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Austin Baggett, managing director, Sava

Nine months ago, the Government set up the Green Jobs Taskforce and last month the Taskforce published its first report.  This set out the priorities to create the skills and jobs to achieve our net zero ambitions.

It is hard to find fault with the report’s 82 pages of observations and recommendations.  There are lots of worthy statements such as “Employers, industry bodies, government and unions should work together to tackle barriers to retraining and upskilling so that no worker is left behind by the transition to net zero”.  All good stuff but lacking in practical substance.

So, in the context of achieving net zero in the social housing sector, what are some of the key issues that housing providers should be thinking about?

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Austin Baggett, managing director, Sava
Austin Baggett, managing director, Sava

Invest in the core skills of construction, building pathology and building services

One of the observations in the report is that green jobs should not be considered as niche, and that every job has the potential to become “green” as the world moves to tackle climate change. 

This is certainly true for housing. Project managers, engineers, surveyors, architects, installers (and let’s not forget the accountants too) are the people who will be coming together to deliver high quality and repeatable refurbishment packages. The challenge is not that we have a shortage of people with “net zero” skills – it goes deeper than that because for many years there has been a severe shortage of the fundamental talent that is needed to design, refurbish, manage and maintain buildings.  Specifically, we have a long-term shortage of surveyors and engineers with a holistic understanding of how buildings are put together, how the various elements of fabric and building services interact with each other, and how they perform in practice.

The average age of both an engineer and a residential surveyor in the UK is around the mid-50s. This means that within a decade, many will retire, leaving a gaping hole in the professional workforce. At the same time, we are failing to attract new people into these built environment professions. There is a lack of engineering and technical graduates, as well as apprentices, coming through schools, colleges and universities.  Those that do emerge are quickly snared by the bright lights of the more glamorous commercial property sector, offering rocket high salaries and the opportunity to work on prestigious, city building projects.  How the UK addresses this fundamental imbalance is beyond the scope of this article, but the next point provides an additional approach a housing provider can take.

Grow you own engineering and surveying talent

Increasing the skill set of existing members of the team is a low risk, high return strategy.  Identifying existing team members either in the trades or in a back-office function has been shown to create high-quality professionals, particularly if they are able to undertake vocational qualifications in surveying, building or engineering alongside their day to day job. It also can increase diversity, for instance opening careers up to woman who did not choose engineering or surveying when they left school.   If these vocational qualifications lead to professional membership of the RICS, CABE, CIOB or similar, then you begin to achieve a self-regulating team who are continually developing and operating to professional standards but where they are already familiar with the challenges specific to social housing.

Use PAS 2035 as a helpful framework but it’s not the be all and end all  

PAS 2035 was sponsored by the Government and is the key document in a framework of new and existing standards on how to conduct effective energy retrofits of existing buildings.  Amongst many things, it defines five retrofit roles - Advisor, Assessor, Coordinator, Designer, and Evaluator, and was a response to the Green Deal that suffered from poor quality workmanship as well as concerns over the reliability of the Green Deal Energy Assessments.

Will PAS 2035 improve the skills sets that are utilised in energy retrofit projects, compared to the Green Deal?  It certainly has the potential to lead to better standards, but it also has the potential to commoditise how we view skill sets and ultimately lead a race to the bottom (something that has arguably happened in the world of energy assessment for EPCs).  In order to comply with PAS 2035 every domestic retrofit project will need to be managed by an approved Retrofit Coordinator. And a Retrofit Coordinator is defined as “the individual who will be responsible for overseeing the assessment of dwellings as well as the subsequent specification, monitoring, and evaluation of energy efficiency measures, in accordance with PAS 2035”.  That’s some responsibility.  And yet anyone can become a Retrofit Coordinator via the Domestic Energy Assessor route, and with a total outlay of £2,000- and five-days online training you can complete the two qualifications to do both roles.  One training provider even boasts of a 100% pass rate. We need to focus on quality and not rush to the fastest and cheapest route to qualification.

PAS 2035 is a QA framework you should use to help manage your retrofit projects.  But don’t see the roles as a standalone guarantee of an individual’s competence and ability to perform a specific technical or managerial task. To undertake the Retrofit Coordinator’s role in the installation of 100 domestic heat pumps, you’re going to need them to be an experienced building services project manager first and foremost. Many of your best retrofit coordinators and designers may already reside within your organisation - but you and they might not know it yet.  

Professional engineers and surveyors don’t know everything – but they know where things can go wrong and how to minimize the risks  

Meeting your objective of net zero is likely to be a mix of deploying three strategies.  Firstly, dealing with the building fabric – the walls, the roof and, possibly, the floor.  Secondly, putting in a low or zero carbon heating system to generate space heating and hot water. Thirdly, considering building-integrated renewables – most likely PV, maybe solar thermal, either ‘whole block’ or on an individual home by home basis. 

Overarching all these will be considerations of air quality, thermal comfort, condensation, usability, maintainability, existing structures and health and safety including, let us not forget, fire.  

It is very unlikely that you will ever find a single professional with an in-depth expertise on all these subjects. So what you will need is a professional team that recognise that a building operates as a holistic system – recognising that altering one thing will inevitably alter something else that needs to be managed or removed. 

Considering what I have already said you probably have, at most, 10 years to build that team. You cannot rely on the universities, training providers or Government to solve the problem for you. You need to take a proactive approach to mapping the skills of your existing workforce and identifying and supporting those who have the capability to fill these roles.  Achieving net zero is a journey, but investing in the core skills will create the infrastructure you need to cope with the many twists and turns ahead.

 

Austin Baggett is the managing director of Sava