Construction industry workshops are increasingly revealing concerns over the cost and complexity of large scale jobs, as mainstream practitioners realise that delivery of housing retrofit could be more complex and costly than anticipated.
These concerns were raised in a series of workshops for contractors, consultants, clients and academics organised by the National Refurbishment Centre, the Centre reports.
Workshop participants voiced fears about refurbishment carrying higher risks than new build, highlighting such issues as the costs involved in developing new products for the sector and the potential for homes to have unforeseen additional problems, such as asbestos or dry rot.
The National Refurbishment Centre report, ‘Refurbishing the nation – gathering evidence’, says that tendering and delivery of green refurbishments were both identified as complex, often causing significant disruption to home occupants, for example.
National Refurbishment Centre manager John O’Brien said it will ‘continue to gather information and data from hundreds of refurbishment projects to help support industry and government to develop the right strategies and products’.
Some of these concerns were echoed by speakers at the recent Retro Expo conference at Birmingham’s NEC. Jeremy Kape, director of property investment at affordable housing provider Affinity Sutton, which has run the FutureFit test programme involving the refurbishment of around 150 of its homes, said: ‘Every cost has proved to be higher than we expected.’
Neil May, project leader of the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance, which carried out the responsible retrofit research project looking at gaps in technical knowledge, said: ‘There is a lack of data on traditional materials and things like how they deal with moisture. There has been an over-reliance on modelling. There is a basic lack of understanding of moisture physics.’
However, local authorities in the vanguard of driving improvement works under the government’s green deal programme said that monitoring would have a big part to play as understanding grows. Michael O’Doherty, head of climate change: buildings and energy at Manchester City Council said: ‘This is the beginning of a market. There will be a need for monitoring in homes – we have the University of Salford doing monitoring work.’ Dave Allport, project manager with Birmingham City Council’s Birmingham Energy Savers programme said: ‘Each of our five projects is being evaluated to see how the green deal works.’
Allport also said he was keen to see manufacturers bring new products to the sector, adding, ‘We are interested in innovative products that overcome barriers for householders, like internal wall insulation that is easy to fit and doesn’t cause major disruption, and external wall insulation that can be carried out in cold weather.’
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Building 4 Change: LINK
