On the 18th of July 2024, our Director of Studies, Professor John Edwards, will make a presentation on training in retrofit to the Energy Efficiency Association conference in Warwick. Here is a summary of his presentation:
In 2014, I was requested by the Construction Industry Training Board’s (CITB) National Construction College (NCC) to develop a course with a qualification for the energy efficiency and retrofit of traditional buildings. It comprised a two-day course achieving a ‘Level 3 Award’ qualification. In 2015, I started delivering this course through the Environment Study Centre. This retrofit qualification is the most established retrofit qualification required by PAS 2035, available some four years before any other retrofit qualification required by PAS 2035 was available.
I suppose I was chosen by CITB because I am an accredited historic buildings expert, plus having a Master’s degree in the subject, but with a varied background that included substantial experience in social housing. Also, that I had been involved in retrofit since the early 1990’s covering both building fabric and building services, and that included buildings which were grade 1 listed. As for education experience, I first started part time lecturing in 1986, in the HNC unit, ‘Maintenance and Adaptation of Buildings’, later named as ‘Maintenance and Conversion of Buildings’. I have been involved with education on a part time basis ever since in various roles, teaching everyone from crafts people to postgraduates. Today I have a part time professor role at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, in Swansea.
Over the past ten years, the Environment Study Centre has built up an excellent reputation for quality training. In recent years, as the training arm of expert consultancy practice, Edwards Hart, we teach what we do. This is to do with almost everything with dealing with existing buildings, including retrofit. We don’t just deliver our own courses but have provided training consultancy, developed learning resources and delivered training for a host of different organisations which has included: CIOB, IHBC, RICS, Wales Low Carbon Hwb, CITB Northern Ireland, Historic Environment Scotland and CITB.
Training links to standards and to a greater extent guidance. My first retrofit guidance was published by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) in 2011, which I authored with the late Andrew Townsend. I have been involved with the authorship of many British Standards. I lead in the development of the British Standard for Building Conservation, BS 7913: 2013, which is part of the British Standards Institution (BSI) retrofit standards framework. I have also been involved with the authorship of the BSI retrofit standards PAS 2030, PAS 2035 and PAS 2038 and currently BS 40104 on retrofit assessment.
Both PAS 2035 (for dwellings) and PAS 2038 (for non-domestic buildings), each require qualifications and competencies, nearly all of which involves obtaining a qualification. When there is a requirement to comply with these standards, it obviously results in a demand for the qualifications detailed within them. When we first delivered the ‘Level 3 Award’ course for traditional buildings in 2015, there was some demand, but this increased rapidly in 2019 and 2020, with the publication of PAS 2035.
There seems to be a chase towards numbers and that might be perfectly understandable, but quality should be seen as just as important. Individuals with little experience of the subject matter, are allowed to deliver a course, if they hold the qualification that the course achieves. I will only deliver training in subjects where I do have expertise, and so do many others. There is nothing we can do about the present situation, other than make sure we have experts delivering our courses. We feel that this will allow the imparting of our genuine expertise to learners, but not everyone involved with training will agree with this approach. I would advise learners to check out who is delivering the training and see what expertise they have. It’s always best to learn from an expert.
The weakest link in PAS 2035, concerns the role of the Retrofit Assessor. The lowest level of competency required is on the low side. Requiring a domestic energy assessor qualification plus a few extra days of training, seems to satisfy accreditation bodies that the Retrofit Assessor is competent. Many will be and many have a much higher level of competency than the lowest level required. The forthcoming publication of BS 40104, the British Standard for Retrofit Assessment, will eventually replace the relevant section of PAS 2035, and will be more demanding. This strengthens the case for requiring a higher level of competency from the Retrofit Assessor. There are already courses achieving a formal Retrofit Assessor qualification, and we feel it to be essential that these qualifications should be required through a future edition of PAS 2035.
The RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) Dwelling Retrofit Standard, was published earlier this year and comes into force by the end of October. This means that any retrofit project involving RICS surveyors, will benefit from their additional building surveying expertise and qualifications.
Where traditional and protected buildings are concerned, the 2023 version of PAS 2035, details new training qualification requirements. It means that Retrofit Co-ordinators must obtain the Level 3 Award Traditional Building Retrofit qualification, if working on any traditional or protected building. It’s the same for Retrofit Assessors, who previously only required the qualification if working on protected buildings. It’s the same for Retrofit Designers, unless they are conservation accredited or certified.
The qualifications required by PAS 2038, the BSI standard for the retrofit of non-domestic buildings, are much greater that those required by PAS 2035. PAS 2038, is littered with requirements for specific qualifications in each role and activities to be implemented. Where such qualifications don’t exist, evidence of competency is a requirement. Where traditional and protected buildings are concerned, any individual undertaking or responsible for retrofit assessment, improvement option evaluation, establishing intended outcomes, the preparation of an improvement plan or making statutory consent applications, must obtain the Level 3 Award qualification in the energy efficiency and retrofit of traditional buildings. Designers must be conservation accredited.
When searching for the Level 3 course, make sure that the trainer has years of experience in doing the job and not just teaching it and make sure that they are conservation accredited. See here for details on the content of the Level 3 Award qualification and course.
