The Environment Study Centre welcomes the RICS Dwelling Retrofit Standard, which comes into force at the end of October 2024.
Overall, this ‘standard’ is higher than PAS 2035 and requires any RICS member to work to a higher standard than others. Therefore, a PAS 2035 project places additional requirements upon those with RICS membership. However, this means that PAS 2035 projects may benefit from RICS members being involved with retrofit assessments as they are already professionally qualified surveyors.
The standard is technically astute as it expresses serious concerns about a ‘fabric first’ approach.
Heavily emphasises the requirements for competence and often refers to BS 7913 where traditional buildings are concerned and the need for significance analysis (note the 2 Day Traditional Building Retrofit Course achieving a Level 3 Award qualification is a way of upskilling and developing competence in this area https://lnkd.in/d7rzCqB).
The selling point for RICS members and RICS regulated firms is that a service at a specific level is mandatory and mandated to be higher than PAS 2035.
RICS and regulated firms wanting to work to PAS 2035 will still have to comply with other specific PAS 2035 requirements, which includes additional qualification.
Our retrofit expert Professor John Edwards said: “as a member of the panel that produced the standard, I am overall pleased with what has been produced, and ensures that retrofit projects will hugely befit from RICS members working on their projects”.
Please contact us if you would like any further information.
