Has your trust got the energy to be best in show?
With all schools charged with reducing their energy pawprint, which breed of pooch do you identify with?
Warneford Consulting pride themselves on their ability to provide academy trusts with accurate, contemporary evidence driven data from which to premise their estate’s strategy. It’s no different when it comes to supporting clients to assess options for how best to reduce energy use and which renewable energy measures are the most appropriate for each individual school’s specific needs.
Working in partnership with experienced energy professionals and in concert with trusts acting as critical friends, we have developed and designed a new Stage 1 Decarbonisation Plan: Energy Audit, that collects, collates, and analyses each school’s current energy use and existing built environment’s buildings performance, before providing recommendations, return on investment and funding routes.
Don’t make a dog’s dinner out of your energy and sustainability strategy.
Some energy surveys capture so much data that the key message gets lost beneath a wall of stats and figures and can cost many thousands of pounds.
Others are so high level that they don’t really tell you anything you did not already know from your Display Energy Certificate. These may be relatively low in cost but provide no value.
And then there are those audits that are simply a tick box exercise, designed to support a funding application and, as a result, their incentive is to meet that criterion and not what is necessarily best for the school.
Experience shows that its always best to be as prescriptive as possible and determine what you want to do with the data before and not after the survey.
We advise schools on our methodology but are always flexible to exactly mirror our clients’ specific needs. Our survey templates are pure breeds and not a product of a puppy farm.
You can’t teach an old dog, new tricks.
Much of our school estate is old, thermally inefficient and in poor condition.
Best practice is to adopt a fabric first approach and ensure that buildings are as energy efficient as possible, well insulated, ventilated with heating systems optimised and controlled.
It is not always financially viable to install modern systems in old buildings which are draughty and have site space restrictions. Whilst we are all on a journey towards decarbonisation, we also require the infrastructure to be in place to reduce our dependence on gas.
Many school estates require additional electric supply capacity before they can convert from agas fired system and the associated costs often render some projects non-runners.
The system must fit the school and not the other way round.
Warneford Consulting want to be best in show.
Many of our school estates resembles a Heinz 57 and are a bit of mongrel, however, we want to make it best in class. Together, drawing upon our collective sector experience and reputation, we will make sure your energy and sustainability strategy is built on the accurate information.
We will qualify and quantify all our recommendations via options appraisals, so that your trust can make informed, costed decisions, and explore routes to funding and returns on investment.
Get on the dog and bone now
Call us to discuss how we can support you put your best paw forward.
