Announcement of the Rapid Assessment of Building Fabric competition winners
Innovate UK is investing £1.5m in technologies that readily collect and make available data from buildings to better understand the performance of the fabric of that building.
Understanding the performance of a building, the nature of its fabric and potential for decarbonisation will generate better outcomes for owners and occupants of those buildings. Innovate UK’s Net Zero Heat programme is supporting solutions that reduce the cost and time required for assessing the fabric performance of buildings and assuring net zero performance targets are achieved.
The techniques and technologies that will be developed are suitable for existing buildings requiring renovation but also applicable to new buildings and those in the construction phase. When the decarbonisation of heat in an existing building is being considered, these solutions can be used to understand and quantify the opportunities. During the building or installation process, they can be used to provide quality assurance and identify shortcomings, allowing for timely remedial action. Heat performance can be evaluated, or re-evaluated, at the completion of the measures being installed or when the new build is ready for handover, to validate performance and provide confidence to contractors, clients, occupants and investors.
Funding has been made available via a Collaborative Research & Development (CR&D) programme and competitive process. The winners of the Rapid Assessment of Building Fabric competition are being announced at UK Construction Week on the 4th October 2023.
The funding has been granted for the following projects, to lead partners as listed:
- Advanced Open EPC – City Science Corporation Limited
- AutoEPC – Scalable, Accurate, Automated Building Fabric Assessment – Digilab Solutions Ltd
- Decarbonisation Measure Assessment Tool (DeMAT) – ICAX Limited
- Development and demonstration of Automated Rapid Thermal Performance Assessments (RaThPAs) for scalable, accurate assessment of building fabric – Kestrix Ltd
- Enhancing Airtightness Quantification with the Portascanner® Airtight – Coltraco Limited
- Measurement Led Actionable Building Diagnostics – Build Test Solutions Limited
- Rapid assessment of fabric performance: historic buildings – Cheribim Ltd
- Thermographic Survey Automation – Maesin Ltd