Zero Ambitions Podcast

Lucy Lyons of Kestrix joins us this week to talk about their use of drones, infrared imaging, and AI to quicken the pace of retrofit surveying. Specifically, with regard to a case study detailing their work with Peabody housing association.

Kestrix is a software company that works with landlords to assess their building stock in terms of which homes need help and whether the retrofit works that have been carried out are performing. 

They use their sophisticated broad-brush surveys and image analysis is is designed to help asset owners get the greatest value out of s...

Baz Iyer (Vulcan) and Stephen Lloyd (Savills Earth) join us to talk about the likely impact of the UK's long-awaited Future Homes Standard (FHS) and, perhaps more importantly, the Home Energy Model (HEM).

HEM is the new model that will inform the UK's Energy Performance Certification (EPC) rating system. It's much more detailed in terms of the information that it demands about the buildings it is being used to rate, and therefore much more demanding of the assessors.

But this means that it can be much more useful for modelling the energy performance of buildings...

We sat down with Anna Moore, CEO of Domna Group, to talk about its approach to the business of retrofit, pragmatic retrofit strategy, and long-term asset management for landlords. All underpinned by a layer of data collation and machine learning.

Domna is currently retrofitting around 10,000 homes per year through grant-funded and self-funded programmes, using an integrated asset management—strategy to: deliver impact and savings through a mix of strategy, support on funding, management of delivery, and quality assurance.

Importantly, Anna knows her stuff and she is fun, too.

Notes from the show

We're back! And we’re talking about the value of post-occupancy evaluation (POE) with Tom Robins and Leigh Fairbrother of Switchee.

Their business is POE for landlords that’s intended to improve the quality of life for the residents that they rely on. Capturing sensor data, analysing it, and synthesising that into something their clients can use.

Essentially, this means validating the quality of fabric, the impact of retrofit works, and anticipating car crashes—metaphorical ones.

We get a really helpful explanation of Awaab’s Law ar...

In this episode, we are joined by Attzaz Rashid (Barratt London) and Joel Callow (Beyond Carbon) to talk about Barratt London's move into Passive House.

It was a chance to get into what attracted Barratt to developing this Lo-E homes proposition and how they came to feel confident about committing to deliver certified Passive House apartments, the team effort that's been employed to make it work, and the way this change has brought about a renewed enthusiasm for the job in some of the project's participants.

It's a really interesting exploration of how the rigour...

Is there a collaboration problem in retrofit within the social housing sector? That was the premise for this conversation with Rafe Bertram, an architect and retrofit expert—appearing in a personal capacity—who was very surprised when I posed the question because he's found collaboration to be a strength in the sector, at least in London.

In the end it led to a conversation about what he's learned from the experiences he's had working on retrofits in the social housing sector, in his community, and even doing big flashy Apple stores.

The most interesting bit thou...

This episode is all about case study in circularity and a group of people turning waste into useful materials for the built environment. Daniel Dinizo and Charmaine Cu-Unjieng of NaturLoop are bringing a new bio-based product to market that transforms waste coconut husk into a material that's something between MDF and a particle board.

For us, this presented a chance to talk about how sustainable materials are developed, the challenges of bringing them to market and how responsible businesses can approach supply chain development (the big challenge now).

As professionals who work with LCAs, EPDs...

In this episode we are exploring the relationship between financial institutions and the built environment in relation to sustainability, building performance and mitigating climate change with Ian Bhullar and Ronnell Reffell from UK Finance, the UK financial sector's membership organisation.

The episode itself was prompted by a report that UK Finance published in relation to the incoming UK Government's own Warm Homes Plan: Greening Homes, Creating Growth: Unlocking demand for green home finance. Its recommendations will be familiar to anyone who has been working in the green building sector but it's notable because these arguments and demands...

We're joined by our new friends from Building Atlas, Nick Taylor and Olga Khroustaleva, who join us for a conversation about commercial retrofit—the non-residential kind. 

They’ve got a data driven business Building Atlas that helps commercial asset owners to plan pragmatic retrofit pathways for commercial real estate.

This isn’t just important because of how much energy the non-residential sector consumes, it’s also because 70% of non-residential building assets are on course to become stranded assets because of their EPC rating and MEES regulation.

They...

In this episode Rose Chard joins us to describes her multilayered and multi textured approach to innovation and research.

It's a conversation about Energy Systems Captapult's experiment in prescribing heating to keep people warm—that's pretty much it, but there was a lot to talk about.

Notes from the show

In a slight departure from our usual building performance themes joining us for this episode we have Richard Muscat, a man who has experienced the world of investment and tech from a fascinating range of angles and is seeking ways to do things differently.

In essence, we’re looking at the way venture capital and climatetech are organised in ways that aren't conducive to delivering the impact that's promised. We're not just picking on VCs, we're using them as a means of highlighting a bunch of systemic economic issues—chief among them is how unrealistic goals for grow...

In this episode we're talking about Zero Bills Homes, so we welcome back Nigel Banks, this time accompanied by his Octopus colleague Emma Fletcher*.

We're not directly talking Fabric Fifth again but the concept is central to the Octopus zero bills strategy i.e. prioritising decarbonising energy use and reducing the cost of energy use rather than focusing on reducing energy demand through fabric measures. As before, basic fabric standards are required in order to make the proposition financially viable.

As you might imagine, Jeff was keen to dig into the technical...

This episode is all about a retrofit programme gone wrong in Preston and the effort required to fix it.

It's a story that was covered in the pages of Passive House Plus back in 2018 under the headline "Disastrous Preston retrofit scheme remains unresolved" and until recently we thought it remained unresolved.

We're joined by Filipe Amarante and Joanna Curtis to talk about the Preston Retrofit Catastrophe and all the work that National Energy Action has been doing to fix the grotesque damage that was wrought on a community in the 2010s. It's a project that's...

We are joined by Valentina Marincioni (UCL, UKCMB) and returning guest Toby Cambray (Greengauge) to talk about the bane of all buildings: moisture.

Recently, they they’ve produced a simple explainer video about "breathability" in buildings for the UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings. Given Jeff's proclivity for referring to the 'sweatability' of buildings this seemed like a perfect opportunity to have Toby back and meet his colleague Valentina.

We got into the subject of moisture in some depth, discussed the key terms (vapour diffusion, hygroscopicity, and capillary action), why this all matters, what’s impo...

Joining us for this episode are Tom Cox and Sally Sattary co-founders of Decent Energy. 

They have a software startup borne of a retrofit experience that did not meet its homeowner expectations, a proprietary software that works to maximise the value of battery storage to improve two key metrics: reducing cost of electricity and reducing the carbon intensity of the energy you do use.

There's a bunch of chat about the potential of decentralised energy management to help people in all sorts of ways, from reducing one's individual impact to helping the g...

This episode is a window into the consumer side of domestic retrofit that’s full of lessons for everyone involved in the retrofit sector. 

We speak with retrofit influencer Judith Leary Joyce about the experience of undergoing a deep retrofit and learning how to communicate about the subject with normal people. She talks us through her journey from building an extension during the pandemic to getting deep into retrofit and eventually becoming an unlikely retrofit influencer.

Whether you work in a domestic, commercial, or industrial setting the nature and needs of normal peo...

Returning champions Richard O'Hegarty and Oliver Kinnane join us to discuss a recently co-authored paper: Understanding the embodied carbon credentials of modern methods of construction (MMC).

Get ready for a long meandering discussion that gets into what they learned and what they think about accounting practices for embodied carbon, as well as plenty of chatter about MMC and why we hate the term (but not what it is).

Notes from the show

Returning champions Richard O'Hegarty and Oliver Kinnane join us to discuss a recently co-authored paper: Understanding the embodied carbon credentials of modern methods of construction (MMC).

Get ready for a long meandering discussion that gets into what they learned and what they think about accounting practices for embodied carbon, as well as plenty of chatter about MMC and why we hate the term (but not what it is).

Notes from the show

For this episode we were joined by Nathan Gambling. For those that are new to him, he's heating engineer of some repute, a renowned educator, and a fellow podcaster. 

The episode revolves around the nature of education and learning, the skills gap—specifically focusing on heat pump and retrofit education—and a post that Nathan put up a few weeks ago about an educational experiment he tried out that led to us thinking about the purpose of education.

In essence, the episode is about how people learn and how this should shape our approach to meeti...

This time around we're talking about the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard (UKNZCBS) with three of its architects: Jess Hrivnak (RIBA), Jane Anderson (ConstructionLCA), and Julie Jodefroy (CIBSE).

The UKNZCBS is the first cross-industry standard for net zero carbon-aligned buildings, albeit in a pilot form. The standard has been developed to enable stakeholders to prove whether a building aligns with the UK’s carbon and energy budgets by providing a single, agreed methodology for defining what ‘net zero carbon’ means for buildings in the UK.

This probably won't be the only episode we'll produce on the...

Last year the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) released its residential retrofit standard. Given that they're one of the construction industry's oldest, largest, and most influential institutions this felt significant.

Importantly, the RICS organisation has a global footprint, so it has the potential to influence good behaviour far and wide. We're also hopeful in light of the success of the RICS Whole Life Carbon Assessment standard. That is in terms of its apparent impact, adoption, and reach.

In order to get into the subject a bit more we invited Paul Bagust (Head of Property...

Can we address the decarbonisation of homes by focusing on health? That's the mission that Jenny Danson has set for herself in establishing Healthy Homes Hub, and it's a question that manages to subvert Betteridge's Law of headlines, too. 

Healthy Homes Hub is a network, built around an online platform, that's dedicated to transforming the way people experience social housing, and its environmental impact, by creating healthier housing environments. Comprising a series of eight dedicated hubs that cover everything from policy and finance, to retrofit and air quality, the platform enable easy access to important information, insights, a...

Joining us on Zero Ambitions this week is Chris Carus co-founder of Loco Home Retrofit, a Glasgow-based 'emerging one-step shop'.

Loco Home Retrofit is a retrofit operation that's most interesting for its approach to developing a viable retrofit offer, focused on building trust in communities and with its supply chain as a means to catalysing the decarbonisation of our homes (or at least Glasgow's homes). 

And now, they're hiring, seeking to fill three positions (below) so if you know of anyone suitable please share the ads:

The first episode of January 2025 marks the long overdue, first appearance of Jay Stuart, a long-time friend and colleague of Jeff and a firm fixture of the green building scene in Ireland. 

Jay joined us to talk about his latest project: Loop Your Spare. It’s a SaaS platform designed to match 'spare' construction materials with projects that need them on other sites before they have a chance to be classified as waste. 

It’s a concept that could largely eliminate the concept of waste and minimise the need for recycling in constr...

What's it like trying to scale a retrofit start-up?

This episode welcomes Max Bloomfield and Alex Whitcroft, two of the folks from VundaHaus, to talk about their product, its ongoing design and development, and their preparations to scale the business as they raise investment.

VundaHaus designs and manufactures a rapid-fit insulation solution for external wall insulation (EWI) of residential homes. It's a a sophisticated off-site, MMC, insulation jigsaw that’s been developed to make the logistics of installation much easier than traditional EWI.

There's more to the story but you can listen to th...

This week's episode is all about the lessons learned in carrying out a low-carbon retrofit.

Natalie Black (Enbee Architecture + Design) and Toby McLean (Allt Environmental Structural Engineers) joined us to talk through their experiments and experiences on the renovation of a derelict house in Muswell Hill, London that was shortlisted for the Architects Journal Retrofit and Reuse awards this year.

This is a project that could easily be misrepresented as a Grand Designs-style endeavour that's only representative of what you can do if you've got loads of capital and capacity, but that wouldn't be fair...

Our guest, Liz Male has been on our radar for a while. She is a figure who has been working in the construction sector since the 1990s, an ally to the sustainability sector, a great communicator, and an experienced thinker.

When we met earlier in the year we talked about a lot of things, but the consistent theme of our conversation was 'why we need to tell better stories about the built environment'. That said, we kept our powder as dry as we could and moved on to discuss when we might be able to get her...

Apologies for the delay, the lost podcast has been returned and is ready for release.

'Don't Waste Buildings' should be a straightforward proposition. It seems obvious. Especially so in the face of the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the business of the built environment is not yet on board completely.

Our guests for this episode are the founders of UK-based campaign group Don't Waste Buildings, Will Hurst (Architects Journal) Leanne Tritton (Ing Media), and Richard Nelson (Abyss Global).

They're a group who are seeking to remedy this challenge by pressuring government and persuading business to...

This week we're speaking with Steven Heath, technical director at Knauf Insulation (UK and Ireland) and a really interesting and experienced person in the sector.

So while we had him, we ran through a bunch of our favourite hoary subjects: measuring performance, performance guarantees, and what we think about EPCs.

Knauf is a firm that's done some really interesting work in all of these areas and has even managed to make headway with the UK state in getting them to think about the value of testing performance, with EPCs and whatever SHDF is called now...

A long-overdue episode with friend of the show, Lloyd Alter, about a blog he wrote and his book "The Story of Upfront Carbon".

We get into the language of sustainability, carbon, and lots of the words that are ubiquitous in this space (sustainability and the built environment, obviously).

We get into the sustainability of travel, to some extent too,

Lloyd's book: The Story of Upfront Carbon: How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis

A wise woman once said: "sustainability is the doing, ESG is the talking about it".

Today an Irish house-building giant has made a major move on Passive House — publishing a positioning paper and announcing the ongoing construction of over 1,700 homes to the standard.

Joining us to talk about this are Nicola Cronin (Senior Sustainability Analyst) and Stephen O'Shea (Head of Sustainable Construction and ESG Reporting).

Rather than this being another episode about Passive House we're more concerned with why a massive housebuilder has chosen to build to the standard. In this case, the...

Jeff invited Mhairi Grant, co founder of award-winning architectural practice Paper Igloo, to join us to talk about the challenges of ensuring that one's ideas for sustainable design actually make their way through to the construction phase.

The subject was sparked by a conversation she and Jeff had about lessons learned from a flawed project (that we discuss) and what it takes to ensure that our best, or even just easiest ideas are delivered upon in the build phase.

Usually, we'd think about specifying a project in a way that can resist value engineering, but...

Why is making UK homes more efficient so difficult? So asked journalist Leyla Boulton earlier this year in the pages of the Financial Times.

Seeing a retrofit article in the FT piqued our interest, even more so once we realised Leyla is a senior editor with an esteemed background in political and environmental reporting. She was reporting on Kyoto where no one cared.

Since beginning her retrofit journey Leyla has become a campaigner and it's this that you'll hear as we discuss the mainstreaming retrofit for the able-to-pay market, an endeavour borne of her experiences...

In the UK every day the construction industry produces enough waste to fill a football stadium.

Rightly, former guest, Chris Clarke (SCAPE) has got a bee in his bonnet about construction waste and is making efforts to draw attention to the issue. He's not just concerned with the profligate use of resources and the impact on carbon emissions, it's the lackadaisical nature of the waste itself.

Waste management accounts for £1.5BN of construction spending every year. In an industry that's operating on margins so tight that any kind of change can be seen to be p...

Something-like twelve months on from inception we thought we'd catch up with what's happening at Living Places, the multi-disciplinary, impact-focused consultancy co-founded by this week's guest Cat Magill.

Where last year Rufus Grantham came on the podcast to tell us all about the organisation he was in the midst of founding, this year Cat joined us to tell us about what they've been up to.

There was plenty to talk about, but in short, the finance part isn’t that easy. However, they're making progress and figuring out how to make it happen, and Cat te...

This week's guest is Caroline Ashe Brady of KORE Retrofit in Ireland, one of the objectively successful one-stop-shop retrofit providers to have emerged over the past few years.

Caroline is a business leader who we’re a proper fan of, so apologies in advance for our ‘so Caroline please tell us, why are you so great’ style questioning. That said, you can trust us in this opinion, we’ve done the work with these guys. 

Caroline was happy to talk about their method, process, challenges and offer up some top tips for how to make it work i...

Returning champion Lisa Ann Pasquale rejoins us on Zero Ambitions to talk about dogs and retrofit. Mainly retrofit though.

Informed by Lisa's experiences as a retrofit coordinator, technical lead at RetrofitWorks, and Technical Manager at The Retrofit Academy she knows an awful lot about the challenges faced by retrofit practitioners. Windows, ventilation, product information, and the inflexibility of insurance-backed guarantees all come in for a well-justified shoeing.

Notes from the show

Returning champion Ellora Coupe joins us to talk about the recent report that Her Own Space has published about the place of women in the retrofit sector, which is heartening, insightful, and damning in equal measure. A great piece of work that everyone interested in the sector should heed.

Perhaps more importantly, she's with us to promote the incoming launch of its professional sister network Her Retrofit Space, a network for professional women working in the retrofit sector. It's a network that she's created to fill an obvious cultural deficit and in her words "empower professional women...

This week we're going by Joseph Little, Head of Construction & Building Performance in the School of Architecture, Building and Environment at TU Dublin. He joined us to talk about the journey he's been on leading the MSc in Building Performance over the last seven years, but we got into a lot more.

Joseph has been deeply involved in the promotion of better building standards by measuring the performance of buildings for years. Not least with the five Breaking the Mould articles he wrote that Jeff published years ago, sounding the alarm on moisture, condensation, ventilation and a...

This week we're thinking about retrofit differently with Dan Hill from Dark Matter Labs (DML). Or rather, we're talking about retrofit's potential to become a movement for social change.

In reality, retrofit is about much more than fabric and economics, it's about people and how they live. With that in mind we should be thinking much more about engagement. This is itself a massive challenge because thinking about people properly, as the users of a building, requires a massive shift in how retrofit practice is organised and enacted.

Dan has 25 years of experience from working...