Author: Jackie Bolt

Richard Barwick, a CIOB Chartered Construction Manager has successfully applied to join the Principal Contractor Competency Certification (PCCC) Scheme (Category B: All Buildings including HRBs (CIOB Certified Principal Contractor for all including Higher Risk Buildings).

All applicants are required to demonstrate their competence in nine areas of building safety, which is achieved by providing practical work based examples to evidence knowledge and experience in building safety, followed by a peer review.

The CIOB is to publish a principal contractor register to allow professionals to demonstrate they meet the competence requirements set out in the Building Safety Act and amended building regulations.

Many homes around Kent are aging and require upgrades or retrofits to improve their energy performance, extend their lifespan, and meet modern standards. We focus on retrofit archetypes and energy-efficiency technologies, such as insulation, heating, ventilation and renewable energy integration.

As a part of the DESNZ Heat Pump Ready programme, we are able to advise and provide solutions on the following “common” housing archetypes:-

• Wimpey No Fines
• Laing Easiform
• Parkinson
• BISF
• Unity

Archetypes designs reduce costs through standardised designs and approaches for retrofit projects, but it is important to remember that all homes are unique. The image below shows a Unity archetype, before and after retrofit

Coombs is Retrofit Solutions Provider, a trading division of established Retrofit Consultancy, RJ Barwick Ltd. Our ‘sister’ company is DDA Engineers Ltd, a Structural and Civil Engineering Specialist. This established consortium combines skills, expertise and resources to provide a one-stop building decarbonisation capability.

If you are a business or public authority, come and talk to us. Telephone Jackie on 01233 632616.

The parent company of Coombs, RJ Barwick, has for many decades innovated in the construction industry. Now, as part of our drive to use innovation to make homes fit for purpose, RJ Barwick has been selected to work with their landlord partners utilising the Energiesprong approach to develop optimum standardised whole house retrofit solutions for four of the most challenging and/or common non-traditional home archetypes across sites in Kent and Wolverhampton

This is one of twenty-four heat pump projects in England and Scotland that will share more than £15m in the second round of funding under the UK government’s Heat Pump Ready programme. Heat Pump Ready is part of the £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) and funding was announced in October 2021 alongside the Heat and Building Strategy. Its key objectives are to reduce costs and increase the performance of domestic heat pumps, minimise disruption in homes during the process of heat pump installation and develop financial models that support an increase in heat pump deployment.

The image below shows some of the homes in Wolverhampton – three storey Wimpey “No Fines”.

#netzero #heat pump #energiesprong

The UK government sees heat pumps as a key low carbon energy technology, to help us all grapple with the challenges of climate change and rising energy bills. Heat pumps are one of the best ways to move away from fossil fuels and decarbonise heat in our homes. As always, the fabric of the building should be the first priority in reducing energy use, and then other measures such as a correctly sized heat pump that is based on room by room thermal demand calculations.

Coombs’ Managing Director recently joined Energiesprong, other retrofit contractors and landlord clients on a study trip to the Netherlands, where the Government is leading a plan to deploy up to 2 million hybrid heat pumps by 2030. The programme is supported by a subsidy scheme by the government that will enable the installation of at least 100,000 heat pumps per year from 2024. Off-site processes (part of the Energiesprong model) can achieve higher quality and better performance at a lower investment than today’s, traditional, labour intensive construction practices.

The images below show a recent Energiesprong scheme in the Netherlands.