Retrofit Taskforce

The Retrofit Taskforce seeks to pilot a Retrofit Procurement Club to enable stockowners to meet building demand based on criteria relating to the archetype of their building to select appropriate retrofit interventions.

Building archetypes are representations of ‘typical’ buildings and help us to understand a building’s thermal behaviour and how best to retrofit them. Developing this concept of a Retrofit Procurement Club allows building owners access to quality supply chain of services and products to carry out retrofit works, ideally prioritising deep whole-house retrofit.  

This will be grounded in an archetype approach to provide the most effective solution to varying building types in Westminster’s vast existing building stock. 

Objectives

The archetype approach and Retrofit Procurement Club have the potential to: 

• accelerate the uptake and delivery of responsible retrofit projects
• address issues around tenure and complex ownership structures
• identify archetypes by reviewing Westminster’s existing building stock with the aim to develop a potential catalogue or pattern book, with implementable retrofit solutions 
• explore and agree on most appropriate form and level of detail for archetype designs, through consulting with industry experts
• develop an approach for a range of heritage buildings that do not fit into the systems of archetypes
• unlock and bring forward retrofit projects that are not viable for owners due to cost, complexity, or knowledge gap around retrofit
• position Westminster as leading local authority in the field of retrofit, developing its approach to heritage buildings, and creating a replicable model which can be shared with other local authorities and historic cities
• reduce the risk of retrofit process by aggregating demand based on established building typologies
• explore options to develop a procurement plan and process which might include different needs for the varying stakeholders or stockowners, for example domestic or non-domestic

Work to date

The Retrofit Taskforce has:

• undertaken a literature review and stakeholder discussions of archetype-based approaches
• identified and reviewed existing relevant procurement frameworks
• identified local authorities to partner with to co-develop the Retrofit Procurement Club and collate with industry experts