Design and contracting is the third stage in retrofitting your home. Your choices and any initial findings will guide the design process, creating a clear set of requirements to help you hire contractors.

Our Home Retrofit Scenarios report and the Bespoke Retrofit Plan services in stage 2, are intended to help you decide on the best-fit retrofit choices for your property. After that, the design and contracting stage transforms your retrofit plans into a clear set of requirements. You can then procure contractors, with support from CAfS if necessary.

There are two aspects to the design and contracting phase:

  • Design stage advice
  • Procurement and Contracting advice

Design stage advice

Once any necessary surveys or preparatory investigations are complete, the retrofit design work can begin.

All retrofit work involves an element of design. For example, whoever decides which insulation you should use and how it is fitted is designing that element of the retrofit. Ideally that person should carry the necessary professional indemnity insurance for their design work!

CAfS offers 2 levels of design advice:

Design Route A  – Design Review applies where a client is working with an architect. In this case, CAfS offer a Design Review service for the architect to discuss their designs with a specialist retrofit architect from People Powered Retrofit (PPR) in Manchester.

Design Route B – Standard Specification applies where a retrofit project is less extensive, low risk and only requires standard specification for a limited number of measures. CAfS can provide standard specification documents produced by People Powered Retrofit (PPR) for installers to work from.

If you already have an architect in mind, or are looking for an architect who carries out retrofit design work, then Design Route A will be relevant for you. We can signpost you to a number of architects who have already used our Design Review service, but we are keen to offer the service to other architects too.

Once you have a set of design details or specifications, this will inform a schedule of work that contractors can price up with confidence, so you can compare quotes.

Cost: The Design Review service is currently free or subsidised for architects who are new to the service, due to pilot project funding. In future it will cost £300 + VAT (to the architect).

The Standard Specification service us currently free to home owners (as part of a funded pilot project), but it is likely to cost £100 + VAT per specification in future, or may be subsidised for eligible home owners when project funding is available.

Procurement and Contracting advice

CAfS provides a standard Procurement and Tendering Advice document highlighting best practice, legal responsibilities and obligations that you as a householder may need to consider during the procurement process.

This document is tailored to those not working with an architect at this stage, but can be found useful by any client taking responsibility for some elements of project management themselves.

CAfS supports home owner clients to produce your own Schedule of Works to tie together standard and other design schedules, using a template and worked example. A review session with our retrofit technical lead provides a critique of your draft before you issue to contractors.

This aims to:

  • Provide an indication of areas a schedule of works would typically cover.
  • Provide a standardised format for you to populate.
  • Support you to produce a high quality clear written communication document to support the procurement delivery and evaluation stages of your retrofit project.

This service is tailored to the needs of Design Route B clients, those not working with an architect.

CAfS provides a standard Contracting Advice document highlighting contracting options, best practice and legal responsibilities that you as a home owner may need to consider during the contracting process.

This document is tailored to those not working with an architect at this stage, but can be found useful by any client taking responsibility for some elements of project management themselves.

Cost: These services are currently free for suitable retrofit projects, as part of a pilot funded by Energy Redress.

To find out more about any of our Retrofit Services or to check your eligibility, please contact us.