27 August 2024
The RSUA Climate Emergency Committee met today in the RSUA office.
Ben James, the newly appointed chair of the Committee, reported on his meeting with the RSUA Publications Committee. The committee agreed that all projects published in perspective magazine should include key sustainability metric as per the RIBA 2030 Challenge.
Maeve Gorman, Conservation Architect with Alastair Coey Architects, will represent the RSUA as construction sector lead on Climate NI.
It was agreed at this meeting that the new sustainability criteria for the RSUA Design Awards will be issued to the members in advance of the awards going live for 2025.
RSUA intends to organise an information session with Belfast City Council on its recently developed Local Area Energy Plan. RSUA will also offer Carbon Literacy training to members before the end of 2024.
The retrofit guidance subgroup reported that they had an initial meeting to review existing guidance. The subgroup concluded that RSUA should not adopt any one single guidance document but should raise awareness of a range of publications. The group is due to meet again in September.
The Climate Emergency Committee also met with two representatives from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Sharon Poots from the Quality Improvement Team and Robert Clements, Head of Sustainable Development.
The outcomes of this meeting were as follows:
- NIHE provided an update on its whole house retrofit scheme to upgrade 300 homes by March 2025 in the Strabane, Dunmurry, West Belfast, Newtownards, Sion Mills, Dungannon Coleraine, and Antrim areas.
- For its pilot retrofit projects, NIHE has undertaken initial design work in-house or produced full construction information before tender. There has been no requirement for external architects in this initial programme.
- NIHE has not reviewed what requirement there will be for external design teams for future large scale retrofit projects or whether architects will need to have additional accreditations to undertake NIHE projects which involve retrofit. NIHE undertook to review this after April 2025.
- NIHE confirmed its plan to use PAS 2030/35 standards for current and future retrofit projects.
- NIHE stated that for most of its work the design team is not procured separately, as current retrofit programmes are generally based on Design & Build. In other circumstances, one-off retrofit works are being designed and delivered in-house by NIHE. RSUA suggested that former projects such as the modernisation of a tower block would benefit greatly from the appointment of an architect from the outset.
- RSUA raised its concern about the attractiveness of the NIHE procurement process. An example was given of a construction contract with an estimated value of £74m that only attracted one bidder who won the contract with a bid of £86m.
- RSUA intends to invite Kevin Logan, Head of Procurement at NIHE to meet with RSUA members, with a member of the Asset Strategy senior team.
