10 August 2021 • Nigel Walley - Chimni MD

Up till now, the emphasis of Chimni’s work has been creating records of past activity - transactions, building work, materials and maintenance records.

Retrofit brings the need for a view forward as well as back. As we know, our homes are responsible for 14% of carbon emissions (CCC 2019) and all homeowners have been challenged with bringing up to new NetZero standards. For most of us that means planning for a series of future works to be undertaken on our homes over the next decades up to 2050.

So for a Chimni user this will mean adding a set of future project plans to their record of past ones. Homeowners need the information and tools to self-manage the process. Property Logbooks can deliver plans to these homeowners in manner consistent with the way they already manage their homes. So a Retrofit Plan is a 'plan of works' with intelligence and integrations built in.

There is a direct link between the data in a Renovation Plan and the rest of the data in a Property Logbook. Logbooks already contain EPC information, historic project records and links to certification bodies. As each component of a Renovation Plan is completed, the data will becomes a historic project record along side all the other project records in the Logbook.

Whichever Retrofit approach is used, at the core of each type of plan has to be consistency in approach and data captured. The industry has needed a standard data approach to this challenge, and Chimni has worked with the Green Finance Institute on data standards for Retrofit Plans, the GFI has just published a new White Paper summarising the work. Chimni’s new Retrofit Planning Module is built from that standard.

Connectivity and integrations with certification bodies and other service providers will also be key for Renovation Plans. Chimni logbooks already integrate with certification bodies and registers (like the EPC Register and HMLR). We are now also working to integrate and share data with companies running stand-alone Retrofit services. Those companies in turn will need to be able to lodge data in a home's Chimni logbook.

For Retrofit finance to work the data sharing needs to extend to finance companies to allow green loans to be measured and monitored. Chimni is a founder member of the RLBA who are working with banks and building societies to establish a standard basis for this reporting to happen with trials expected to start at the beginning of 2022.

It is also likely that many homes will be sold in the next few years with this Retrofit journey only partially completed. This means that progress will need to be assessed as part of the conveyancing process and project / green finance information will need to be passed between owners on sale. It is therefore crucial that the information in Retrofit Plans is co-ordinated with the other digitally-hosted data being collated by homeowners considering selling their home. This data needs to be integrated with the conveyancing and mortgage industries. Chimni logbooks will deliver these integrations.

The next challenge will be agreeing how this data can be exchanged and shared between the various systems and services being developed by the Retrofit community. We recognise that there will be Retrofit Assessors and Coordinators building stand-alone software and web apps using this new data standard. It is crucial that these systems can share data with homeowners in a variety of ways, including app integration and data sharing with Chimni Property Logbooks.

We look forward to working with the other industry players to agree data and API schemas necessary for this integration and data sharing to take place.



Nigel Walley - MD Chimni - Oct 2021.