Sustainability Services

Deep, evidence-led energy and carbon assessment sits at the core of our sustainability expertise. Detailed analysis of building fabric, services, controls, occupancy patterns, and metered data is undertaken to build a true understanding of how buildings perform in practice, not just in theory. This rigorous baseline allows inefficiencies, constraints, and opportunities to be identified with confidence, forming the foundation for all subsequent feasibility, decarbonisation, and investment decisions.

Our assessments go beyond compliance or headline metrics. They are designed to challenge assumptions, test real operational behaviour, and provide clear, defensible insight that clients can rely on when prioritising intervention, securing funding, and committing to long-term change.

Net Zero feasibility is approached as a decision-making exercise, not a statement of intent. Detailed feasibility studies test carbon reduction pathways against technical constraints, operational reality, cost, programme, and risk. Options are explored comparatively, with clear articulation of implications and trade-offs, enabling clients to make informed, defensible decisions before committing funding or delivery resources. This work consistently underpins successful business cases, funding submissions, and onward design development.

Extensive, hands-on experience delivering estate-scale decarbonisation across complex and diverse portfolios underpins our approach. Rather than treating buildings in isolation, we take a strategic view, understanding how assets interact, how they are funded, and how change can be sequenced intelligently over time. Asset condition, operational criticality, grid capacity, lifecycle planning, and funding opportunity are considered together to ensure interventions are prioritised where they deliver the greatest long-term value.

The result is a coherent, phased roadmap that clients can act on with confidence. These strategies support sustained carbon reduction while remaining realistic, fundable, and resilient to change, enabling organisations to move from ambition to delivery at estate scale.

Heat decarbonisation is one of our core specialisms, underpinned by detailed technical understanding and extensive real-world application across complex, live estates. Planning begins with rigorous assessment of existing heat generation and distribution systems, building fabric and demand profiles, electrical capacity, and patterns of use. This establishes a clear, evidence-based baseline from which proportionate solutions can be developed.

Our approach goes far beyond technology selection. Each strategy carefully balances carbon reduction with system resilience, occupant comfort, safeguarding requirements, and continuity of operation in sensitive environments. Options are tested for technical feasibility, grid impact, phasing, cost, and funding alignment, enabling transition pathways that are realistic and deliverable rather than disruptive or over-specified. The outcome is a clear, phased route to low-carbon heat that supports funding readiness, future flexibility, and long-term operational confidence.

Reducing demand at source is treated as fundamental, with fabric-first retrofit forming a critical link between sustainability strategy and construction delivery. Detailed assessment of construction type, condition, moisture behaviour, thermal performance, and heritage sensitivity informs proportionate interventions that improve efficiency without compromising building health, durability, or significance.

Wherever possible, existing elements are retained, adapted, and reused, recognising that the most sustainable material is often the one already in place. This approach minimises unnecessary demolition, reduces embodied carbon, and supports responsible construction practices through careful sequencing, selective intervention, and material reuse. Retrofit strategies are developed in parallel with construction methodology, ensuring that proposed works are buildable, low-waste, and aligned with both operational carbon reduction and embodied carbon objectives over the life of the asset.

Informed sustainability decisions rely on understanding both long-term cost and carbon impact. Options are assessed using whole-life cost analysis alongside robust carbon modelling and carbon accounting, enabling transparent comparison between interventions at both operational and embodied levels. This approach reveals true value, payback, and risk over the life of an asset, rather than focusing on short-term capital cost alone.

Carbon accounting is embedded to quantify emissions baselines, forecast reductions, and track performance across proposed interventions. By aligning financial and carbon metrics, clients gain a clear, defensible evidence base to support prioritisation, funding submissions, and long-term investment planning, ensuring decisions are resilient, measurable, and future-proof.

Turning technical insight into investable action is a critical part of our sustainability role. Extensive experience translating feasibility, modelling, and carbon analysis into investment-ready business cases underpins this workstream. Proposals are structured to meet governance, funding, and value-for-money requirements, supporting routes such as PSDS, local authority programmes, and grant-based funding.

Business cases are developed with clear narrative, robust evidence, cost certainty, and deliverability at their core. This ensures decision-makers and funders can move forward with confidence, knowing that sustainability ambitions are supported by credible analysis, achievable programmes, and a clear route to implementation.

Decarbonisation within historic and sensitive buildings requires a higher level of judgement, restraint, and technical understanding, where ambition is carefully balanced with conservation responsibility. Strategies are developed through rigorous assessment of heritage significance, building fabric behaviour, environmental conditions, planning and consent requirements, and the long-term stewardship obligations associated with these assets.

By aligning conservation principles with sustainability objectives, proportionate, heritage-compatible low-carbon interventions are identified that respect historic character while delivering meaningful improvements in performance and resilience. This approach ensures change is not only technically sound, but credible, consentable, and responsible, enabling heritage buildings to adapt thoughtfully, remain in active use, and continue serving their communities well into the future.