Assura, arbnco and Murton and Co
Project: Application of arbnco’s asset management and portfolio assessment platform to
improve Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) across Assura’s entire portfolio of
healthcare premises across the UK.
Outcome: Assura’s entire portfolio of 600 properties received retrofit improvement
strategies with estimated costs to improve EPC ratings of its portfolio.
Background
As part of Assura’s social impact strategy, SixBySix, their aim is that six million people will benefit from improvements to and through their buildings by 2026. One of the key aspects of this is reducing energy consumption within buildings and to achieve this as a landlord, Assura has committed to improving the building EPC rating to a band B or higher across the entire
portfolio. This is four years ahead of the proposed enhancement to regulations specifying a minimum B rating for rented property by 2030.
In order to meet this target, Assura was looking for data-driven insights to be able to identify where improvements could be made across their portfolio and to calculate the specific measures at each property to realise the higher efficiency rating.
“Improving the Energy Performance Certificates across our portfolio is one of our key aims as a business and is also one of our SixBySix commitments. Being able to get that holistic data view right across the portfolio allows us to really push hard on the actions needed at every individual site and to move ahead on our journey towards net zero carbon for local health spaces.”
Paul Warwick, Assura Senior Project Manager
Providing bespoke retrofit strategies to improve Assura’s EPC ratings to band B before 2026 across entire portfolio
In order to achieve Assura’s significant goal in its environmental impact strategy to target an EPC rating of B or better across its portfolio, they needed quick analytical solutions that provided centralised information on how to achieve this.
EPCs already existed for about half of the portfolio, and the data from these was collated. Murton and Co were commissioned to survey the remaining half in the first quarter of 2021, and they were able to complete this programme, providing the full data files for upload to arbnco’s energy software platform.
arbnco’s platform provides a single source for managing energy performance and compliance across large and diverse property portfolios. For Assura this represents over 600 EPCs, varying from small retail units below 100m2 up to large medical centres of over 5,000m2.
For each of these assets, the platform identified a range of measures to improve the rating, each with costs, savings and carbon impact. These measures include LED lighting, replacing old boilers with efficient, modern ones or heat pumps, installing double glazing and insulation walls and roofs.
However, the power of arbnco’s software platform was the ability to provide estimated improvement costs in a centralised view across Assura’s entire portfolio. The improvement strategies recommended provided an overview of the most economical routes to achieving EPC B ratings across all buildings, allowing Assura to plan sustainability investment with confidence.
arbnco’s platform can be used to highlight current and future compliance risk alongside areas to drive asset performance and reduce the day to day running costs of assets. As businesses are being urged to set out ambitious net zero strategies, the government will soon introduce more ambitious regulations, meaning highlighting future risk now is imperative.
Now is the time to join Assura in becoming a leading sustainable business by setting strong, determined net zero targets ahead of 2050.
Outcomes
• Bespoke detailed strategies to inform Assura on their path to improve all 600 EPC ratings to B ratings before 2026.
• Supporting one key element of Assura’s SixBySix strategy – reducing the energy consumed across all its buildings.
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