Improvement Option Evaluation and Medium-Term Improvement Plans

Improvement Option Evaluation and Medium-Term Improvement Plans are both well-established elements of good retrofit practice, and they are both required by PAS 2035.?

Ensuring the delivery of quality whole house retrofit; retrofit assessors, retrofit designers and retrofit coordinators and project managers should all be familiar with these terms and processes. As part of our commitment to ensure this, both Improvement Option Evaluation and Medium-Term Improvement Plans are included as part of The Retrofit Academy’s Level 5 Diploma in Retrofit Coordination & Risk Management.

In many domestic retrofit programmes, the improvement measures to be installed have been pre-determined by several influencing factors before the dwelling has even been assessed.?This approach has led to inappropriate measures, or inappropriate combinations of measures, being installed in dwellings. In some cases, the installation of effective measures has been blocked by inappropriate measures having been installed earlier, in the wrong order.

Improvement Option Evaluation (IOE)?

A way of addressing these issues and establishing an appropriate and effective set of retrofit measures for every dwelling or dwelling type.?An IOE provides a comparison of the costs and benefits of the potential improvement measures so that the Retrofit Coordinator can agree with the client on the details of the package of improvements that should be installed.

Important outputs of an improvement evaluation are:?

• Savings in fuel use?
• Savings in fuel costs?
• Savings in CO 2 emissions

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Medium-Term Improvement Plan (MTIP)?

Accepts that most householders and landlords cannot afford to install all the necessary improvement measures at once, and so prioritises the measures in stages, bearing in mind the interactions between measures and the need for appropriate sequencing.?An MTIP, therefore, establishes a staged sequence for the installation of measures.

Both the IOE and the MTIP are requirements of PAS 2035, for projects following risk paths B (medium-risk projects) or paths C (high-risk projects). The retrofit coordinator is required to review the IOE report, the recommended package(s) of improvement measures and the MTIP together, with the client for the project (whether householder, landlord or funding body). It is their job to agree on the scope of the project, the intended outcomes and appropriate energy performance target(s) for the improved dwelling(s), and the budget.?

Want to know more about Improvement Option Evaluation and Medium-Term Improvement Plans, including the objectives, best practice and guidance and requirements around PAS 2035??The Retrofit Academy’s Technical Guide, written by Dr Peter Rickaby and Alan Pither, is available within our Knowledge Base Library; one of the many benefits of becoming a member.

Find out more by visiting our website here.?