Energiesprong UK has announced that its deep retrofit innovation partnership is live and open to bids.
This ground breaking approach to procuring and developing Energiesprong deep retrofit solutions aims to unlock up to £10bn of market potential and kickstart large-scale, whole-house retrofit for homes across the country. The innovation partnership brings together housing providers and suppliers to help transform the approach to retrofitting the UK’s aging, inefficient housing, creating desirable, warm, affordable homes at scale.
The big retrofit opportunity
The drive towards net zero homes is receiving ever-growing Government support, with funding through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund pilot (£50m) and the full fund (£3.8bn) to follow soon after. This gives much needed certainty that retrofit is here to stay, and that it will grow exponentially over the coming years.
With that in mind, five UK housing providers have already signed up to the first tranche of IP schemes, with a further six across the country already gearing up to join the second tranche, and more to come in following tranches.
What suppliers need to know
The contract notice and tender documents are available online here. Within the tender documents, we would like to draw your attention to carefully read the documents and note:
The programme utilises the Energiesprong approach that aims to deliver net-zero performance guaranteed retrofits at scale and is open to all housing providers across the UK. Off-site and modular approaches are encouraged to hit the quality and “time onsite” requirements for each stage of the process.
In the SSQ instructions and questions, under Financial Capability and Capacity in Part 3, Section 4, there is a minimum turnover threshold that applies to this opportunity. We welcome partnering between organisations (including SMEs) and encourage it where it will provide the expertise and capability required to deliver the works and/or services. Should you wish to share your details with other suppliers interested in this approach, it can be done here: Share your details with other suppliers interested in joining (or forming) a consortium
Innovation is encouraged through a developmental process (2021-23) that scales up through each of the Prototype-Pilot-Commercialise stages. Only those who successfully complete the 4 stages of the Innovation Partnership Phase will be entitled to participate/bid through mini-competitions published through the framework agreement, which indicatively begins from early 2024. A Collaboration Hub will be set up to share learning and work on common challenges.
It is anticipated that 5 founding Housing Providers will form part of the first Tranche of Schemes. Starting costs are set in the region of £85k per home with a target cost of £55k, the documents provide further information on how these costs may vary. Volume 2 Scope, S 100, which sets out the objectives and description of the works, including by Innovation Partnership Stage. The capacity of the framework is £4-10bn, potentially up to 180,000 homes.
A 10 year performance warranty is required for all homes in the scheme, this caps maintenance costs from rising above an agreed level and ensures energy performance is sustained. See Volume 3 Contracts, Framework Contract – Part 5 – Performance Guarantee Agreement for further details.
The deadline for the Supplier Questionnaire is 11th December 2020. Successful Applicants will be invited to submit Proposals for the ITT stage (Stage 0) in the New Year. It is anticipated that the funded design activity will commence from April 2021.
