Energy Talks

SAP & RdSAP: Insights and Expectations

• Season 1 • Episode 2

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Andrew Parkin is joined by Jason Hewins, New Build Dwellings Manager, and Damien Roberts, Existing Dwellings Manager, to discuss SAP and RdSAP. Listen now to hear about recent updates, upcoming changes and expectations for the future.

Andrew Parkin: Hello everybody, and welcome to episode two of season one of the Energy Talks podcast. My name is Andrew Parkin and I am your host. For the second time in a row. So, aren’t you lucky people? 

Today, it gives me great pleasure to welcome two guests from inside Elmhurst Energy. Damien Roberts, who is the existing domestic scheme manager. Hello Damien.

Damien Roberts: Hello. 

Andrew Parkin: And hello, Jason. Jason Hewins, who is the OCDEA scheme manager; an expert in all things SAP methodology. Hello, Jason. How are you doing?

Jason Hewins: I'm very well, thank you. You gave me a big build-up there, so no pressure.

Andrew Parkin: Well, you know, I like to put a little bit of pressure on. I think if people find their level then and understand what we're all about on this podcast. I'm really excited to be doing this one because this is about stuff that I know about, which is always helpful - to a point anyway. We're going to be talking about SAP and RdSAP and what's currently happening, sort of what's happened over the last year, and what's going to be happening in the future because there's a whole raft of changes and some really exciting things coming down the line.

So really timely moment to be looking back and forward and working out what's going to be going on, and in particular how it's going to impact our members and their clients. And we're now part of this much bigger world involved in tackling climate change, something that's been obviously in the news very recently. And there's an awful lot of debate and discussion around the part that EPCs play and energy assessment and energy efficiency. So, we might touch on some of those things, but really we want to get to the nitty-gritty of things like SAP and RdSAP today. So, I think the build-up is absolutely necessary. 

Just a little bit about this podcast. This is episode two, as we said, but this is part of an ongoing podcast that was started when Stroma and Elmhurst were two separate entities and it was the Stroma Certification podcast which ran for two seasons, and I think we did 20 or 21 episodes in the end there. Part of the merger between Elmhurst and Stroma is that we're going to bring the best of both worlds together. And one of the things that we identified as being really good is a podcast. So we're continuing on with that and we're on to episode two. So there's a little bit of a preamble. Who's on the line today?

And we are in different rooms as well, which is a little bit of a challenge. So I'm hoping everything goes to plan, so we'll get cracking. Let's deal with the first question, which is what is SAP and RdSAP? I think most of us in our industry know this. It's really to sort of set the scene for anybody who's either coming into our industry for the first time or looking over the fence and trying to understand what we do.

So, without getting too simplistic, Jason, I'm going to go to you. What is SAP?

Jason Hewins: It's an energy rating methodology created by the BRE and approved by government for use in building regulations and also for the production of energy performance certificates (or EPCs). And it's been around for 20-odd years now, I think officially in that capacity. But yeah, it's a very complex document, but that's really our bible I suppose here at Elmhurst isn’t it.

Andrew Parkin: So the SAP methodologies. Yeah. I can understand that, it’s place where we go to to find out how to do things and what to do in terms of the assessment and how the calculation goes ahead. Yeah. So SAP is/what does it stand for and why do we talk about that first when we're talking about SAP and already RdSAP.

Jason Hewins: It stands for Standard Assessment Procedure and the clue is probably in the name really, it's a standardised methodology for any type of dwelling in the country to be assessed and derive an energy use, carbon figure, carbon emissions figure, and the cost for the estimated running costs, and I use the word estimated very lightly. 

RdSAP is more Damiens bag, but I can answer anyway. RdSAP is SAP. RdSAP is just SAP, but with a controlled set of inputs based on date patterns of properties and lots of other things, but it's essentially the same engine being run, just with a more limited set of inputs.

Andrew Parkin: And is it for all buildings or is it, you know, I'm leading you here a little bit, but can you use it for commercial buildings?

Jason Hewins: You can't use it for commercial. It's just for domestic buildings, really.

Andrew Parkin: Excellent. Right. Okay. So I think we've layered a little bit on there. Damien, do you want to take it on the RdSAP side of things. What’s specific and unique and important about RdSAP?

Damien Roberts: Yeah, no problem. So, as Jason's already said, it is basically derived from full SAP. It stands for reduced data standard assessment procedure and involves assessors going to visit properties to collect a standard set of data and from there entered into software to create an output, an EPC or an energy report or maybe something different.

Andrew Parkin: And, so being reduced data, can you point to a couple of things that are different in the data sets?

Damien Roberts: Yes, so there'll be certain assumptions, for example, with SAP and you’re working from plans and other documentation - so you have all of the information already upfront, but with RdSAP you don't have that for existing dwellings. So, you're going out to visit a property. So you have limited information. So it's going to be based on some assumptions, for example, an assessor would have to select an age band for the property based on their knowledge, and they may have some documentary evidence of that age of the build of the property. From there it will assume certain u-values and things like that. When you start to put in the wall construction and insulation. So whereas in SAP they would have that information with view values already.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah. Okay. So what we're saying here is that the RdSAP is an onsite assessment and SAP is more plan based, and SAP is appropriate for new build because you've got all that information from the start – well, you should have - and because you're dealing with existing buildings that have changed or, or been built in weird ways, you're basically working off what you can say and what you can evidence. Is that right?

Damien Roberts: Yep. Sounds about right to me

Andrew Parkin: Okay, good. And then there are differences between the two because of those different ways of assessing a building. I mean, I know RdSAP, you know, fairly well, having used it for a number of years and been an energy assessor back in the day, I should say. Well, yes. And I was actually trained by Elmhurst back in the day. So, you know, I'm hoping that the training was good enough to make me decent enough that some. 

I do. I do remember, you know, looking at things and going, well, what you know, if I if I've got a building that was built sort of five years ago, ten years ago, I'm doing an EPC, Something's changed at the property. I've been asked to go back and do an assessment that's appropriate. But what about, you know, the air changes, You know, what about, you know, the air permeability of the property - kind of factor that into RdSAP and there’s instantly one difference between SAP and RdSAP currently. For SAP, you can put that figure in and RdSAP, you can't. It assumes it. And so there's one area that people are pointing out, well, that there's a difference there, and there's a good reason for that. Things are going to change and we'll come to that very soon. 

But can you use SAP when you should be using RdSAP, and can you use RdSAP when you should be using SAP? I'm going to throw that out to Jason first.

Jason Hewins: Yes, there are instances where you can use SAP on the existing dwellings, mainly for the reasons you were just talking about. If there's something in an existing home that cannot be modelled RdSAP, but can in SAP then surely it makes more sense and you'll get a more accurate assessment at the end of it to use SAP. The best example that comes up time and time again at the moment is air pressure tests.

Yeah, if you've had something that's air pressure tested, you would not dare to reflect my air tightness in RdSAP, but you can in SAP. So that's one example. There's a few of the areas around new technologies, community heating, that sort of thing, but air tightness is probably one of the most common ones/ examples where it'd be more appropriate to SAP.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah, that's my understanding as well. Damien - anything to add to that? Any thoughts on those differences?

Damien Roberts: I don't think so. I think I think we've covered everything from, from an RdSAP perspective really. I can't think of anything else.

Andrew Parkin: Would you say already RdSAP is now closer to the SAP than it's ever been?

Damien Roberts: And yes, yes and no. I think as we move along, I know we're coming up to another update shortly and I guess we'll cover that later in the podcast. But yeah, as we do further updates – so far there have been seven for RdSAP since it was introduced in 2007, 2008. And yeah, each update in turn has gradually got closer to SAP.

And then we're coming up to the next iteration - RdSAP 10 - and that will move us even closer to SAP. So, they are starting to merge together.

Jason Hewins: I would say there's quite a gap at the moment. We’ll come onto this in a minute, I don't want to take too much of what we're going to talk about, but obviously SAP – we’re in the world of SAP, 10. RdSAP, we’re not, we’re still in SAP 2012. So at the moment, actually there is quite a gap between the two. When RdSAP 10 comes along, which Damien will talk about later, then, yes, I think they will get closer.

Andrew Parkin: Okay. So that's something we haven't mentioned yet is the fact that SAP gets updated as well RdSAP gets updated. What/ I mean we’re probably borrowing a little bit from the agenda going later on the podcast, but what was the normal process there, Jason, in terms of updating SAP and then updating RdSAP?

Jason Hewins: I think historically and again, Damien might correct me on this, but RdSAP tends to have been updated about a year after a new SAP version has come into effect. From my memory that's what certainly happened last time round.

Andrew Parkin: And when was the last time round, Jason? I know we've just had a separate update, but what was the previous one to that?

Jason Hewins: In England, the last SAP update was in 2013, confusingly called SAP 2012, but it actually came into effect in 2013.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah. So quite a long gap between the one that's just happened – SAP 10 – and the previous version, confusingly called SAP 2012. And Damien, there's been incremental changes to RdSAP between 2013 and now hasn't there.

Damien Roberts: There has, Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

Andrew Parkin: So, what my understanding is - that whatever SAP updates, RdSAP has to follow. Sometimes it's six months, sometimes it's a year behind, it depends. And then, RdSAP is allowed to incrementally change in between, if necessary. And there's been a few changes there in that time. That's great. I think that, I think that covers that really well. So anyone listening to this, who has never understood RdSAP or SAP before, knows the differences now between the two and what happens, how they work together, or how they are different from each other. So that's great. Thank you. 

But in terms of who's responsible for it, who really owns the methodologies? I'll go to you, Damien, on that one first.

Damien Roberts: Okay. So, the methodologies are owned by – are we allowed to call them DESNZ or do I go for the long-winded version? DESNZ (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) it is – they own the methodologies and often we get queries and it can get confusing because you have the output of the EPC which is owned by DLUHC.

Andrew Parkin: So you've got two government departments. One owns the methodology, in DESNZ, and one owns the EPC, in DLUHC. Is that a problem? Is that okay, you know, have we ever had any issues there?

Damien Roberts: Yeah, we've had multiple issues. You often get government departments not talking to each other. So yeah, communication can be a problem when it comes to the two entities’ – RdSAP methodology, SAP methodology and the output.

Jason Hewins: Yeah.

Andrew Parkin: Anything to add to that, Jason?

Jason Hewins: I would just say this - there's a further thing from my perspective, which is building regulations and they are part of the DLUHC department as well. So that's a further thing that again they rely on DESNZ and BRE to keep SAP up to date so they can use the latest version of SAP in the latest building regulations. And sometimes there are delays on both sides because of another side.

So yeah, it's very complex. In terms of overall ownership or governance. I think from our point of view we would probably say that sometimes there is a bit of a lack of governance - it feels like that way and probably talk about it when we talk about the issues with SAP 10. But yeah, sometimes it feels like there needs to be a bit more joined up thinking - is probably the easiest way to answer it.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah, I mean. It's really complicated. Is it? Sorry, Damien, I'll cut in there on you.

Damien Roberts: No, I was just saying I would agree with what Jason just said.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah. It's a complicated world. Everything's complicated these days, isn't it? It almost feels like I say that about everything, But it is complicated because of building regulations and then the way that they interact with the methodologies. And you've got different teams doing things at different times. And the government has my complete sympathy here because, you know, once you stop doing that, you start to lose people out of the process or the process sort of slows down to a crawl and you really have to be carrying on with this all the time.

It's got to be a state of continuous improvement so that we can carry on improving the building regulations, which means better buildings when they're constructed, which then moves into the methodology, which is being evolved and adapted and improved, and that produces better outputs like the EPC. And so I think for me, that's where we've got to now is we've been through that pain of having to start this whole thing back up again.

And we're now on a cycle where we're updating the RdSAP methodology for RdSAP 10. And then the next thing we look at is something else, SAP 11. We'll come to that in a second as well. So, I think the governance side of it is kind of sorting itself out a little bit and I think it was always going to take a little bit of time. And there is that duality of having two government departments in play. 

Where do schemes and BRE fit into this, Jason?

Jason Hewins: BRE creates the methodology. And there again, as far as I'm aware, their remit is to create a methodology. Now what building regulations or EPCs take from that is up to the government departments. But BREs real aim is to create an approved methodology that's obviously robust, fit for purpose, for what it needs to do. 

Schemes. See, we're there to create software for SAP and RdSAP for our members to produce certificates, building regulations certificates, EPCs. We work relatively closely with the three stakeholders as previously mentioned, particularly when there's a change in the methodology which obviously we've been through quite a lot, but also make sure where there are changes, we disseminate that information to our members so they understand what's happening, what changes that are likely to see and the impacts on that as well for their clients. So I think from a schemes perspective, that's our part of the jigsaw really.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah. As aside from the usual auditing and support and technical support, etc. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I mean we've spent a bit of time on this sort of preamble. There is something else I wanted to talk about very briefly and just the subjective of data. These two methodologies produce a lot of data. Assessors are gathering information and they're putting it through the software which ends up being lodged against the EPC register.

Who's responsible, whose data is that? Who does it belong to? Damien, I'm going to go to you on that one.

Damien Roberts: It belongs to the Secretary of State. So, it's effectively owned by government. And, I'm sure you're going to broaden this out, but there obviously is an issue with sharing data when it relates to EPCs.

Andrew Parkin: Indeed there is. And what are those issues at the moment, to your knowledge, what are the challenges that we're facing at the moment?

Damien Roberts: It’s a ridiculous situation that we find ourselves in, isn't it really. As an industry, energy assessment, you know, the data people are relying on the data. The stakeholder that springs to mind are social landlords. They have a massive amount of data for energy purposes and that effectively they're restricted. They can't get access to that data where it relates to an EPC, so they can't use it for any particular purpose like funding or anything, improving properties. It's just a ridiculous situation.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah, and you say that and you know, there's probably an opinion in there as well, but I subscribe to exactly what you're saying there. You know, you've got data that's being gathered by an energy assessor at the request of potentially a social housing provider, and that data, once it's lodged against an EPC, isn't used. It can't be used for anything. It goes to the Secretary of State and that's where it lives. 

I will caveat some of these points, which is - I don't think this is the intention of government. I think government are very/somewhat caught out by this as well. When the regulations were set and there's been a couple of times when the regulations have changed, but they haven't been reviewed for a long time, it was there to sort of protect people and property and ensure that the data wasn't being misused.

But we're in a different world now where it's clear that we need to start making some real headway and progress on the energy efficiency of buildings. And data is absolutely king in all of that. Without the data and the free availability of the data to appropriate people like building owners, like social landlords, we're sort of stepping away in the dark.

We've got an EPC that tells us a bit of information on it, but it’s the underlying data that's hyper useful and being able to augment that data and add it to other datasets is absolutely crucial. And I'm just going to be really clear with anyone listening on this – I know I'm taking over a little bit as host - but we have been told in no uncertain terms that the data, the data of the EPC belongs to the Secretary of State and to share it without his or her express permission is illegal.

And until the law changes, that is, that is the status quo. The good news is the government are spending some energy and time unpicking the regulations and looking at how they can reset them so that the data is shareable. The trouble is it takes time. And that's the frustrating point at the moment is that it will sort this out. The government will sort this out. It just it has to go through the political process, which can be quite time-consuming. So you're absolutely right. I mean, it's almost a ridiculous situation and it shouldn't have really got to this stage. But here we are. 

We do have mechanisms around this. You know, we've had to put Retrofit into being, so PAS 2035. The process around being able to retrofit a building requires energy data. I Know I’m… Jason is going to have plenty of time to have a say about SAP so I'm going to focus on you here. But what have we done there to allow energy data to be used in Retrofit?

Damien Roberts: Yes. So we've obviously been in communication with the different government departments, specifically DLUHC, and they have been very amenable actually listening to us and the frustrations that we all have. The process that we have agreed on relates to energy reports, which is another output from RdSAP. But effectively in simple terms, if an assessor is visiting the property with the conclusion to create an EPC, they can then use a different approach by telling the homeowner exactly what they're doing, that it is for the EPC. The data can't be shared, but they're going to assess the property again in terms of an energy report, and then effectively that gets submitted through the systems. That data then can be shared because it's relating to an energy report, not to an EPC.

Andrew Parkin: And therefore, you're disconnecting the data from the central register. It is an ever so slightly different data set and it’s going to live somewhere else. Brilliant. I think it is a solution for the now, isn't it? It allows retrofit to work and, as long as permission is being given to use that data for that purpose, everything's fine.

There is some guidance on that as well, isn't there. There’s some guidance that can be sent out to to customers or energy assessors can review that guidance? That’s separate to this podcast. So what we'll do is we'll make sure that's easily accessible for members if they're just joining the scheme – and where they can get that information from.

Okay. So that sort of covers the intro, the end of the intro, I'm going to focus on SAP for a moment and Jason, you've been sat there very patiently waiting for us to unpack data. I want you to just quickly go over what's been happening with SAP recently, particularly SAP 10.2 and how it's gone. And I think let's be frank, some of the pain that you've suffered. And as an industry, we've had to go through, what we've learned from that. And what we're doing about the next iteration.

Jason Hewins: You say quickly… how quickly have I got. There’s a lot to talk about, isn’t there?

Andrew Parkin: I think if you could put it in simple words and keep it below 5 minutes, that would be helpful. 

Jason Hewins: Okay, so SAP 10. SAP 10 has been on the cards/it was on the cards for a while actually. It was originally called SAP 2016 - way back - which shows you how long this has been working on but really came into its own back in 2019 when the government issued the consultation on the future home standard and Part L, and that was the first iteration of SAP, it was called 10.1 at that point. The consultation ran through, then we obviously had COVID, which delayed a few things amongst other things. And if we fast forward to the 15th of December 2021, we had Part L 2021 and SAP 10.2 released. So, by released I mean put out into the public domain. The schemes were given guidance on what they needed to do to get approved, to get their software ready and built, and at that point we went into a stage of developing SAP software ready for June 2022 in England.

Okay. There were some issues this time around. This is my third iteration of a SAP and building change. And this is by far the way the most difficult one for the industry. There were some issues around the methodology which was released on the 15th December - it wasn't really finished. And what I mean by that is we got… as schemes, we get what we call test cases. So we have to build our engine to match test cases. The trouble was that the test cases had errors in. Some of them were incomplete and we went in sort of a cycle of building our engine, finding an issue, new test cases getting issued. And going round in that loop for quite a while. And Andy, from your perspective at Stroma, you would have gone through the same pain at that point.

Andrew Parkin: I remember it well.

Jason Hewins: Yeah. So, what we actually got into was a situation that by June/when June rocked around, the two SAP software providers, ourselves and Stroma at the time were approved, but only for a certain amount of technologies. From an industry perspective, obviously, that wasn't great because people want answers and their developers want to know what they're building, they want a plan, and we weren't able to give them that certainty.

And that carried on. Even as late as April this year, there was still the new version of SAP 10 that was issued in April this year, which changed a few things around heat networks and other stuff. So, it's been a moving picture really, and it's been very difficult for the industry to get certainty of designs and specifications because of that.

What we want to see going forwards to avoid this happening again is more regular updates. SAP 10 took ten years to come along from 2012, which I talked about previously. We can't wait that long again. You know, there's too many new technologies, there's too much innovation, there's too many changes in carbon factors and things, which means it needs to be updated more frequently.

We need much better communication, I would say, between all stakeholders. The departments we talked about before, BRE, ourselves, industry. And crucially for us as software developers to be able to get software out to members before any change of building regulations. We need that methodology to be fixed, robust and ready, at the point it is issued and not get into the situation we had last time around where the methodology is still being tinkered with actually as the building regulations have gone live. So that would be our biggest wish where they would need that certainty. 

And one other thing, which is probably a bit more ambitious is you could decouple SAP from building regulations. So the SAP methodology could be worked on, and could be finished on an independent timeline to what is going on with building regulations. Because SAP is just the methodology. Building regulations can pick whatever metrics it wants out of SAP. SAP that produces them all. Yeah, so ideally SAP 11 would be finished way in advance of when the building regulations perhaps are even published or even consulted on. I don't think that's going to happen. But that methodology is just sitting there on the shelf, ready to go, approved, robust, finished, and that would make things a lot easier for everyone. I think.

Andrew Parkin: I think that's a really, really good point. I really like the idea of that you've always got something in the chamber ready to go. You know, if and when you know it's called upon. We are always evolving and improving the methodology. I mean, SAP is as close to the truth as we can probably get, given what we can do right now with the technology, and being able to evolve that and bring in new things as well without having to do a big release certainly seems to be a sensible approach.

If you look at the way that software is released, you get big releases, but then you get incremental changes throughout. And I think that's probably a model to look at and certainly, something I've heard been spoken about. So good, good point there. 

I'm thinking about the impact on our software then, I’m talking about both Stroma and Elmhurst here, but it was a challenge, wasn't it? It was a challenge to not only get the methodology and the engine working with the methodology, but the actual software itself and the functions. Do you want to just expand on that a little bit?

Jason Hewins: It was a challenge, yeah, because the SAP software itself is a complex beast and the SAP methodology is very complex. You then add in the features that assessors want to be able to do things quickly and more efficiently. They rely on sort of the methodology being fixed and stable and our MD, Stuart, uses a good analogy – a house is only as good as its foundations. If the foundations aren't solid, everything will fall down. So the really key stuff that software wants to build in, you know, stuff to mass manipulate assessments and things, that can only really be done when the methodology is fixed. And as I said, the methodology kept changing and kept changing up until really 2023. So it was very, very difficult to do that, which doesn't help industry, and probably the people listening to this. It doesn't help you obviously get answers for your clients quickly and efficiently. And that's been the most frustrating thing. The Part L has probably got more attention than it's ever had before because it's tighter and obviously, as we said, climate change is much more headline news than it was, say, ten years ago. And developers haven’t been able to get certainty to know what they're designing was actually approved after the building regs came in. And that was the real difficulty that the whole industry faced.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah, I think there's a whole range of different things, a Venn diagram of competing things going on all at once. And you're right to point out that more people are focused on the performance of buildings because of climate change and the need to really dramatically improve the standard of our buildings, particularly new build, which, you know, at one point we were looking at having net zero buildings by 2016 and we're not there yet. We won't be there… some argue we're not going to get there in the next iteration of the building regulations, which is a nice segway onto SAP 11. 

We've only just had SAP 10. Why are we talking about SAP 11. What's going on Jason?

Jason Hewins: SAP 11 is in development already, isn't it? It's already getting ready. I mean, the government set out an ambitious timescale that they wanted the future home standard which is another name for Part L 2025. They want to consult on that this year. To consult on that you need the next version of SAP to be ready, or at least in a beta position.

So again, when that consultation comes out, people can go and start modelling the buildings and get an idea of what the standards will look like in 2025. Because we have not had the to building regs and SAP for ten years, we’re now having to do two very quick releases and updates to buildings regs. So, we obviously had the one last year, which was SAP 10. And now we've got SAP 11 on its way already.

So the reason it's topical at the moment is England committed or the English government committed to consulting on SAP 11 and the future home standard – and I’ll put it in inverted commas, even though you can't see – ‘Spring 2023’. Well… we are on the 26th of July. It's not yet come out, but we sort of believe it's fairly close, but we don't have a specific date. But I think it can't be too far away. If government want to meet that 2025 target, they've got to get moving and get consultations out the door ready now to give us a fighting chance as an industry to get there.

Andrew Parkin: And I think it's imperative we get there as well. I think that we do need rapid progress here and we need to get to that figure of an 80% reduction by 2025, 2026. And every building that's built from that point on. As a consumer, if I was buying a brand new building in the next couple of years, I want to know it's on the latest building regulations.

I want to know it's going to cost me very little. I don't want to find out that it's still being built or designed three or four years ago and being built to that design. That makes no sense to me. So I'm very supportive of this rapid progress. It doesn't really help us as a business because it's there are lots more things for us to do, but we're in this game and we want to do a really good job, so we embrace it.

What sorts of things are we expecting to see in SAP 11? Do you have any insight into that at the moment?

Jason Hewins: We don't have too much detail, to be honest. We know something. Obviously, the cost factors, the carbon factors, the energy factors for all fuel types will probably be examined and revised again, as they always are, with any change of SAP. It’ll be interesting to see what the costs figures are, bearing in mind all of the political issues and obviously the war in Ukraine and things like that. 

I believe that they're going to move to half-hourly energy use. Currently is sort of done on a monthly basis, but they're looking at moving to half hourly because that reflects clever energy, electricity, tariffs and on-demand peaks and all sorts of clever things. But they need to make the energy use granular enough to show the benefit of that. So, I think they're looking at a lot of new technologies.

Yeah, they'll be looking at new technologies as they always do. Heat pumps will probably come under the spotlight in terms of the methodology around those, but I think that's probably all we really know at the moment. And as far as I'm aware.

Andrew Parkin: All eyes on the consultation then, Jason. I think I’ going to leave it there for SAP. That's really, really informative. Thank you very much. You can sit back and relax a little bit, as I'm just going to bring Damien in now to talk about RdSAP. Damien, we've already touched upon the history of RdSAP and the fact we've had seven revisions and how long it's been out there for but it's grown hasn't it? It's become a bit of a… not a victim of its own success, but it’s been used for an awful lot of things these days. Do you want to just give us a bit of an overview of what RdSAP does and what we're using it for?

Damien Roberts: Yes of course. Yeah, RdSAP is used for many different things. So if you think about EPCs at this stage then you're using it for the sale and rental of properties and then the other output report, energy reports, then the data there is generally used for retrofit purposes, sort of like ECO and, and other funding mechanisms like social decarbonization.

Andrew Parkin: So it has to wear many hats then, basically. It has to do an awful lot of things for a lawful lot of people. That's fair to say, isn't it.

Damien Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Parkin: And so therefore, I mean, from my perspective, I think people want something different for every kind of use. So it wants to be all things to all people. It can get a little bit of criticism as a result of that, can't it? And I think I mean, personally and I have a vested interest here, I don't think anyone is surprised to hear me say that. But I think it's unfair that the criticism it gets is based around misunderstandings as well.

Damien Roberts: It is.

Andrew Parkin: I think I know you agree with me, it does a really good job on a lot of things.

Damien Roberts: The data… in RdSAP, the data itself and everything that's collected, the assumptions. There's a lot of useful information amongst all of that. I think, like I said earlier, that what the confusion is around the outputs with the EPC and the information that's contained in that probably isn't as robust as it probably could be.

Andrew Parkin: Do you want to give it a couple of examples on that. I'm going to try and think of a couple as well. But is there anything on the top of your head that you'd like to see changed, perhaps on the EPC as an output from RdSAP.

Damien Roberts: You could introduce lots of other metrics and I think we've obviously just had the consultation come out from Scottish Government and talking about introducing new metrics in terms of energy use. So, their view on it would be to rebrand the metrics that we currently have, you know, making them much clearer, but then also introduce a third metric for actual energy used.

So that's, I think that's something we would all like to see. It’ll make it a much better customer journey. I think when people look at the EPC in that respect, they can see, you know, if the intention is to focus on fuel poverty, for example, then you're looking at the cost rating. But then if you have a policy that the government released where it's focused on reducing carbon, then it's obviously looking at the carbon rating, which again actually isn't on the EPC for England and Wales as a graph rating that you would see.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah, in Scotland they've retained those two graphs that we used to EPC haven’t they, which is interesting. I mean energy is a devolved subject, a devolved matter. So the different parts of England Wales, Northern Ireland, they can do the things that they need to do around energy and, and I think that's a really good thing because what we end up seeing is different ways of doing similar things.

And I think we can point to good practice, particularly in Scotland. We are seeing some really good ideas and I'm thrilled to see this consultation coming out because we need to start talking about what the future looks like from an EPC in an RdSAP point of view. How we can move this whole thing forwards. And again, I'll talk for a little bit, but EPCs, a lot of talk about improving them, but they are what we have and they have been in place a long time and there are many thousands of people who can produce EPCs and they understand the methodology.

There are obviously improvements we need to put in place as always, in every walk of life. You can't stand still. But they are a very good tool. They're not expensive, they're data rich and the data itself, when it can be used, it has been used by the government. It is the envy of an awful lot of other government departments because nobody else has what we have in our industry. Such a data rich dataset. That really gets to the nub of many, many issues. 

But I do agree with you. Absolutely. We should have three metrics on the EPC and they should be part of a customer journey and they should be helpful for customers on making good decisions. And I think that’s an awful lot of what we need to focus on in the future is what the recommendations really look like.

Jason Hewins: It's worth saying SAP and RdSAP don't need to change to do that, as the methodology already produces all of those figures. It's what the EPC takes from it is the thing that needs to change. SAP, RdSAP can produce whatever you want, energy, cost, carbon. It does it all already. It's just the EPC side of it or any output needs to reflect what government want it to reflect. And at the moment it's cost based. That's, as Damien said, well a lot of where the misunderstanding comes from that's not the fault of all these RdSAP or SAP. That's the design of the EPC.

Andrew Parkin: That’s a very good point, Jason. Damien, you were going to say something.

Damien Roberts: Yeah, I was also going to say because obviously you've got, on the EPC, you've got the description on there as well and again that's another type of metric. So it would be useful to elaborate on that and have a little bit more data describing those areas, I think.

Andrew Parkin: Yeah. I think there's an awful lot that's being reviewed at the moment. And I know this is all part of a couple of other things that are going on at the moment. I'm going to loop on to something else. We'll come back to RdSAP 10 in a second, but we've got the EPC action plan that's been in place for a couple of years now and has seen some significant improvements in certain areas, particularly around the EPC register and looking at what we can do at audit, smart auditing and things like that.

But yeah, I mean part of the EPC action plan is what does the EPC say. Coming off the back of that or sort of taking over the lead from that is the energy bill. It's actually called the energy security bill, but that's going through Parliament at the moment, which is crucial. It covers an awful lot of things around energy.

But in there, there is all the energy performance of buildings regulation stuff that came from Europe, and we're going to be taking back control of that and working out what we want to do with it. So things like improvements to the EPC and the data, the sharing of the data and helping consumers make good decisions are sort of wrapped into that bill.

So I'm particularly excited about that. You mentioned the consultations as well, which is good. I mean, the Scottish consultation is out, there is one coming out for England and Wales and presumably Northern Ireland wrapped in there as well. Which follows on from the energy bill as I've just mentioned. So that's, that's all to come. So there's an awful lot of focus on the EPC and the methodologies all at once.

So I'm now going to loop back around Damien to RdSAP 10, which is part of all of that EPC action plan, RdSAP improvements cycle. What do we know? What's happening?

Damien Roberts: Well… what we know. So we started the journey maybe two years ago now. Andy, you'll remember being involved in the RdSAP advice groups way back when. Still, some of them are ongoing now as well, so it's still not finalised. But what we believe is likely to happen will be hoping that it's introduced at the beginning of next year, likely maybe spring actually for RdSAP 10.

We know that SAP 10.2 introduced some new fuel prices and carbon factors. So they will/should automatically be introduced. So we know what factors are going to be involved in that. Additional data inputs - assessors will need to spend time thinking about likely will be measuring windows in the entirety. So no more typical option, full measurements of all of the windows, More detailed information for rooms in the roof, then get a more accurate reflection of those. Pressure test results. So we're moving into, as Jason said, more innovation. Technology is moving so fast that obviously RdSAP and SAP need to keep up to date with all of these new innovations. So you're going to have hopefully PV diverters, battery storage, all those kind of things. So there will be a lot of information and new information that assessors will have to spend time thinking about to collect.

Andrew Parkin: So there are the changes coming. It's going to be a meaningful change because SAP 10 was a meaningful change and therefore that trickles down. What does that mean for members then? What have they got to do in the next year from an RdSAP point of view?

Damien Roberts: So we'll be/we're actually now focusing on developing some material for training. So there will be some CPD sessions involved in that to bring assessors up to speed on what's going on. So we'll be releasing lots of information, technical bulletins, training, etc. So all the members will be fully briefed on what will happen.

Andrew Parkin: And so they're going to get a bit of information as and when it's available in advance to prepare for things. We're going to be working on the software like crazy people for the next six months, or however long it is going to be or take. We're just waiting for all of this to land, aren't we, really?

Damien Roberts: We are. Yeah. So, we don't have the methodology/Appendix S hasn't been finalized yet so we are waiting on that. There’s likely to be thorough as from what we see internally. There'll be what we think is a slight gap between receiving Appendix S and Appendix T, which is the recommendations and then test cases which allow us to then build our software from there. So yeah, ultimately we have, from receiving the first set of test cases around… should be a six-month window after it’s released.

Andrew Parkin: And at the same time, Stroma and Elmhurst are emerging the schemes and we're going to be doing DEA and Retrofit next. That will pretty much take us to the end of the process and when RdSAP 10 comes around, we’ll have an opportunity to look at the things that we want to bring in, the things that we've always wanted to improve in the areas that we can do best of both as well.

So I'm really looking forward to what we do with the software there. And I know our members will be (our joint membership) will be really keen and interested to keep on top of those changes. 

So I'll do a bit of an outro now and sort of summarize things. The next year is going to see a lot of change. We know that there's going to be RdSAP 10 coming. We know that there's going to be a consultation on SAP 11. We know there's going to be an energy bill going through Parliament and consultations coming off the back of that. And we've already started to see that in Scotland. So lots of opportunities for us as an industry to have our say back to the government so they can make some better decisions on what they do going forward.

We're also expecting MEES 2.0. So something to be coming out about that. We haven't had any time to talk about that. It may be another topic for another time, but obviously that's been very much prominent in the news recently and there's a lot of talk online about that at the moment and we should get a better understanding of what that really means and what the Conservatives want to do with the next round of minimum energy efficiency standards.

Obviously, this all could change if we have election. So we don't know what's going to happen there either. So the thing I can say about this is there's going to be a lot of change. And if you're an Elmhurst member, when you are Elmhurst member, if you're a Stroma member at the moment, you're in the right place because we've got the people who are going to the meetings, who are doing the work, who are at the coalface, learning about the changes as and when that happening, and we're going to be communicating that to you.

Keep an eye out on Energy Matters magazines as they're coming out, and technical bulletins. Damien, you've also mentioned CPD, which is excellent, obviously there’s going to new conventions to come as well, which I know you're working on. So there's going to be some information on that. And ultimately we've got conferences, we can have a conference at the start of next year, which you know, was really well attended this year and that will be really, really timely.

There's the PEPA conference as well, I’ll put my PEPA hat on for a second, coming up (shameless plug). But also we're going to do some regional conferences as well. We've done Scotland recently. We've got Wales being set up at the moment and we want to go over to Northern Ireland. So it's a really, really big year and I implore everybody just to get in the frame of mind that I need to learn and I'm going to get that information from Elmhurst. 

I think we've run out of time. I thought this might happen, but that was really, really helpful. Thank you, Jason. And thank you, Damien, for joining us today. We're obviously, you know, we'll be following this up in various ways, as I've mentioned. And who knows, we might even do another podcast on RdSAP 10 as that comes down the line, and SAP 11 as we get closer to that as well. 

But thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the second podcast in the series and we'll be back very shortly in a month or twos time with yet another podcast talking about something else just as informative. Have a great summer, enjoy yourselves and take care. Thank you very much.