IES: Dynamic, Digitised Decarbonisation investment and engineering roadmaps for UPgrading building portfolios

About the project

Dynamic, Digitised Decarbonisation investment and engineering roadmaps for UPgrading building portfolios (3D-UP) will develop a digital twinning infrastructure and methodology for the development of decarbonisation pathways for building portfolios.

What has been delivered? What has been successful?

The project delivered  the following:

1. Defined the needs of stakeholders through 10 focused interviews with private and public sector building portfolio owners.
2. Produced software use cases from stakeholder feedback, including respective data-driven services required to deliver a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
3. Mapped software use cases for MVP, incorporating portfolio owners/operators needs and constraints to existing software capabilities, and produced gap analysis showing development requirements.
4. A full feasibility study for the MVP showing the required resources to be invested and the timeline for its development.

The key success was the engagement activities conducted with building portfolio owners and operators. Over 20 building portfolio owners/operators were contacted, with 10 agreeing to a 2 hour interview regarding their current activities, workflows and data availability for their plans for portfolio decarbonisation. The openness regarding their existing processes and enthusiasm for the potential software meant the resulting use cases and feasibility study was able to reflect a MVP with a realistic proposal to become a successful commercial software which will save users  time, money and aid them in their building portfolio decarbonisation journey.

Key lessons learnt

Key lessons learnt were as a result of testing different hypothesise with stakeholders, as follows:

• The current state of the art is not delivering what stakeholders need and want, with many having unstructured manual processes.
• Initial expectation of what the stakeholders needed/wanted from the potential new software were valid.
• Drivers and concerns regarding building portfolio decarbonisation are different in the private and public sectors. Public sector managers are tightly governed by finances and meeting decarbonisation goals, whilst private managers seek to identify ways to make buildings most attractive to prospective tenants. Their financial commitments are towards investment groups seeking a return on investment.
• Data availability is different between private and public sectors. Data quality, expertise, infrastructure and resources are lacking in public sector portfolios. This appears to be less of an issue in the private sector.
• Portfolio managers with a well-defined approach to decarbonisation studies seem to have better data, resulting in well-defined pathways.

Next steps

Following from the feasibility study, the next steps are as follows:

1. Detailed specification, methodology and data requirements for the Decarbonisation Roadmap for Building Portfolios software.
2. UX design and development, including interfaces corresponding to different stakeholders, certification requirements and exporting functions.
3. Development and testing of the software and data-driven decarbonisation services for buildings portfolios.
4. The demonstration of the viability and validity of the digital twinning solutions in buildings assets and portfolios under real market conditions and the assessment of their feasibility and value proposition to their relevant stakeholders.

Interested stakeholders may wish to be involved to ensure the software and services are applicable to and valid for the real world at stages 3, and 4 as appropriate.