Managing behavioural risks in large-scale social housing sustainable retrofit projects in the UK

Panel: 3. Local action and national examples

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
William Swan, University of Salford, United Kingdom
Phil Brown, University of Salford, United Kingdom
Richard Fitton, University of Salford, United Kingdom

Abstract

The delivery of sustainable retrofit programmes in the UK social housing sector is gathering pace in the UK, driven by emerging policies such as Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation. However, there is a real danger that the implementation of sustainable energy efficiency improvements to people’s homes does not take account of the many behavioural issues that impact both adoption of improvements and how they are used by homeowners. Adoption factors ranging from basic issues such as inconvenience and disruption to more complex issues of social norms, trust and stories, all which have a capacity to derail construction programmes through adoption refusal. In addition, in use factors drive both the fundamental benefits of the improvement project, as well as feeding back into the wider retrofit adoption within communities. Here we present a model, developed by the University and Fusion21 as part of a joint project, that incorporates both research findings and UK social housing practice to develop a tool to help project teams manage behavioural risk in the pre-delivery, construction and post-occupancy phases of a sustainable retrofit project. The model reflects not only behavioural factors of the residents, but also the capabilities of the delivery teams and the pragmatics of resource and project management. This paper discusses the development of the model and some of the feedback from the initial pilot stages.