Discussion

I am seeking other people’s views. So as not to breach any confidentiality, I have replaced the company name and contact name with XXXXX, but I have publicised it as I want the CLG/CIBSE/BRE/QUIDOS DCLG EPBD steering group and DCLG to be aware of what is happening in the market place.

Start of e-mail

I have come across your details online, and have a proposition for you. I work for XXX and we have won some large contracts recently in the EPC marketplace. We have circa 800 surveys to complete in the next 3 months. I am looking to put together a team of sub-contractors to supplement our employed assessors. We pay £60 per survey, but expect you would be able to complete two surveys per day at a minimum. Often our assessors can complete 3-4 per day – this would equate to £180-240 per day. We would pay more per property if the surveys were of larger buildings. We also pay the lodgement costs and insurance.

We approach surveys slightly differently to the standard survey method of the assessor completing the site work and then inputting the data to produce the EPC. We have developed a system which utilises assessors to complete the site work, then send the information to our team of architectural technologists who model the building in Designbuilder (data inputting) and then send it back to the assessor to check and lodge. This based on our own surveys will save the assessor 2-3 hours of inputting depending on the size of the survey. We work with the accreditation scheme XXXX Accreditation and we pay for the lodgements.

End of e-mail.

This is a crazy situation.

If the assessor has not been trained and qualified to use the New Builder or another software, he has no way of checking if the data input is correct (other than getting the SBEM data file and checking that way) and if you going to check, you might as well put the data in yourself .. the assessor is also putting his name to the data as being correct when he did not input it. IMHO, the rules need to be modified to stamp out this practice. What do other think?

I would be delighted if the power that be will raised this issue with CLG as I believe it constitutes sharp practices. Thanks What do other think?

In this case the assessor IS collecting, and lodging the EPC; but the processing of data input is completed by 3rd party. According to the DCLD rules this is allowed.

The data is sent back to the assessor and he then signs off or lodges the work as his own.

Apparently this is OK and within the DCLG rules. But the issue is that he probably wont check the data, or if he is unfamiliar with the software program used by the data processor is unable to do so.

Talking to other ASs audit depts., they don’t like the process, but accept that it goes on. The audit failure rate for these projects is very much higher with these projects.

I am requesting that 3rd party data processors be stopped too.

What do others think?

If the EPC assessor is collecting data, and checking that the model is correct then in theory there shouldn't be incorrect information in the EPC. I appreciate that there is a risk that this won't be the case with 'mass produced' EPC practices as above, but I can't see a practical way of legislating against it without unfairly penalising normal practice (i.e. getting technicians to help build models).