Quality Assurance of Building Energy Certificates

The government requires that all energy certificates provided to clients must be a true record of the energy performance actual or potential of the building being certified. CIBSE will therefore scrutinise at least two percent of all certificates produced each year by CIBSE Low Carbon Energy Advisers.

It will do this by:

1. Carrying out desk surveys of work produced by LCEAs.
2. Collecting data from LCEA clients.
3. Visiting a proportion of CIBSE LCEAs.
4. Accompanying a proportion of LCEAs on a site visit.

We believe that LCEAs provide the very highest value of service to their clients, and like you, we constantly emphasise the value of what you do. We would therefore like you to offer your clients the attached questionnaire as part of your service to clients. They will return the information to CIBSE Certification which may also carry out some follow-up. This should provide your clients with further assurance that you provide a professional service backed by the quality assurance and complaint resolution offered by a major professional institution.

1. If selected for a desk survey you will be asked to provide all data for one of your certificates in much the same way that you did for your test certificate. CIBSE’s QA Manager will then examine the data provided, ensure that it is robust, the way the data has been entered and the general methodology used.
2. If you are selected for a customer survey, CIBSE Certification will ask if you have been distributing your client satisfaction questionnaires. CIBSE will also randomly select some clients who have not returned a questionnaire and will seek a telephone interview with the client covering these same questions.
3. If you are selected for a visit by CIBSE’s QA Manager, the QA Manager will send you in advance a list of areas he will wish to cover in this visit (check here to download visit agenda). He will be particularly interested in your systems for producing certificates and ensuring their quality.
4. If you are selected for an accompanied visit to site, you will be asked to nominate premises you are scheduled to survey and the CIBSE Certification QA Manager will accompany you on site, check the way you gather data and your datings with the client and will ask for a copy of all the data you gather during your visit, with a view to providing a shadow certificate which will be calculated using the same version of the same software that you will be using. The purpose of this re-calculation is to assure the CLG that all certificates provided by CIBSE LCEAs are within 10% of the ‘truth’. The re-calculation will be used to provide the ‘truth model’.

Guidance for Energy Assessors working on non-domestic buildings

We would like to draw your attention to the CLG requirements for keeping records of your work as an energy assessor. The requirements are in a CLG guidance document that can be found by clicking on these links:

• The EPC file can be downloaded from the CLG website at this address:
  • www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/nondwellings.pdf
• The DEC file can be downloaded from the CLG website at this address:
  • www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/publicbuildings.pdf

The specific requirements for EPCs are in the sections numbered 20 and 21 of document "Minimum Requirements for Energy Assessors for non-dwellings" and sections numbered 21 and 22 those for DECs in document "Minimum Requirements for Energy Assessors for Public Buildings (Display Energy Certificates)".

You need to comply with these requirements but for CIBSE Certification we would like you to keep the following as a minimum :

• Your contract or other document asking you to prepare the energy certificate
• Your quotation for the work
• Your notes of the site visit including any plans provided or measurements taken by you or your colleagues
• Any photographs you were supplied with or took yourself
• Copies of any product data sheets upon which you relied for input data e.g. boiler efficiencies etc
• Details of anyone that helped you with the site visist or in compiling the software model
• Copies of letters, faxes, emails concerning the preparation of energy certificates

You will need to be able to produce this information for every energy certificate, EPC or DEC, that you have lodged through the CIBSE Certification scheme when you are selected for a quality assurance audit.

Data Gatherers

Some concern has been expressed, particularly in the domestic arena about the use of data gatherers. This can take two forms:

• The use of in house teams to gather, collate and process data.
• The lodgement by LCEAs of certificates generated by other individuals who are not accredited.

It is clear that most large organisations carry out energy certificate generation by team working and not all individuals in the team will be accredited. This is entirely acceptable provided that all those involved are competent to carry out their allotted roles. The competence of team members and the process in place for managing them is one of the areas which will be examined in QA visits.

Equally it is quite legal for LCEAs to lodge certificates for others, but only in the understanding that they are completely responsible for the accuracy and veracity of these certificates. LCEAs who wish to lodge certificates for others may wish to use the QA checklist which will be used by CIBSE’s QA Manager to test that certificates they lodge will pass CIBSE’s QA requirements.

Downloads

• Click here to download the LCEA QA Visit Agenda (Word Document)
• Click here to download the LCEA Audit Preparation Questionnaire (Word Document)
• Click here to download the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (Word Document)