Our consortium-led Transform-ER project recognises that cross-sector collaboration is critical to catalysing home energy upgrades at scale. Energiesprong UK’s culture change lead Stéphanie Ah Tchou explores how its new toolkit is jam-packed with practical ways to align teams, navigate complexity and build trust.
Two years ago, Innovate UK brought together 40 organisations to create game-changing ideas to speed up the roll-out of decarbonised heat for buildings.
From this intensive workshop emerged Transform-ER: a consortium of 13 industry experts with one mission: to create the systemic change needed to enable a retrofit industry that can deliver 1m home energy upgrades every year by 2030. This included a focus on prototyping products and kits-of-parts and developing new digital pipeline assessment tools and finance mechanisms.
But at its heart was an understanding that retrofit at scale requires fundamental cultural change. Our combined experience had taught us that technical solutions fail without strong partnerships, financial models collapse when organisations can't align interests, and projects stall without trust and shared purpose.
Combining in-depth industry research and learning from case studies (including Heathrow T5) and wider investigations into successful approaches for nurturing collaboration showed us that projects succeed when teams:
✓ Build trust early and maintain it
✓ Share risks and rewards transparently
✓ Engage all stakeholders meaningfully
✓ Focus on solutions, not blame.
Additionally, our sector-wide questionnaire found that - while technical competency is important – people emphasised that relational factors, like empathy, integrity, and shared goals, are crucial for fostering successful partnerships. And this requires finding ways to work together that nurture these factors.
And that’s why - at its core - Transform-ER’s new model for delivering retrofit will use alliancing – a partnering approach where organisations share risks, rewards, and decision-making to drive down costs and improve delivery certainty.
This requires more than contractual agreements; it demands cultural change that builds trust, aligns values, and sustains cooperation throughout complex projects.
So, we’ve developed a framework and toolkit to support this cultural transformation – and are sharing it more widely to help other retrofit project teams navigate complexity, build trust, and adopt collaborative mindsets.
The toolkit has two parts:
• First, our collaboration framework which outlines the key components of our approach, including highlights from our research.
• Second, a four-phase culture change approach from initial alignment through to ongoing cooperation. Each phase offers practical tools for key challenges.
This toolkit recognises collaboration not as a fixed state but as a dynamic process, one that evolves over time, shaped by relationships, and real-world pressures. It provides practical, adaptable tools for each stage of a project, helping teams lay strong foundations, navigate tension, and sustain trust over time.
Crucially, it also helps make the invisible visible: the values, behaviours, and communication patterns that often determine whether true collaboration can emerge.
Rewiring retrofit - a collaboration game
• A 90-minute participatory card-based workshop inspired by Climate Fresk.
• Developed as part of the Transform-ER project to build understanding and alignment around the foundational shift that alliancing represents.
Common vision and values mapping
• A four-phase visual mapping exercise
• Fostering open discussions about team values = trust and co-operation
• Nurturing a sense of ownership and commitment with individuals’ input reflected in the team’s shared vision.
“Non-Violent Communication” (NVC) for navigating tough conversations
• Disagreements are natural during complex retrofit projects
• This tool helps shift the focus from conflict to finding a solution collaboratively with NVC techniques
• The result? Respectful conversations and resolving issues without escalating tension.
Storytelling to shift the narrative
• Tips and tricks for turning everyday project wins into compelling narratives
• Helping create the social proof that collaborative retrofit is not just possible, but powerful.
Culture change won't happen through tools alone. It requires people willing to work differently and lead by example. It needs teams committed not just to delivery, but to how delivery happens. And it demands honest storytelling to shift retrofit's narrative from difficulty to possibility.
This is the moment to choose collaboration. Let's commit to making it a reality – because with it, we have a real chance of unlocking retrofit at the scale and speed our net-zero goals require.
