13 partners, 22 months, one mission: our consortium-led Transform-ER project aims to enable one million home upgrades every year by 2030. This blog series tells the stories of our tactical team of partners and the retrofit barriers they are addressing – so let us introduce VundaHaus, our ‘prefabrication progressor.’
Last year, we began our Meet the Transform-ERs series, showcasing our tactical team of partners working to revolutionise retrofit. For this next instalment, we’re catching up with Max Bloomfield, co-founder of VundaHaus, to discuss the realities of being a retrofit manufacturing start-up, including the challenges of certification, the need for industrialisation and why a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t the way forward.
My co-founder Adam Slader and I founded VundaHaus with a clear mission: to reduce carbon emissions from residential buildings. We wanted to find ways to deliver carbon savings while identifying opportunities in areas that need innovative solutions. Our focus is on enabling the transition from gas central heating to electrified heating systems in a way that is cost-effective, equitable, and scalable. If we can reduce heating demand quickly and affordably, we can speed up the transition and help those struggling with energy bills. The climate crisis and cost-of-living crisis make this work urgent.
Working in the built environment is complex, it requires expertise across various disciplines. To solve problems effectively, you need to lean on different perspectives and skill sets. Transform-ER’s ambition is to create a retrofit delivery vehicle that nurtures collaboration and gets all the stakeholders in the room together at the start of projects. This will offer greater understanding across the supply chain about the realities of implementing key building solutions, energy upgrades, and offsite manufacturing. Having these conversations early ensures that supply can meet demand as we scale up innovations.
One major challenge is labour shortages, particularly in the UK. We need to make retrofit processes more efficient, so we don’t rely solely on a shrinking workforce. Offsite manufacturing and kits-of-parts can be game-changers, they allow us to create better-skilled jobs while improving product quality. This is a key part of our work within Transform-ER as we work with our fellow manufacturers to test new solutions – stay tuned to hear some of the results!
Absolutely. The certification process in the built environment is hugely challenging, particularly when it comes to retrofit – it's just incredibly complex. There’s no clear path, and much of the industry operates on assumptions and must pander to the whims of the gatekeepers.
To truly kickstart a retrofit revolution and open the market to new entrants, we need a clear set of rules. The medical device industry does this well with strict and well-defined regulations. They take a while to get your head around but once you have, you know where you stand.
In construction, there’s no single document that lays out the rules, so companies are constantly navigating uncertainty. We’re fortunate to have an experienced team and some brilliant advisors who have helped us to find a pathway through, but for many businesses in this sector it is a real barrier to entry. The Transform-ER retrofit rulebook is designed to start tackling this by creating industry guidance which lays out what ‘good’ looks like so organisations don’t have to start from scratch.
We’re refining our installation processes to improve efficiency. Since our last demonstrator project in Sheffield, we’ve been iteratively testing our system, and we’ve achieved a big step up in installation speed. Scaling our manufacturing remains a challenge but the process we are using now is much better suited for mass manufacture, so I’m confident we will be ready for larger scale pilots later this year.
We need to move away from perfectionism. A one-size-fits-all approach to retrofit isn’t feasible. Instead, we should assess each property individually and implement the most cost-effective measures. There should be minimum standards, but flexibility is key.
One way Transform-ER is responding to this is by creating a pipeline assessment platform that can aggregate similar property types and match them with the right approach – while using drone scanning and AI for more detailed property data to tailor solutions.
Creating strong pipelines of homes for retrofitting will also help new products and solutions join the market with clear visibility for demand.
