Our Senior Project Manager/Data Insight Lead has built a data reporting tool that is so innovative for the industry it has been shortlisted for an EG Tech Award and has won a UKAA BTR Award for sustainability.
The tool measures the utilities consumption of every home within our Build to Rent portfolio, allowing us to make objective decisions against two key goals; reducing material and carbon consumption at construction, and optimising the consumption of resources during operation.
The tool processes apartment utility meter readings once every 15 minutes and sets this data against the unique context of each home in question. This includes its size, if it is occupied by a resident and its orientation so sunlight can be considered. A daily report is populated, with areas of concern highlighted for our operational teams to action – such as a light left on in a vacant home.
The tool has proven to help us reduce the consumption of electricity, hot/cold water and heating within our vacant and occupied apartments, making a meaningful impact on costs and unnecessary use of resources. The system has even highlighted issues in occupied homes such toilet cisterns continually flushing, often before the problem is reported to us by residents.
The success of this tool in identifying unusual consumption of utilities is testament to how crucial technology like this is to the wider industry.
The next step for our team is to use this unprecedented source of operational data within the design and construction of our future buildings – obtaining the performance we need whilst minimising our impact on the environment.
