Baker Homes won the Housing Innovation Award for Most Innovative Consultant 2016, last week. The following article explains the awards and reason for the win.
The prestigious awards, run by Excel Publishing, celebrate leadership and innovation in the housing sector. Senior representatives from housing groups, consultants and the supply chain attend and watch these awards to understand which organisations are providing innovative services to help the sector do more.
Phil Morgan, was Chief Executive of TPAS (England) for 10 years and Executive Director of Tenant Services at the Social Housing Regulator. In his role as a judge of the awards, he stated that:
“Baker Homes set the sustainability standard for the sector and that means we all benefit from the work they do. I was really pleased to see what they have been doing in terms of community engagement, using behaviour to save energy, but also through their innovative use of crowd funding to pay for research.”
John Stapleton, Head of External Affairs, Baker Homes, who collected the award (pictured) from Valerie Owen OBE, Chair of Swan Housing Group, had this to say:
“We are a different type of consultancy –combining leading research and advocacy, which benefits the whole sector, while providing practical tools to enable housing associations and others to take the necessary steps to implement and measure sustainable business practices, resident engagement and new built and retrofit programmes. We are delighted to receive this award in recognition of that.”
So what were the judges talking about specifically? Here is a brief summary of those items.The sustainability standard for the housing sector – Here Phil was talking about the services that enables accredited organisations to measures, compare and improve their environmental performance. Over 80 organisations are now involved. See the full list of landlords and partners.
The future - Baker Homes is leading on two Innovate UK projects. One has developed an advanced remote monitoring service for asset managers visualising electricity and gas use and the gas used to heat water in real time. This is years ahead of smart metering. The other is harnessing big data to help improve decision making for those managing or building new homes.
Crowd sourcing national research: Each year Baker Homes, along with SHIFT clients, carried out research on key issues in the built environment. Topics include, amongst other things, behaviour change and the energy efficiency of heating systems such as combi boilers, and energy use in the home. The work plays an important role in informing the sector about how energy is really used in homes. If you would like to be involved please get in touch.
This is just a range of what Baker Homes does helping landlords and residents reduce impacts, save money, and improve quality of life. We also advocate for landlords, to reduce fuel poverty and for a brighter future for the sector.
We hope the summary has been of use. Thank you to all those that have supported us thus far. We look forward to working with you and others to get more done and create more change.