How do we build better? Advice and training for low energy building, with Peter Warm and Sally Godber (Warm and Coaction)

This week we met Peter Warm and Sally Godber, a father and daughter team well known in low energy building for their work at their Warm consultancy. Although Peter may now be retured they've both been instrumental in Warm, consultancy in volved in testing and certification of buildings, as well as training for professionals. 

We hadn't intended to focus on passive house, again, thinking that we could dig into their experience as certifiers for low-energy buildings. Our idea was to ask about the basics of how to approach building better, interrogating the things that they commonly see going wrong, and offer some top tips for what to avoid.

They've been heavily involved in the delivery of flagship developments like Goldsmith Street, as well as being notable for their long-running practice. However it took a while for us to get to that because of some remarkable news about their Coaction non-profit.

Unexpectedly we were waylaid by some exciting developments in the work that their new training non-profit has been making, setting out to revolutionise training within the built environment by offering a basic grounding in PH (building physics) first to architectural students with plans to make this available to all professions within the built environment.

We did cover the top tips but only late on: the tl:dr is to get an experienced energy, retrofit, or passive house consultant involved at the earliest opportunity to help steer you right; it is an investment, not a cost.

Notes from the episode

• The Warm Consultancy's website is here
• Coaction's website for training is here too 
• The webinar Sally mentions is available to members of the Passive House Institute (PHI) and accessible here; we believe that it is the Quality assurance concepts for fast deep renovation approaches but I don't have a login so I can't check
• They also recommended checking last year's Efficiency Now campaign from the PHI as a place you can find some information in lieu of a login
• A Passive House Institute 'step-by-step article': Overall retrofit plan for step-by-step retrofits to EnerPHit Standard, by Jan Steiger and Eva Vahalova 
• Here’s some more info on the stepwise approach that is mentioned frequently too

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What is Zero Ambitions Podcast?

Zero Ambitions is a consultancy and weekly podcast about sustainability and the built environment.

We find interesting and experienced guests who know what they're talking about, usually to discuss how we navigate the complexity of decarbonisation and sustainability in the built environment and its many related sectors.

The success of the podcast has seen it grow into a consultancy, Zero Ambitions Partners. The consultancy works with blue chip clients, public sector institutions, and niche-market innovators that operate in the built environment, advising about the development and delivery of sustainability strategy and how it should be communicated.

Hosted by Jeff Colley (Passive House Plus), Dan Hyde (Everything is User Experience) and Alex Blondin (Everything is User Experience).