We are pleased to announce the expansion of our service offering with the launch of New Build Energy Assessments, delivered through our specialist land and building surveying business Lucion Survey Ltd with the appointment of Principal Building Performance Consultant, Kyle Jones.
Our New Build Energy Assessments service provides Standard Assessment Procedures (SAP) and Simplified Building Energy Model (SBEM) Calculations, Part O Assessments and Future Homes Standard readiness support across both residential and commercial developments. This suite of services, further expanded below, closely complements our energy and sustainability expertise already provided by the Lucion Delta-Simons Ltd team.
A Sector Under Pressure to Deliver
This service launch comes at a pivotal moment for the sector. The government’s long-awaited Warm Homes Plan, confirmed that under the forthcoming Future Homes Standard, new homes will have low-carbon heating, high levels of energy efficiency, and solar panels by default.
Research published by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) found that new build homes are, on average, 21% cheaper to run than older properties, with 87% of new build homes rated EPC A or B, compared to just 5% of existing housing stock.
For housebuilders and developers, that advantage only holds if compliance is demonstrated efficiently and accurately at every stage, from design through to as-built EPC. This is the gap Lucion’s new service is designed to close, bringing energy assessment in-house alongside Lucion’s own CAD, survey and ground engineering teams so design decisions don’t need to wait on third-party modelling.
Will Vennard, Business Unit Director for Lucion Survey Ltd, said:
“Housebuilders have told us time and again that waiting on SAP calculations or Part O assessments is one of the biggest bottlenecks on a live scheme. By bringing this capability in-house within Lucion Survey, we can move at the pace our clients need, without sacrificing the rigour these assessments demand. Kyle’s appointment means we can now support a project from setting out and survey, right through to energy compliance and EPC, all under one roof.”
New Home Energy Assessment Services
Kyle’s appointment brings a broad range of new build energy assessment services in-house, covering both residential and commercial developments, English/Welsh and Scottish regulatory routes, and support for BREEAM accreditation alongside statutory compliance:
- Energy Statements for various councils across England, Wales & Scotland including GLA support for London Plan
- U-Value & Interstitial Condensation Risk Calculations (One-Dimensional)
- Thermal Bridging Support
- As-Designed, As-Built SAP Calculations & EPCs
- SAP Calculations for Proposed Extension
- Part G Water Use Calculations
- Part L Photographic Evidence Review
- As-Designed, As-Built SBEM Calculations & EPCs
- Part O Overheating Risk Assessments via Dynamic Thermal Modelling and the Simplified Method
- Section 3, Standard 3.28 Overheating Risk Assessments via Dynamic Thermal Analysis and the Simplified Method
- BREEAM Ene 01 – SBEM
- BREEAM Ene 04 – Low and Zero Carbon Technologies
- BREEAM Ene 04 – Passive Design
- BREEAM Hea 01 – Daylighting
- BREEAM Hea 04 – Thermal Comfort
- Steady-State Heating and Cooling Load Calculations
- Dynamic Heating and Cooling Load Calculations
While many of these services support residential new build schemes, several, including SBEM Calculations, BREEAM support and commercial EPC work, apply equally to non-domestic developments, meaning Kyle’s remit spans housing schemes, commercial units, and mixed-use developments alike. This range means Lucion can now support projects from the earliest design-stage energy strategy right through to as-built compliance and BREEAM credit evidencing, without needing to bring in additional external consultants.
Your First Home
With the Future Homes Standard set to reshape residential compliance, and demand for energy-efficient buildings continuing to rise, our New Build Energy Assessment service is positioned to support housebuilders, developers, architects and planning consultants navigating an increasingly demanding regulatory landscape, backed by the wider expertise of the Lucion Group.
Kyle Jones, Principal Building Performance Consultant, said:
“Too often, energy compliance gets treated as something to sort out at the end, when actually the earlier you’re involved, the more value you can add.
I want to be the person a design team calls when they’re still working through options, whether that’s heating strategy, glazing specification or overheating risk, so we’re solving problems at the point they’re cheapest to solve, not after they’ve been built into a scheme. That applies just as much on a commercial or mixed-use project as it does on a housing development.”
This kind of integrated, multidisciplinary support is also becoming a commercial necessity, not just a technical one. As the government prepares to confirm Your First Home, the much-anticipated replacement for Help to Buy, in October’s budget, housebuilders are facing a new ‘contribution’ cost to join the scheme on top of existing cost and planning pressures.
Lucion Survey Ltd’s Business Development Manager, Tom Chapman, has recently explored why this is pushing more housebuilders towards consolidated, multidisciplinary suppliers, who can offset costs through efficiency rather than price alone, with energy performance now playing a direct role in managing a development’s long-term viability.
As Kyle told Tom when asked about the potential link between the Your First Home contribution and a property’s running costs:
“If the contribution ends up being tied to a home’s running costs, it changes the conversation. Developers won’t just be thinking about hitting the minimum standard to get through Building Control, they’ll be looking for genuine performance gains that bring that ongoing cost down. That’s where early-stage SAP and Part O work really earns its keep.”
Read Tom’s full analysis, ‘Is Your First Home A Lifeline Or A Squeeze Too Far For Housebuilders?’, to find out more about what the scheme could mean for housebuilders’ bottom line, and why multidisciplinary suppliers like Lucion are increasingly part of the answer.
