January 2023
We are pleased to announce that mwclubb Architectural Design have been selected to provide Energy Audits and Retrofit Plans for 25 community owned or operated buildings across Aberdeenshire. These bespoke retrofit plans will help with the transition to warm and healthy community spaces, powered by renewable heating systems.
About the Project
The first part of this project is to select 25 buildings that represent a fair distribution of different buildings, based on age, design, heating system, use pattern and location.
We plan to select at least four community owned or operated buildings from each of the six council areas: Banff & Buchan, Buchan, Formartine, Garioch, Kindcardine & Mearns and Marr. Unfortunately buildings in the Cairngorm National Park cannot be selected.
Each selected building will undergo a detailed survey by our team of architects and retrofit experts. We will build detailed energy models of each building that reflect their current and future usage pattern and evaluate all the options for improving these buildings to make them comfortable and ready for zero-emissions heating systems, like heat pumps.
What are the outputs?
Staged Retrofit Plans will be produced for each building, which will give the building operators an understanding of the most suitable measures, their estimated cost and order of installation.
This will allow the building operators to plan the improvements over a number of years and to source appropriate funding. These Retrofit Plans will be suitable for supporting applications to the CARES Fund from the Scottish Government.
The timeline for this work is very short, we need to select the buildings by the 20th January and complete the Retrofit Plans by 15th March 2023.
The project is funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural Community Led Vision Fund, administered by Aberdeenshire Council on behalf of the North and South Aberdeenshire Local Action Groups, so there are no costs to the community.
Community Engagement
We held a launch event on Wednesday 18th January.
If you missed it you can watch the recording back here
We need your help!
There's no definitive list of community owned and operated buildings for Aberdeenshire. We don't want to miss any, so if you have a community building that would benefit from a retrofit plan, please complete a questionnaire to help us.
For each building we need to know it's usage pattern, so if you're a building owner or operator and you can help with this information please provide it on the questionnaire.
If you'd like to discuss your community building please email us at community@mwclubb.co.uk
Or call 07710 279156