Preparing data for strategic analysis with Cottsway Housing Association.
Cottsway is West Oxfordshire’s largest housing provider and has over 5,100 homes across Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. Cottsway are working to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs for customers in these homes and are working with Sava to help achieve these objectives.
What did Cottsway want to achieve?
At the beginning of the project Cottsway held only enough energy data to calculate ratings within Sava Intelligent Energy for a small number of properties. Cottsway had commissioned a large number of EPCs over several years which they no longer had access to. Cottsway also held a lot of useful energy data in separate asset datasets such as PV information and gas boiler makes and models.
The Sava team worked with Cottsway to create a robust data baseline using Open Data Communities data. This provided access to most of the data from previous EPC assessments. From this baseline, Sava were then able to align the additional data Cottsway already held (PV, boiler etc.) to increase the quality and accuracy of the dataset.
Cottsway commented that they would recommend to anyone who is not already handling Open Data downloads themselves to ensure this data gathering and cleansing work is done by the Sava team.
Lynne Berry, Asset Intelligence Officer for Cottsway said:
“The benefits we had from Sava doing the data work for us were: A, speed of database building (it would have taken us ages to get this volume of data correct). B, the more detailed understanding of how the data fits together and what the different inputs mean – this helps us with analysis and improving our data going forward. C, it has been good to work with Sava; as well as being knowledgeable and thoroughly competent, they have also been good at saying what will be delivered when and explaining what will happen next.”
What were the outcomes?
Sava provided Cottsway with:
- Energy (SAP) and EI (Carbon) ratings for the whole stock where data was available
- A populated copy of Sava Intelligent Energy
- A populated KGI to allow Cottsway to upload all gathered data into their asset management system
- Continued assistance with any errors or data queries
What are the next steps?
Now Cottsway has a more comprehensive overview of their stock, the next steps are to start with analysis on prioritising next year’s budget expenditure on their key energy saving measures that will be undertaken at void and a separate planned programme. They will then identify what data gaps they have with a view to improving overall data quality. They will also do planning analysis on future projects around boiler replacement and moving to SAP 10.
What were the benefits of working with Sava?
Cottsway commented that “having undertaken our Sava Intelligent Energy training we are now ready to dive in and we can see how we will be able to set up plans and inputs for various projects and improvements in a way that will really save us data analysis time and how we will be able to do new analyses we would not have been able to do without having this set up.”
Sava asked Cottsway if they would recommend our consultancy services to other housing providers. Lynne replied “We thought we could set this up without consultancy, and we might have been able to muddle through, but it is so much more efficient and faster to have the consultancy team at Sava to hold our hand and steer us and our data in the right direction. Darren is extremely knowledgeable and has been invaluable to the project.”
Darren Walker from Sava commented;
“I was very happy with the final dataset we were able to provide Cottsway. When we complete this type of work for clients who require multiple sources of data to be combined, it can seem very daunting at first, as the data sources don’t always agree with one another. In these cases, one of our main aims is to document all the conflicts in the data provided, as well as document the educated inferences we make to get as many properties as possible to return energy ratings. This takes the form of a simple excel sheet that is supplied along with the dataset which allows our clients to focus on improving or confirming the data of the most complicated properties.”
How can Sava help your organisation?
If you would like to find out more about how Sava can help analyse data, assist with zero carbon goals or provide strategic advice and research, please contact us at technology@sava.co.uk or read more on our analytics and strategic support page.