Picture a London office block on a cold Tuesday morning — the heating's been on since 5am, yet by mid-morning the reception area still feels draughty and the top floor is stuffy. It's a familiar headache for facilities managers, and one that a recent industry report suggests has as much to do with the building's fabric as its boiler.
The report, published by INCA, the trade body for external wall insulation, found that of the roughly 8.5 million solid-walled properties across Great Britain, a striking 89 per cent are still uninsulated. That's not just a domestic problem — plenty of older commercial and mixed-use buildings across London and Essex share the same solid-wall construction, and the same energy losses.
The findings echo a major government-backed research project into retrofitting older buildings, which found that insulating solid walls properly can cut whole-building heat loss by anywhere from 19 to 55 per cent. Put simply, no amount of clever heating technology can outrun a leaky building envelope.
Even Ofgem, which oversees the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, now advises that heat pumps and other efficient heating perform best once a building is well insulated first. It's a "fabric first" approach — get the walls, roof and airtightness right, then let the heating do less work for a better result. For any planned or compliance maintenance programme, that's a sequence worth building in from the start.
This is exactly the kind of thinking Advanced Building Management brings to every property it looks after — whether that's planned maintenance, reactive repairs or full compliance servicing across London and Essex. If your building's heating bills don't add up, it might be time for a proper fabric-first review. Get in touch with Advanced Building Management at advancedbml.com to find out more.
