Fabric First day at the sparkling new CoRE building in Longton, Stoke. It has a roof packed with pv panels, and a great view of the pottery factory with bottle kilns being refurbished for the conference centre. Not sure of their future use, I asked if they were going to be seminar pods?The place feels jumping with proposals, including a report from Stoke Council on their plans for an electricity generating and low energy Stoke - proposals include using waste heat from ceramics factories.  Andrew Ainsworth of Room 4 consulting, presented the report, 'Fabric First and Refurbishment Excellence: Up-skilling to Deliver the Green Deal and Beyond', follows months of research into the skills and training needs of the construction industry, which you can download from their website. Neil May spoke about the lack of proper research into how to work with traditional buildings, Lynne Sullivan on retrofitting to scale - a tower block in London using PHPP as guide, which neatly followed my talk on St Luke St in Stoke, the Retrofit for the Future house, which was designed with phpp.
Fran