Decision-making criteria vs product recommendations

[Vicki Cowan]

Hi all

Beacon has always been very careful about product recommendations; our remit is improving quality of home performance but with many industry partners we constantly and pro-actively strive to maintain our independence.   So we have always stuck to “choose a product with X performance”.  However, my recent personal foray into home renovation (about to move out for 5 months…sigh) I am a home-owner needing to make decisions about insulation of my walls, a new sub-floor (building into our attic space) etc.  So I have been developing, in my head (and written here for first time), a set of decision making criteria for product selection.

Here’s where I got to for wall insulation (not in priority order):

product needs valid R-rating (I am so not bothered about just meeting B.code – I am striving well beyond that minimum “so stop trying to save me a few bucks by downgrading the R-value, I only want to do this once!”);
product ideally made in NZ (support local industry BUT also product won’t have been squashed/ jammed for overseas transport which will impair its performance when installed);
rigidity (I know this is the first time my 1901 villa walls have been opened since it was built, I don’t want to do it for another 20-30 years…product MUST NOT succumb to gravity and slump and stuffing soft insulation into spaces is sub-optimal – squashed insulation doesn’t perform to it’s reported R-value);
easy to ‘cut’ to spec for a tight fit (my walls will have all manner of shapes and research tells me I don’t want ANY gaps or just ‘jamming it in’);
quality installation (research tells us that you undermine any claim on the packaging with a poor install; so I need a product that has a recognised method for each purpose (underfloor vs wall) and ideally qualified installers – this is a skilled job – EECA is training wall insulation installers).
Consideration given to unintended consequences (will installing this product help avoid problems, e.g. weather-tightness, help me identify/fix hidden structural problems e.g. rot).
Priced to reflect the investment I am making to improve my thermal envelope (I am valuing both comfort and efficiency) and considering future maintenance (don’t make me open those walls again and given the palaver it would be hard to over specify an R-value!)

So in my view we could, as a community, be developing a set of decision-making criteria that put power of choice with resident so they can question industry and demand better products.  Thanks to my passionate Beacon colleagues who help me shake this stuff out – but written under my own name..mistakes all mine!!   Interested to hear if you have a view on this…

Cheers, Vicki

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[Sally Blackwell]

5 months?! ouch…

In my (very short) career as an advisor in the HEAC this is exactly the sort of thing I would have found useful. We kind of did it with a mental checklist but this sort of framework for decision making sounds even better. Similar to a hierarchy of action for dealing with internal moisture problems (i.e. eliminate sources of moisture, ventilate etc…) before going straight to a product solution.

What do others think? Does this sound like a useful way this community could help support better decision making whilst maintaining (and subtly – or not so subtly – advocating for) the independence of advice provided?

 

 

 

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[Richard Popenhagen]

Hi Vicki
This is exactly the process we should be all follow. I think that some of the more rational of us do this in our mind but have not put it down on paper.
The trick is going to be to get homeowners, specifiers, designers and builders (optimistic here!) to do it this way, as opposed to the usual “what is the cheapest product that will do the job/ meet the building code” or “which deal gives you a free bonus …..whatever”.
So in answer to your question, yes I think would be great to develop a set of decision-making criteria as you suggest.

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[Jo Wills]

I agree.  I am fielding more and more enquiries through the CEN website from homeowners confused and frustrated by what they are being told by sales reps for a vast array of energy efficiency products.  As you mentioned Richard, the building code is a bit of a thorn in our side, because we know ‘crappy homes’ can still be build according to the code.   And of course the other issue is the power of a ‘good’ salesperson who builds rapport with the homeowner for the purpose of selling the product.  When I receive the enquiry I try to match the person up with a CEN member in their area, or an EDA (thank you Richard) however sometimes that is too late and the salesperson has already done a number on them.  So if there was to be the decision making process based on best performance – would this be accessible to the wider public as well as energy practitioners?  Imagine the horror of some salespeople if the homeowner turned around with question based on performance and not subsidies!

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[Sally Blackwell]

I’m keen to progress this guys as I think it would be great to see some tangible ‘real world’ (i.e. not just online) things come out of this collaboration. I could put a bit of Hub time into it ‘tho not sure the best way to move it forward from here. Thoughts? Vicki?

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[Norman Smith]

I may have kick-started this conversation by declining to name products or suppliers on the Hub as we didn’t have a agreement or protocol, so here are some thoughts.

My thinking is that within the Hub could we find a way to share information which we would not talk about with households, whether it is positive or negative.

However, to avoid potential problems this should be on a ‘needs to know basis’ and probably not in writing. e.g. I heard about an absolute rip-off double glazing company operating in Wellington charging twice what everyone else is, contact me if you want details; OR I came across a great new service/product which I think is better and cheaper…etc. In the past I have talked to other practitioners about my experience in this way.

Have I ever made a mistake by going out on a limb and caused real harm by giving bad advice? Who knows, I have always tried to do my best. I do know both my growing knowledge and new products means what I recommended five years ago I would not now – e.g. who is going to recommend solar hot water systems today over PVs?

Faced with companies with big advertising budgets and the issue of bounded rationality (ref. Behavoural Economics) sometimes households want us to tell then what product or company to use. Is it our responsibility to use our superior knowledge, bite the bullet and name names ?

Kia Kaha, Norman

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[Sally Blackwell]

This is a useful conversation; and part of the purpose of the pilot was always to tease this stuff out.

From my perspective the key issue is how effective the advice is (i.e. its ability to get people over what ever decision making barriers they have and prompt change and therefore a better outcome for them), and one of the key elements of that is trust. Whether the householder trusts the person giving them advice.

Independence (not being aligned – or being seen to be aligned) with a particular product is part of that.

Of course currently advisors all have different operating models. There is no govt or other funding source that make independent advice accessible to all households, therefore someone somewhere will always be selling products. Some advisors (EDAs, The HEAC when it existed) categorically won’t mention particular products, others will be selling products and services to pay for the advice (some community enterprises do this), and still others may be ‘advisors’ only as an adjunct to sales (there’s no one in this category on this site).

What a decision-making tool like Vicki is suggesting would do is provide a framework for households (and advisors) to know their decision making process is robust and the outcome will positive for them.

Maybe whether one person or another does or doesn’t mention a particular product or supplier is a separate issue (and probably one we can’t control anyway). But we could help raise the bar.

On the issue of whether people want to connect with each other through the Hub to share intell. I guess that’s another issue again and maybe one best done off line (at least for the time being).

One of the things we want from the pilot is a set of guidelines around information sharing on the site. It is proving rather difficult to facilitate this conversation through the site and we might look at another face to face meeting at some point in the future to address this and some other issues.

Norman, I do agree though that some people just want you to tell them what to do!

 

 

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[Rebecca Ford]

Hi all.

Vicki – I think this is a great idea, as both practitioners and people trying to make changes have a whole set of criteria they have to assess new products against. We have been looking at developing a decision making tool as part of the Energy Cultures project program, but initially we were thinking of these being at the level of one type of product vs another type (i.e. insulation vs. installing heat pump vs. installing thick drapes etc etc.). What we have come to realise through the research to date is that these different product types differ in a numer of characteristics (e.g. upfront cost, skill level needed to install, etc. etc.), and that different people care about different characteristics more or less. So one of our current projects is to develop decision making support for people through evaluating the characteristics that are important to them, and then highlighting the particular upgrades that would be best suited to the particular preferences of a particular person.

However, I can easily see the same sort of decision making tool being used by practitioners  but instead of looking at the level of heat pump vs. thick drapes (product type 1 vs. product type 2), we think about heat pump 1 vs. heat pump 2 (product 1 vs. product 2 of the same type). This would help practitioners to rate these products according to the particular characteristics they were interested in, and this would help provide a level of independence and rigour to the recommendation, provided the data input to the tool was carefully done.

I’d be really keen to talk more about this and see if we can integrate the research with the great knowledge base of people actually doing things, for both of the tools! Perhaps we can set up a Skype call with anyone on here who is interested to explore this further….

 

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[Phil Squire]

Great discussion folks. It’s the medical approach – diagnosis and then recommendation of the most effective solution to provide the required outcome. Perhaps this is a protocol we could work into the advisor training modules as we develop the qualification. I’m sure there are plenty of examples from advisor training modules in the UK (City and Guilds) advisor training courses that we could modify.

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[Sally Blackwell]

Hi guys – picking up on an old thread here.

I want your opinion about what our first Hub resource should be!

I’m working with the rest of the ad hoc steering group (Heidi Mardon, Jo Wills and Vicki Cowan) at the moment to put a plan in place for the next stage of the Hub.

One of the things we all really want to see is a Hub resource developed that synthesises the knowledge in the group and is designed to help advisors in their work (and fills a current gap…). It will also be ‘quality assured’ by the Hub.

There is currently a working group (made up of Hub members) providing input into the development of CEN’s Home Performance Advisor training and certification. Once that work is complete I’d like to set up another working group (and will be calling for interested volunteers!) to develop a decision-making tool/resource sheet for advisors on a particular (yet to be decided) topic.

I’ve been looking back over the discussions in the forum during the pilot and from what I can see the topics that have been very active, have a diversity of opinions and could be contenders for our first shared resource are (working titles obviously…).

• What’s the right level of insulation for me? See… ROI relative to R values
• Advising on heat transfer
• Ventilation
• Insulating Walls
• Secondary glazing – here and here and here and here

So tell us, what would be most useful? Where is the greatest need?

Or is there another pressing topic we need to tackle first??

Looking forward to hearing what you all think

Sally

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Sally Blackwell]

PS – Obviously the intention is to do more similar resources, but we have to start somewhere. So want to know what the first cab off the rank should be.

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[Phil Squire]

I’d love to see a decision tree on ventilation – incorporating all the usual moisture culprits and finally ending up with 1% needing mechanical ventilation

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[Scott Willis]

I support Phil’s suggestion as there appear to be more add-ons (a solar heating clip-on) being promoted as well now (sorry folks, I’ve misplaced the card I was given a couple of weeks ago) and we’d be able to put a simple tool on ventilation to good use.

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[Sally Blackwell]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Anyone else?

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