The Building Energy Rating Reality Capture Project: A rich digital open educational resource to address the national demand for upskilling in the energy assessment of dwellings

About this initiative

The challenge that underpins the proposal arises from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s (SEAI) desire to increase the number of Building Energy Rating (BER) Assessors available to the housing market, which typical training partners alone do not seem to be delivering at present, and also, following a review by our programme team on the BSc in Architectural Technology, we have identified a difficulty in managing and teaching large numbers of students how to survey and assess existing dwellings. SEAI and the Architectural Technologies Discipline in the TU Dublin School of Architecture Building and Environment (SABE) believe that we can develop a new module that will prepare undergraduates to act in the role of registered BER assessors after year 3 of our existing programme. We also believe we can address the problem of bringing large numbers of students to existing dwellings, and the inherent problems this creates with space and group management, through an innovative digital solution. 

This funding will enable us to create three high quality digital reality captures of case study houses around Ireland that can be used by educators and learners to remotely access “existing dwellings”, as groups and individuals, to practice the assessment, survey, and upgrade of such properties. Our plan of work will include the selection of two dwellings, one of historical solid-wall building fabric, a second that represents modern cavity wall construction, and a final contemporary dwelling that is at construction stage, where we can scan/ capture it several times and create a reality capture allowing the exploration and explanation of the building technology through a time sequence. This will create a rich open educational resource and address a national demand for upskilling.