Senior Retrofit Advisor

Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract until July 2027 (with potential for continuation)
Working Pattern: Full time 37.5hrs Mon-Friday
Location: Hybrid (Sheffield City Centre office at least 2 days/week, regular travel across South Yorkshire, home-based)

About Pure Leapfrog

Pure Leapfrog is a sustainability charity that works nationally across Energy, Sustainable Finance, Carbon, and Natural Capital. We are committed to helping support a Just Transition to a net-zero society and use our combined skills in energy systems, project development, policy & regulation, financial & energy modelling, technology, buildings and retrofit, social impact, carbon and finance to effect positive change.

Job Description

You will be part of Pure Leapfrog’s Buildings and Retrofit team, specifically working for our “Let Zero” One Stop Shop Retrofit Service.

Let Zero is seeking to address the issue of poor housing conditions (issues such as damp and mould) where it exists in parts of the Private Rented Sector, whilst also making homes cheaper to heat and addressing their carbon emissions.

We deliver the Let Zero OSS Service in the South Yorkshire region; providing advice to landlords and tenants regarding retrofit, decarbonisation and issues relating to damp and mould.

You will provide in-person advice to landlords and tenants in South Yorkshire, empowering them to commission high-quality works to decarbonise private rented homes in South Yorkshire. You will assist in advising landlords and tenants what an energy efficiency home improvement project could look like. To do this, we have developed a structured framework. Training and mentoring will be provided.

You will build relationships with relevant stakeholders and seek out and attend local events to promote our service and recruit landlords and tenants to our offer. Your on-the-ground insights will inform our marketing and communications to landlords and other relevant stakeholders to raise the profile of our One Stop Shop.

Let Zero has been developed over the past 18 months with support from Innovate UK and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. Continuation funding strategies are being developed to help us deliver our five-year plan of creating a non-profit impactful model that is financially self-sustaining.

Location

• You will need to live in or around to Sheffield, where our office is based and be willing to travel within South Yorkshire, as you will be needed regularly ‘on-the-ground’.
• The role will require be a mixture of office and on location surveying. The office is set in the heart of Sheffield city centre.
• Use of own vehicle required for travel around the Yorkshire area and occasionally into Lincolnshire, which is reimbursable at 0.45p per mile.

Duties

• Work with the Let Zero Communications and Marketing Officer to develop Let Zero’s marketing and engagement plans and implement them.
• Organise and take part in engagement events and activities to promote the Let Zero One Stop Shop.
• Be a first point of contact for enquiries from potential service users.
• Provide Landlord Portfolio Assessments and Retrofit Advice to a high professional standard. Giving advice on the best route to EPCC.
• To hand off Landlords who wish to act on advice, to other parts of the service and work with them to ensure smooth continuity of experience.
• Maintain records and systems with accurate data and information. A tablet is provided for on-site data collection.
• Develop strategic partnerships with Regional Landlord Groups, Estate Agents, Mortgage Advisors, other retrofit professionals and the wider property and retrofit sectors.
• Any other duties that may be reasonably expected in the delivery of this role.

Person Specification

Let Zero is both a live service and an innovation project. We are trialling new technical and commercial solutions that will contribute towards the transition to net zero. We are looking for someone who is comfortable with unknowns; who is solutions oriented, proactive and motivated to develop new ways of working, seeking process and efficiency improvements, whilst also maintaining delivery of a live service.

Being comfortable meeting, interacting and providing in-person retrofit / energy efficient home improvement advice to a range of people (landlords, tenants, letting agencies etc) and working outside of an office environment is a critical requirement.

If you like sharing the knowledge you have and learning new things, then this role is for you. As part of your role will be customer-facing, you must be comfortable having in-person interactions with the public.

We welcome applications from anyone who feels qualified to apply and is interested in doing so. We particularly encourage anyone who might be returning to work, is switching career, requires flexible working or job share, has additional needs, or in some other way may feel excluded from this kind of opportunity, to make an application.

It is essential that:

• Qualified DEA (Domestic Energy Assessor)
• You have a basic understanding of PAS2030/2035 process; the funding landscape; and Net Zero policy
• You have a proven knowledge of retrofit processes and measures, with good understanding of the technical details, of how measures are installed, available systems and the major pitfalls of retrofit as well as mitigating against these risks (Damp/Condensation/Ventilation systems etc)
• You have excellent customer service skills and can deliver positive interactions with all stakeholders.
• You are willing to call warm or cold landlord leads and convert them to paying customers, by presenting a basic report using the old EPC data to suggest how their property might achieve EPCC.
• You can build strong professional relationships from scratch.
• You thrive on working with other people and communities, wanting to have direct and immediate impact ‘inside the room’.
• You are comfortable having in-person interactions with the public and working from public locations for some of the time.
• You are skilled at taking in complex concepts and explaining them in an easily understandable manner for landlords and tenants.
• You are passionate about environmental sustainability and addressing climate change.
• You can demonstrate an awareness of the importance of decarbonising buildings in action against climate change.
• You enjoy contributing to developing new solutions and approaches challenges.
• You are self-starting, can work remotely as part of a distributed team, and that you have effective communication skills: verbal and written.
• You have strong IT skills, including Excel, Word and PowerPoint and you are comfortable learning to use new IT solutions.
• You are organised, methodical, have an attention to detail, and take pride in your work.

It is desirable that:

• You have a Level 3 Retrofit advisor qualification in old and traditional buildings.
• If you are newly qualified, you will be willing to spend days accompanying an assessor in the field, to get up to speed quickly.
• You are accredited to carry out retrofit assessments by ECMK (A UK based energy assessor accreditation body) and experience with Assess+Software. Other bodies are okay but ECMK is a definite plus.
• You have experience in improving the energy efficiency of homes or have experience in a field closely related to enhancing the quality of homes, such as the housing sector or construction industry.
• You have previous experience within a customer facing role.
• You have insight into the wider energy system, and the challenges to decarbonise the grid, transport and heating.
• You have an interest in innovation and behaviour change.
• You understand what social impact is and understand issues such as fuel poverty, economic deprivation and exclusion.

Our Culture

Pure Leapfrog is committed to being a socially and environmentally impactful organisation. We value our team, our communities and the organisations we work with and seek to treat them with respect.

We try to live by the principles we expect of the communities and organisations we work with including equal opportunities, inclusivity, diversity, health and safety, and environmental sustainability.