SOLUTION: Tenant Engagement Strategy

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Tenant communication and engagement before, during and after a retrofit has been identified as uneven across retrofit projects, with many tenants unhappy with low levels of engagement and consultation at all stages.

Requiring a "Tenant Engagement Strategy" with some standardized components will ensure that certain engagement activities -- and the corresponding funding for those activities -- are included within all retrofit projects.

Landlords may opt to carry out these activities themselves, or may decide to include these activities within the design team's Terms of Reference. In some cases, they may engage a third party organization or community group with experience in such consultation.

While required elements of a Strategy may be standardized, the plan itself must be geared to the specific communities within the building -- taking into account language barriers, cultural differences, demographics, varying modes of communication and other local factors.

• Example: At the Oxford City Council Estates retrofit in Oxford, UK, an independant resident group was established to scrutinize the process and provide a third-party review of the retrofit. Residents also participated in selecting the building contractor, using contractors' track records from their past similar projects. Residents visited the contractor's previous projects and spoke to the residents. Once selected, the contractor was contractually required to provide a "high degree of customer care" and opted to provide a tenant liaison on-site to meet this requirement.

SOLUTION: Design Assist Program for Retrofits with Residents in Place

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Since complex housing retrofits are still relatively uncommon in Canada, many architects, engineers and other design team members are unfamiliar with specific considerations for designing a retrofit with residents in place.

A "Design Assist" program is a peer review of a retrofit design by other experts in the field. This program would provide assessments and recommendations of designs which are mid-stream, allowing adequate time for adjustments to be made by the design team as a result. This review can offer suggestions meant to reduce disruption to tenants and may include advice around single-day installation, panelization, exterior installation, retrofit-ready products, etc.

Design Assist programs already exist in several jurisdictions across Canada for energy savings or for design quality: these programs can be accessed by any design project, bringing a number of experts together to review designs over the course of a single-day charrette. Materials are provided in advance for expert review. Typically, these programs are funded by utilities or by landlords with large portfolios. In the case of a Design Assist program geared to minimizing disruption, this assessment could be integrated into the already-existing energy savings Design Assists provided by the utilities, or could be administered by government bodies.

Local experts in various jurisdictions would be assembled to provide input. Due to building code variations across provinces and territories, it is ideal for expert pools to be localized.