Client: Gilmour Engineering & Industrial Services

Brief: Advising on refit of a tired 20,000sq ft industrial building in Barrow-in-Furness to meet Building Regulations and future minimum EPC ratings.

All Russ Gilmour’s tenants have signed long leases of between six to 10 years – and that’s largely due to the fact his newly refurbished commercial units are extremely energy efficient.

“It makes my life a lot easier as I won’t have to keep finding new people,”

says Russ.

“I didn’t want any dirty work on the site such as garages, and I think the improvements I’ve made helped me get tenants who make and sell kitchens, furniture and furnishings as well as two internet firms.”

Three years ago, the old industrial building was in a sorry state with a leaking corrugated, asbestos roof that had damaged interior ceiling tiles after standing empty for two years. Russ, the Managing Director of Gilmour Engineering & Industrial Services, planned to completely refurbish it and create five smaller workshop/trade-counter type premises, so asked Murton & Co’s Jonny Murton-Lavelle to advise on the specification to ensure it complied with Building Regulations and EPC regulations.

Each of the five 4,000sq ft units had only scraped an EPC G rating – far below the necessary grade E to grant leases. On Jonny’s advice, Russ removed the gas, insulated the external walls, installed LED lighting, double glazed the windows and used electric heaters for the hot water. Jonny also suggested introducing a double skin roofing system using composite metal-clad sheets and including 100mm of insulation between the two layers on the curved roof.

“This means the units keep cool when the weather is warm and keep cosy in cold weather, which the tenants really appreciate,”

says Russ.

The front walls on three of the units had to be replaced and rebuilt as the previous owner had taken down the supporting steel structure. Jonny advised using a double skin breeze block with insulation in the new walls to add points to the EPC, and Russ’s firm produced the new steels.

“The development took three years from start to finish as I didn’t have the funds to do everything at once,”

Russ explains.

Work started on units three and four, and then on unit five – getting in tenants once the work was done – and Russ has recently finished refurbishing units one and two.

“All the units got a B rating which was great. The result is a very energy efficient building,”

he adds.

“Each time we moved to the next phase, Jonny gave me great guidance for all the units, so I knew what I needed to do to get to the same EPC grade as we did on the others.”

With the expectation that commercial landlords will need to achieve an EPC C on their buildings by 2028 for the purposes of Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards – which could well be abandoned in favour of a single target of EPC band B – Russ is ahead of the game.

“Russ made the right decision not to cut corners and by considering his tenants’ needs has now future-proofed his investment to satisfy a likely rise in minimum EPC ratings in the next few years,”

adds Jonny.

Russ is currently using part of the sixth split-level unit as his office and plans to refurbish the basement.

“I’ll strip out the sixth unit in the next few months and will ask Jonny to advise me on how to do that to get the best possible EPC rating. I think it’s currently a D and I’d like to get it to a B.”

He knows he’ll get timely, expert advice from Jonny who has regularly made time to visit the site to offer guidance and support.

“Even though he’s not based near me, Jonny has called in a few times between conducting the surveys and it’s really helped to talk to him face to face,”

explains Russ.

“I’ve been impressed by his professionalism and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Jonny to anyone embarking on a project. His best advice was to speak to him before I started doing any work. If I hadn’t done that, I could have gone about things the wrong way – and ended up with a worse EPC rating. Working with Murton & Co has saved me a lot of time and energy.”