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Energy consultancy website development

For principals and practice managers of energy consultancies, assessment practices and efficiency advisers who want engagements, data collection, site visits, reports and recommendations designed around how their consultants actually work a building, rather than a document store with a contact form.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A consultancy of six assessors takes on an engagement by email, agrees a scope in a proposal document, and then asks the client for twelve months of utility bills, meter readings, floor plans and an occupancy schedule.

  • The data arrives in pieces over three weeks: some bills as photographs, a spreadsheet of readings with gaps, and a plan from the landlord in a format nobody can open.
  • The assessor chases by email, builds the baseline in a workbook on their own laptop and books the site visit by phone.
  • On site they photograph plant rooms, note meter positions and record lighting counts on a clipboard.
  • The report is written over a fortnight, reviewed by a principal in tracked changes, and sent as an attachment.
  • The client replies with questions, a second version goes out, and three months later nobody is sure which version the board saw.

Where it gets harder

The recommendations in the report, thirty of them across lighting, controls, insulation and plant, disappear into the client's own spreadsheet; when the client comes back a year later for a review, the consultant cannot say which were implemented without asking.

  • Recurring monitoring clients send readings whenever they remember.
  • Compliance deadlines for assessments the practice is registered to carry out are in a diary, and a client's certificate expiry is noticed when the client asks.
  • The principal knows the practice is paid for the report but valued for the follow-through, and has no system for the follow-through.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom energy consultancy build normally covers:

  • A service catalogue By assessment type with the data each type needs from the client
  • An assessment request with building type Size, use, tenure and the client's objectives
  • An engagement record that moves through requested Scoped, data collection, site visit, analysis, draft report, issued and review
  • Data intake forms per engagement where the client uploads bills Enters meter readings against named meters and dates, attaches plans and completes occupancy schedules, with a checklist showing what is still outstanding
  • Site visit booking against assessor availability and travel
  • A site visit record with photographs Plant and meter observations and lighting or equipment counts entered on a tablet
  • Report delivery through a client portal with numbered versions A record of who viewed which version and when, and client questions answered against the version
  • A recommendations register extracted from each report with status Owner on the client side, target date and evidence of implementation
  • Recurring monitoring reviews With a schedule for the client to submit readings and the consultant to issue a short review note

How discovery works

Discovery follows one engagement from enquiry to the twelve-month review with you: how assessment types differ in the data they need, how clients supply data today and where it stalls, what the assessor captures on site, how reports are reviewed and released, how recommendations are tracked afterwards, and how monitoring clients are served. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: request, scope, collect, visit, analyse, report, track, review.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The modelling and calculation software the practice is accredited to use, whose outputs are attached to the engagement
  • The lodgement of certificates on official registers, which is recorded against the engagement with reference and date but done on the register
  • Accounting

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A consultancy serving a retail chain with two hundred sites, a shared portfolio dashboard for the client's estates team, half-hourly data from the client's metering provider and recommendations rolled up by site and region needs a portfolio layer over engagements, automated data feeds and client-side roles with site restrictions. That is a different build from a practice serving single buildings, and the scope document says so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following one engagement from enquiry to its twelve-month review
  • A written scope document naming each engagement stage, the data intake rules per assessment type and what is out of scope
  • Design of the client intake forms, the site visit capture on tablet, the report portal with versions and the recommendations register on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of client, building and historic report records from your drives and spreadsheets, where practical
  • Training for assessors, the practice administrator and principals, with a short written guide and a client-facing portal guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts, your assessment types, current proposal and report templates, the data request emails you send clients and the review calendar.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with a principal, an assessor and the administrator; the engagement stage model, intake checklists per assessment type and scope document are agreed with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the client intake checklist, the site visit form on a tablet in a plant room, the report portal with version history and the recommendations register, checked with a willing client contact.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: clients, buildings and engagements first, then intake forms and site visits, then report versions and the portal, then recommendations and monitoring reviews.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Two live engagements run through the system alongside the old email process, including a client uploading real data and receiving a report version, and the practice tells us where it does not match the work.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Intake fields, site visit forms, portal layout and recommendation statuses are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Records migrated, portal invitations tested against addresses you control, report templates signed off, launch checklist completed.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The practice runs on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Metering and energy data providers for half-hourly or monthly consumption feeds where the client has access
  • Modelling and calculation software whose exports are attached to the engagement
  • Official certificate registers where an interface is published, for recording lodgement references and expiry dates
  • Electronic signature providers for engagement letters and report acceptance
  • Calendar feeds so assessors see site visits on their own devices
  • Document storage the practice already uses for archive copies
  • Email and SMS providers for data reminders, report notifications and review schedules
  • Accounting and time-recording software for fee stages and invoicing

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A consultancy serving a retail estate with a portfolio dashboard

The situation

A consultancy advising a retail chain with two hundred sites received monthly readings from the client's metering provider by spreadsheet, produced site reports one at a time and had no way to show the estates team which recommendations were open across the estate.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the client, not only the consultant, works in the system at scale, which a single-engagement portal does not support.

The scope we would propose

  • A portfolio layer grouping engagements by client, region and site, with client-side roles that restrict a regional manager to their own sites
  • An automated intake that accepts the metering provider's export format and flags missing periods per meter
  • Site visit scheduling in regional batches
  • Report versions published per site with a portfolio summary the estates team can filter
  • A recommendations register rolled up by site, region and category with status updated by the client's own staff and evidence attached

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of assessment types and the depth of the intake checklist for each
  • Number of assessors and whether site visits need tablet capture offline
  • Client portal with report versions, questions and recommendation updates by the client
  • Monitoring reviews with scheduled data submission and review notes
  • Automated data feeds from metering providers or the client's systems
  • Portfolio clients with many sites and client-side roles
  • Certificate register references and expiry reminders
  • Volume of client, building and historic report records to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Energy consultancy package

Engagements by assessment type, client data intake checklists, site visit capture, report portal with versions, recommendations register and monitoring reviews for energy consultancies and assessors.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Would the package do, or do we need a custom build?

A practice whose engagements follow request, data intake, site visit, report and recommendation tracking for one building at a time is usually well served by the energy consultancy package configured with your assessment types and templates. Custom work is the honest answer for portfolio clients with many sites, automated metering feeds, client-side teams working in the system, or a practice that also sells monitoring as a subscription with its own dashboards. Discovery settles it before anything is quoted.

Does the system produce ratings or savings figures?

No. Ratings come from the accredited software and the official register; savings and payback figures are the consultant's professional judgement entered in the report. The system stores and versions what the consultant writes, attributes figures to their author and never generates a claim of its own.

How does client data intake work in practice?

Each assessment type carries a checklist of what the client must supply. The client logs into the portal, sees the list with what is received and what is outstanding, uploads bills, enters readings against named meters and dates and attaches plans. The assessor sees the same list and reminders go out on the schedule you set until it is complete.

Can clients update recommendation status themselves?

Yes, where you allow it. Each recommendation has a status, a client-side owner and a target date; the client marks it in progress or implemented and attaches evidence such as an invoice or a photograph, and the consultant reviews before the next monitoring note is issued.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code, client and building records, intake data, report versions and the recommendations register are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed.

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