How a chance call led us through the looking glass with some surprising results
The growing importance of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) in the UK's built environment is undeniable and the trend is set to gather pace through this decade and beyond. Landlords up and down the country are thankfully leaning towards the necessity to improve their buildings and reduce their environmental impact, helped to no small degree by the high energy-cost enviroment we all find ourselves in.
Another undeniable trend is all things Artificial Intelligence with tech prodigy OpenAI at the vanguard. Towards the end of last year the firm began to allow users to create custom GPTs (Generative Pre-Trained Transformers) - in layman's terms a pet robot capable of learning which you can train in a specific knowledge set.
Following a phonecall from a friendly commercial agent asking us to ballpark a building's EPC rating from a few scant details it got us thinking, could a GPT learn this party trick common to any seasoned energy assessor?
We created our GPT and christened it the Commercial EPC Calculator and proceeded to feed it a diet of MEES regulations, BRUKL minutiae, SAP and SBEM theory and even going so far as to teach it about level 5 EPCs. We then started testing it, with imaginary buildings at first and then slowly began to input datasets from our portfolio of real-world energy performance surveys that we have completed across London. It immediately did something wonderful and a little bit scary, it learned - and was soon estimating ratings correctly 95% of the time.
We pondered the potential applications for this marvel from the back-burner position when suddenly last week OpenAI unexpectedly announced they were releasing all GPTs into the public arena in a dramatic debut that has been compared by many to the launch of the AppStore. Many thousands of GPTs are now out in the wild and it became imperative for us to stake a claim to our first for the energy assessment industry, is it one small step or one giant leap?
Watch the commercial EPC calculator in action
Please note the following important caveats:-
The GPT is currently only available to paid subscribers of OpenAI - whilst we thoroughly recommend subscribing to gain access to their Aladdins cave of AI powered tools we also think the liklihood of them all becoming freely accessible in the near future is high.
It is only intended for use regarding non-domestic / commercial properties in England, Wales and Scotland - any other use will render wildly incorrect results.
The Commercial EPC Calculator is not perfect nor infallible - it provides good estimates of a building's EPC rating but requires good inputs for accuracy. Like any emerging technology it is prone to bugs and unexpected glitches.
We will not be held liable - this tool is offered to provide estimates of potential EPC ratings, all actual ratings are subject to a full survey from a suitably qualified Non-domestic Energy Assessor (NDEA). Haptic EPC Ltd. accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever resulting from the use of this tool.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on this project and in particular from companies in the commercial property industry who may be interested in incorporating this technology into their own web presence. Do please contact us.
blog reposted to linkedin