Technical explanations

What is a zero-data property brief?

A zero-data property brief is a complete profile of a building assembled before the owner has supplied anything except an address. Algi resolves the address to a specific structure, then queries six public data sources in parallel. The EPC Register returns the energy performance certificate, floor area, built form and construction characteristics. Companies House returns the occupying company's number, SIC code, accounts filing cycle and size indicators. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service returns local PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide and ozone concentrations. NASA POWER returns climate normals for the exact coordinates, including average temperature, humidity and wind speed. The National Grid Carbon Intensity API returns the distribution region derived from the postcode and how that region's electricity is currently generated. Ordnance Survey and open mapping data return the building footprint, so the brief describes the actual structure rather than a pin on a map.

Those six feeds combine into one profile: what the building is, how it is built, who occupies it, what the outdoor environment does to it, and how its regional grid behaves. From that, Algi derives an indicative annual consumption figure, an energy use intensity, and a benchmark position against comparable buildings. Every one of those numbers is labelled indicative, because it is modelled from public records rather than measured at a meter. Nothing is presented as a measurement until a bill or a sensor supplies one.

One detail matters more than it looks. The EPC Register keeps every certificate ever lodged against an address, including expired ones, and a naive query will surface an old certificate next to the current one. Algi takes the latest lodgement only, so a brief never reports a rating the building no longer holds.

Internally this is Layer 0, the layer that runs before any relationship exists. It costs nothing, and it needs no account, no bill, no meter connection and no site visit.

How does the AI bill analysis work, from upload to report?

You upload a bill as a PDF or a photograph. The document is read by AWS Bedrock, which locates the supplier, the meter or MPAN reference, the billing period, the consumption in kWh, the unit rate, the standing charge and every additional line item. Scanned and photographed bills are handled as well as digital ones, because the page is read as an image rather than parsed against a fixed template. That matters in practice, since most bills that reach a facilities desk have been through a scanner or a phone camera at least once.

The extracted figures are then set against the building's own profile. Floor area comes from the EPC, occupancy type from the property record, regional grid data from the postcode, climate normals for the exact period from NASA POWER, and prior consumption from any earlier bills on the account. That comparison is what turns a bill into information. Consumption that looks unremarkable on its own becomes a finding once it is well above the benchmark for a building of that size, in that use class, in that region, in that season.

The system then looks for specific, nameable waste: a unit rate above the current market range, a standing charge out of line with the contract type, capacity charges for capacity the building does not draw, reactive power penalties, estimated readings carried for months without an actual read, Climate Change Levy or VAT applied at the wrong rate, and baseload consumption that does not fall when the building is closed.

Every finding is expressed in kWh and pounds, and every one is cited to the line item it came from. Nothing is reported as a percentage improvement without the underlying figure behind it. If a saving cannot be traced back to something printed on a document you already hold, it does not go in the report.

What data sources does Algi use and how current are they?

Six public sources feed the property brief, and each has its own update rhythm. The EPC Register updates whenever a new certificate is lodged for the address, which for a commercial building is typically on sale, on lease, or after significant works. Companies House data refreshes on the filing cycle, so accounts and confirmation statement information moves once or twice a year, and the underlying company details move whenever a filing is made.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service publishes near-real-time air quality analysis and forecasts, updated through the day, which is why the brief can describe the air the building is drawing in rather than a long-run average. NASA POWER is the opposite case. It supplies climate normals built from decades of satellite and reanalysis data, so those figures are stable and change slowly by design. The National Grid Carbon Intensity API updates every 30 minutes across the 14 distribution network regions of Great Britain, which is what lets the brief describe a regional generation mix rather than a national average. Ordnance Survey and open mapping data supply the building footprint and update on survey cycles.

Once you connect bills, your own consumption and tariff data joins the set, and it is the only input in it that is measured rather than modelled. Algi keeps the two apart in every report, because a figure that quietly blends a modelled estimate with an invoiced amount cannot be defended when a board, an auditor or an assessor asks where it came from.

How does energy benchmarking work?

Energy Use Intensity, usually shortened to EUI, is annual energy consumption divided by floor area, expressed in kWh per square metre per year. It is the standard way to compare buildings that are not the same size. A 20,000 square metre office using more total energy than a 4,000 square metre office tells you nothing on its own. The same two buildings compared at 190 and 340 kWh per square metre tells you a great deal.

Algi benchmarks against three reference sets. The first is CIBSE TM46, the benchmark category set behind Display Energy Certificates, which gives a typical annual figure for each of 29 building activity types. The second is the building's own characteristics as recorded on the EPC: floor area, built form, main heating fuel and construction age band, which qualify the comparison so that a 1960s naturally ventilated office is not judged against a new air-conditioned one. The third is the anonymised Algi client dataset, which grows as more buildings are analysed and is the only one of the three that reflects what comparable buildings are actually doing this year rather than what a published benchmark says they should be doing.

For context, the average UK office sits at roughly 273.9 kWh per square metre per year across all fuels. That number is a starting position, not a verdict. A building well above it may have a good reason, such as a data hall, a commercial kitchen or extended operating hours, and the brief says so wherever the public record shows it.

Benchmarks are recalculated every time a bill is processed, so the position moves as the building's own consumption record lengthens and as the comparison set grows. A building that sat in the worst quartile on public data alone frequently moves once real consumption is in, and it moves in both directions.

What file formats can I upload for bill analysis?

PDF, JPEG and PNG. Multi-page PDFs are supported and are the common case, since most commercial supply bills run to several pages of line items behind a one-page summary. Up to ten documents can be submitted in a single analysis session, which is how a full quarter across gas, electricity and water is usually loaded.

The minimum information needed for a useful analysis is the supplier, the billing period, the consumption in kWh, and the cost. With those four a bill can be benchmarked, rate-checked and compared against the building profile. A bill showing cost but no kWh can still be checked for rate and charge anomalies, but it cannot be benchmarked, and the report states which of the two you are getting.

For photographed bills the practical requirement is only that the numbers are legible to a person: the whole page in frame, in focus, and without a fold running through the consumption table.

Is my data secure?

Data is stored in the United Kingdom, in the AWS eu-west-2 London region, and stays there. It is encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest. Access is controlled at row level, so an account can read only the properties, bills and reports that belong to it.

Bills are processed by AWS Bedrock inside the same AWS account and the same region. They are not sent to a third-party AI service, they do not leave the infrastructure Algi controls, and they are not used to train any model. That is the reason Bedrock is used rather than a public API endpoint: the processing happens inside the boundary the data is already in.

Uploaded bill files are deleted from storage once the report has been generated. The figures extracted from a bill are retained, because they are what the benchmark history, the trend chart and any later SECR aggregation are built from. The source document itself is not kept.

The anonymised benchmark dataset described above carries no client identity, no address and no company name. It holds building characteristics and consumption intensity only, which is what makes a comparison possible without exposing anybody's figures.

Can I export my data?

Yes. Reports export as PDF, the underlying figures export as CSV, and API access is available on Enterprise for organisations that want to pull the data into their own reporting stack or asset management system.

All data belongs to the client. That is not a courtesy position. A compliance record you cannot take with you is not a compliance record, because the obligation stays with the filer whatever happens to a supplier relationship.

Exported reports carry the methodology statement with them, stating what was measured and what was modelled, which source each figure came from, and which conversion factor set and publication year were applied. An auditor, an assessor or a board reviewer reading the export a year later can see the provenance of every number without having to come back and ask.

What happens if I cancel?

Data is retained for 90 days after cancellation and is then deleted. The 90 days exist so that nothing is lost while an export is arranged or a reporting year is closed out. Export everything you need before that window ends, because the deletion is final.

Leased hardware is collected. There is no charge for collection and no dilapidation claim for normal use. Units are collected, not written off against the client.

There are no exit fees and no minimum term beyond the billing period already in progress. The reasoning is straightforward. If the platform is not finding more than it costs, stopping should be easy, and the alternative is a business that depends on lock-in rather than on results.

What is ESOS Phase 4 and when is the deadline?

ESOS is the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme, a mandatory four-yearly energy assessment for large UK organisations, administered by the Environment Agency. Phase 4 has a qualification date of 31 December 2026 and a compliance deadline of 5 December 2027. An organisation is assessed against the qualification date, and the audit covers the twelve months of energy use running up to it.

The assessment must account for total energy consumption across buildings, transport and industrial processes, and the audits themselves must cover at least 90 per cent of that total. The remaining 10 per cent can be set aside as a de minimis, which is what allows a small outlying site or a marginal fuel to be excluded without invalidating the assessment. Choosing what falls in that 10 per cent is a judgement the Lead Assessor signs off on, not an administrative rounding.

Phase 4 also carries the obligations added after Phase 3: an action plan setting out what the organisation intends to do about the opportunities its audit identified, and annual progress updates against that plan. The scheme has moved from an audit you file and forget toward a cycle you report against, which changes what a compliant organisation needs to have in place between deadlines rather than just at them.

The practical timing point is that the qualification date and the compliance deadline are eleven months apart, and the audit must cover a twelve-month reference period ending on or before the qualification date. Organisations that start collecting energy data after the qualification date are already reconstructing history rather than reading it.

Who qualifies for ESOS?

A UK organisation qualifies if, on the qualification date, it employs 250 or more people, or it has both an annual turnover above GBP 44 million and an annual balance sheet total above GBP 38 million. An organisation that is part of a corporate group where any member qualifies is brought into the scheme with it.

It is worth being precise about the difference between this test and the SECR one, because they are frequently conflated. SECR uses the Companies Act large-company test, which is two out of three criteria. ESOS uses its own thresholds, with an "or" between the headcount limb and the financial limb, and the financial limb requires both the turnover and the balance sheet figures to be exceeded. An organisation can therefore be in scope for one and not the other.

Group structures are assessed at the highest UK parent level. The parent is responsible for compliance across the group, and the whole group's energy consumption is in scope, though participants can choose to disaggregate and comply separately where that suits the structure. Overseas parents do not pull a UK group out of scope, and the highest UK entity carries the obligation.

Does ESOS require an accredited assessor?

Yes. Unlike SECR, an ESOS assessment must be reviewed and signed off by a Lead Assessor registered with an approved professional body, such as CIBSE, the Energy Managers Association, IEMA or an equivalent register. The assessment is also signed off at board level by a director, so there are two signatures on it and they cover different things.

The Lead Assessor's review is not a rubber stamp on a finished report. They examine the data, the methodology, the sampling approach and the reasoning behind the opportunities identified, and they are professionally accountable for the conclusion. That is why the quality and completeness of the underlying data has such a direct effect on how long the review takes and what it costs.

The one exception is that an organisation certified to ISO 50001 covering its total energy consumption can use that certification as its compliance route rather than commissioning ESOS audits, though it still notifies the Environment Agency.

How does Algi help with ESOS?

Algi prepares the complete energy data pack that the Lead Assessor reviews. That means twelve months of energy consumption reconciled across every site and every fuel, the building profile for each property, the benchmarking analysis showing where each site sits against comparable buildings, and the savings opportunities already identified from the bill analysis, each one quantified in kWh and pounds and cited to its source.

Most of the cost and most of the elapsed time in a traditional ESOS engagement is not analysis. It is data collection: chasing bills across sites, reconciling meters against properties, filling gaps with estimates, and establishing what the organisation actually consumed before anyone can start asking why. An organisation running on Algi has that record already assembled and continuously maintained, because it is the same data the platform uses month to month.

The data arrives structured and complete, which moves the assessor's work from weeks of collection and cleaning to hours of review and judgement. Sign-off itself is available through the Algi advisor network at reduced rates, for the same reason: the fee reflects the work remaining rather than the work avoided.

What Algi does not do is sign off. The Lead Assessor's judgement is the regulated part of the process and it stays with an accredited human being.

How much does an ESOS audit typically cost?

A full standalone ESOS engagement typically costs between GBP 8,000 and GBP 15,000, with multi-site organisations and complex estates at the upper end and beyond it. Spread across the four-year cycle, that is roughly GBP 2,000 to GBP 3,750 a year, which is how it should be read when comparing it against an annual subscription.

The spread in that range is mostly explained by data readiness rather than by building count. Two organisations with the same number of sites can pay very different fees depending on whether the consumption record exists or has to be built from scratch, and the second case is the common one.

With Algi preparing the data pack, the assessor's review is substantially faster, and the fee through the advisor network reflects the reduced work rather than the standalone rate. The saving comes from removing the collection phase, not from discounting the professional judgement, which is the part you are actually paying for.

What is Awaab's Law and what does it require?

Awaab's Law was introduced by the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. It sets fixed statutory timeframes within which registered housing providers must investigate and address specified hazards in their properties, including damp and mould. The timeframes replace a position in which "reasonable time" was interpreted differently by every landlord and tested only in retrospect.

It is being brought in in phases. Phase 1 came into force in October 2025, covering damp and mould hazards and emergency hazards. Phase 2 begins on 30 November 2026 and extends the duties to a wider set of hazards. Each phase adds obligations rather than replacing the previous one.

The change that matters most operationally is not the clock. It is the expectation that providers can demonstrate they are proactively monitoring conditions across their stock rather than only responding once a resident has complained. A complaints-driven record shows what was reported. It does not show what the conditions in a home actually were, and it cannot show that anything was being watched between reports.

Providers therefore need two things: a way to see conditions continuously, and a record of that observation which holds up when it is examined months later by a regulator, an ombudsman or a court.

How does Algi monitor housing conditions?

Algi Sense units measure temperature, relative humidity and CO2 continuously, sampling at one-minute intervals. Each unit is battery powered and wireless, and reports through the Algi Hub installed at the property.

Sustained high relative humidity is flagged as condensation risk. The word sustained is doing real work there: humidity spikes during a shower or while cooking are normal and self-correcting, and a system that alerts on those produces noise that gets switched off within a fortnight. What matters is humidity that stays elevated after the activity has stopped, because that indicates the moisture is not clearing, which is a ventilation question rather than a behaviour one.

Humidity spikes that may indicate possible leaks are surfaced separately for investigation, on the basis that a sharp, sustained rise with no matching occupancy pattern is worth a human looking at.

All readings are timestamped and stored, whether or not they triggered anything. The data that proves conditions were normal is as important as the data that flags a problem, and it only exists if it was being recorded all along.

Does using Algi make a provider compliant with Awaab's Law?

No, and it is important to be exact about this. Algi provides continuous monitoring data and a defensible evidence trail. It does not guarantee compliance, ensure legal safety, or prevent mould.

Compliance under Awaab's Law depends on what a provider does: whether hazards are investigated within the statutory timeframes, whether residents are informed, whether works are carried out, and whether all of that is properly recorded. Those are operational duties that sit with the landlord, and no piece of software discharges them.

What monitoring provides is evidence. Evidence that conditions in a home were being observed continuously rather than checked after a complaint, evidence of what those conditions actually were on a given date, and evidence that a response followed a trigger within a documented period. That is the difference between asserting that a property was managed properly and being able to show it.

Any supplier telling a housing provider that their product delivers compliance is describing something software cannot do. The obligation is not transferable.

What is the evidence trail and how does it work?

Every sensor reading is timestamped and stored against the property and the room it came from. That continuous record is the foundation, and it exists independently of whether anything went wrong, which is what makes it evidence rather than incident reporting.

When a condition crosses a threshold and triggers an alert, the alert is logged against the same timeline. Any response is then logged against it too: who was notified, when, what was inspected, what maintenance action was raised, and when the conditions returned to normal afterwards. The result is a single chronological record running from observation through to resolution, rather than sensor data in one system and a works order in another with nothing joining them.

The full record exports as PDF or CSV for a case file, a complaint response, an ombudsman determination or a regulatory inspection. The export is per property and per period, so a single home's history can be produced without extracting anything about the rest of the stock.

The reason this is built as an export rather than a dashboard view is that the moment the record is needed is usually months or years after the events in it, and typically by someone outside the organisation. It has to stand alone.

Can the sensors detect mould growth directly?

No. Algi monitors the conditions that correlate with mould risk. It does not detect mould growth, and no environmental sensor does.

The two conditions it tracks are sustained high relative humidity, which is the primary driver of surface condensation, and inadequate ventilation. Ventilation is inferred from the CO2 decay curve: when a room is occupied, CO2 rises, and when occupancy ends the rate at which it falls back indicates the air change rate. A room that clears slowly is a room where moisture will also linger, and the CO2 record shows that whether or not anyone has reported a problem.

What that gives a housing provider is a prioritised evidence base for investigation. A home showing sustained elevated humidity and a slow air change rate is a home worth inspecting, and the data says why and since when. The inspection, the diagnosis and the remedial work remain human tasks.

What are the six Algi packages?

Essentials is the software layer: bill analysis, savings identification, energy benchmarking against comparable buildings, government grant matching, and the zero-data property brief. It is the starting point for any commercial building.

Comply adds the compliance layer on top of Essentials: SECR-ready reports with the published conversion factors applied, PPN 06/21 Carbon Reduction Plans, ESOS data pack preparation, and UK SRS readiness. Monitor adds Algi Sense hardware to Essentials instead, for buildings that need live temperature, humidity and air quality rather than more reporting. Housing is the portfolio-scale monitoring package for housing providers and social landlords, built around the Awaab's Law evidence trail described above.

Complete is the full stack, including access to the advisor network for accredited sign-off, EPC and DEC lodgement, and Bio Wall integration once the building is ready for it. Enterprise covers multi-site portfolios and property groups, with group-level SECR consolidation, board pack exports, volume hardware deployment, custom integrations and a dedicated account manager.

Packages are priced per property, with Enterprise priced per portfolio. You can start on one and move up when the next one earns its place, which is the intended path rather than an exception.

How does the advisor network handle accredited sign-off?

Some obligations require an accredited human being to sign. ESOS needs a registered Lead Assessor. EPCs and DECs need a qualified energy assessor. Those requirements exist for good reasons and no software product removes them.

Algi's advisor network provides that sign-off. Because the platform has already assembled and structured the data before the advisor sees it, their work is review and professional judgement rather than collection and cleaning, so it takes hours instead of weeks and the fee reflects that.

Commercially the client deals with Algi directly. One relationship, one invoice, and no coordination burden between a software supplier and a separate consultancy each holding half of the picture. The advisor's independence and professional accountability are unaffected by that arrangement, because the sign-off remains theirs.

What does the typical annual compliance spend add up to?

The UK Government's own SECR Post-Implementation Review puts the average cost of SECR compliance at GBP 7,100 a year. That is the single largest recurring line for most organisations and the one they are least likely to have questioned, because it arrives as a professional fee rather than as an energy cost.

Around it sit four more. An ESOS assessment at GBP 8,000 to GBP 15,000 every four years is GBP 2,000 to GBP 3,750 a year once spread across the cycle. An energy broker takes GBP 2,000 to GBP 5,000 a year. PPN 06/21 preparation runs GBP 2,000 to GBP 4,000. Benchmarking work adds GBP 1,500 to GBP 3,000.

An organisation carrying all five is spending somewhere between roughly GBP 14,600 and GBP 22,850 a year, which is where the GBP 17,600 figure used elsewhere on this site sits. Almost none of that is analysis. It is five separate suppliers each collecting substantially the same energy data, each starting from scratch, and each charging for the collection.

The case for consolidating it is not that any one of those fees is unreasonable for the work done. It is that the work is being done five times.

Is there a free tier?

The property brief is free. Enter any UK commercial building address and Algi generates a report from public data, with no account, no bill and no commitment. That is the zero-data brief described at the top of this page, and it is the same brief a paying client gets on day one.

The first bill analysis is also free. That is deliberate: the point at which the platform proves itself is the point at which it reads a real bill and names something specific, and putting that behind a subscription would mean asking for money before showing anything.

Paid subscriptions begin when ongoing monitoring earns its place, which is when there is more than one bill, more than one period to compare, or a compliance obligation with a date attached to it.