On 1-2 December 2022, three EUROPA project partners – Climate Alliance, Reimarkt, Ekubirojs – participated in a contractor workshop on Integrated Home Renovation Services (IHRS) for LIFE and Horizon 2020 projects in Brussels.

The event targeted actors on the ground dealing with energy retrofit of residential buildings across Europe. The two-day workshop provided a suitable framework to exchange and learn from each other. Even though there was not enough time to go into depth, a broad variety of challenges and opportunities for One-Stop-Shops was addressed in small group discussions, such as the collaboration and engagement of the supply side, the lack of professionals, strategies to mobilise the public interest in different regions and the needed enabling policy framework.

Besides that, EUROPA organised a workshop about the customer journey and value proposition of One-Stop-Shops. Creating value for your target group starts with understanding their experience in the current process of retrofitting their house. What are the tasks they need to fulfil and what pains and gains do they experience when doing so? And most importantly: how are you, as a One-Stop-Shop, adding gains, relieving pains and providing services so they will choose you as a retrofit partner? This way of thinking forms the very basis of the proposition of a One-Stop-Shop. And it doesn’t stop there; it provides a starting point from which you continuously get to know your customer better by testing, monitoring and improving.  The exercise provided new insights to most of the projects: such a shame that we ran out of time!