Rob joined UCL Energy Institute in March 2012, to work on the EPSRC-funded project “New Empirically Based Models of Energy Use in the Building Stock”, having completed his doctorate earlier that year at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD), at De Montfort University, Leicester. His thesis research investigated the “Characterisation of Space Use and Electricity Consumption in Non-domestic Buildings”, with particular relevance to the estimation of internal gains resulting from the operation of electrical appliances. The profiles of characteristics are for use at the urban scale.

Rob began his higher education with the Open University, before going full-time at the University of Birmingham, from where he graduated with a BSc (hons) in Sustainable Technology, in 2005. Rob remained, for a short while, at the University where he worked in its own Power Station. Then, prior to enrolling at the IESD, Rob was a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate, employed by London South Bank University, developing an online building log book application.

Rob is a member of the RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology. In association with Prof Philip Steadman and Steve Evans, Rob is principally engaged in the identification of the activities carried out in non-domestic premises and their consequent energy use. The outputs are used in the 3Dstock model on England and Wales, which is then intrinsic to the SimStock dynamic energy model.

Much of the information on numbers of premises, activities and the areas used comes from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). These data are cleaned and fed into the 3Dstock model and the CaRB2 national-scale model, to estimate energy use in the building stock of England & Wales. The VOA updates its records continuously, so it is in theory possible to update the model as these data become available.