Transition Culture

21 Jul 2010

An Update from Transition Training and Consulting

Transition Training and Consulting (TTandC) is the part of the Transition Network specifically designed to engage with businesses and organisations in our communities, and deliver transition-related training and consulting services. Run as a social enterprise, any profits go to support the work of the Transition Network. This is the first of a regular series of updates from TTandC. It aims primarily to keep transition folk posted about the work we are doing, the services we are developing,  opportunities to help, and upcoming training sessions if you wish to join us.

What work are we doing?

Although these are early days, we are already delivering the innovative Energy Resilience Assessment (ERA) on a professional, commercial basis. This diagnostic service investigates direct and indirect energy use in a business or organisation. Focusing on key products or services, it calibrates a company’s vulnerability to energy shocks and disruption.

The ERA meets businesses and organisations where they are today, using language and processes that are familiar to them, yet it also acts as strong call to action. It makes the issues around peak oil, energy security and economic uncertainty very real to a business, identifying their particular vulnerabilities, and quantifying the risks to their revenues, costs and profits.

A recently completed  ERA with the National Trust focused on the 6,400 acre Killerton Estate near Exeter, and explored their vulnerabilities in three main areas:

1. Fuel price impacts on their visitors 94% of visitors drive to the property, with an average round trip of 66 miles. The likely impacts of fuel price increases on visitor driving behaviour were modelled, and the impact on admissions and retail revenue for different scenarios assessed.
2. Energy price impacts on tenants in their let estate (250+ cottages in the local communities), and the related property maintenance costs required to achieve a minimal energy efficiency standard and protect rental income and alleviate potential for fuel hardships.
3. Direct energy costs were explored using different future price scenarios including increases of up to 70% by 2015.

The National Trust Case Study has further information about this work and its impact on the Killerton Estate.

The Totnes Kayaks Case Study describes our work with a retailer of boats and canoes, where an exploration of the oil and energy aspects of the full supply chain, including raw materials, manufacturing and distribution, led to significant positive changes.

The ERA is a valuable, timely and relevant service, helping to reduce oil dependency, but we need to reach many more businesses and organisations.  Could a business or organisation that you know be interested in working with us? Please contact Fiona Ward to discuss further.

What other services are on offer?

Five services are on offer at the moment. All are described in the ‘our services’ section of www.ttandc.org.uk (along with PDF versions of service overviews and case studies).

Two of the workshops, Opportunities in a Low Carbon Future and Designing for Organisational Resilience are now in final development, and we are seeking friendly businesses and organisations to run initial pilot projects. Please let Fiona Ward know if you have any suggestions, or if you work somewhere that might be interested.

Many transition groups recognise the need not only to engage with their local business community, but also to start to stimulate a new type of economy. Do let us know if your transition initiative may be interested in piloting activity in these areas with TTandC.

Interesting in helping us deliver TTandC services?

TTandC professional services are delivered by practitioners with experience of delivering training and consulting services to businesses and organisations, and who are also involved in their local transition initiative. Collectively we form the TTandC Practitioner Network (meet some of us here). You can join the Practitioner Network by attending one of the practitioner training courses, or by making a significant contribution to developing one of the services.

At this time we are only offering practitioner training in the ERA service. We will offer practitioner training courses in the other services once we have completed the pilot stage and are sure that what we are offering achieves its aims.

So far we have run one ERA practitioner training in October 2009, and we now have 11 of us across the UK. This group is increasingly delivering work commercially, and playing a key role in helping develop and pilot the services, shape our organisation, develop new business and define how we work together.

More information about the next ERA practitioner training is available in the training section.

What about non UK countries?

At the moment TTandC only operates in the UK with businesses and organisations. However we receive an increasing number of requests from potential practitioners in other countries where transition is taking off, and are considering the best way to roll-out our services and processes to other places that want them. Meanwhile see information about the next ERA practitioner training if you are not from the UK, but are interested in attending the next one we run here.

For more information about TTandC or to join our email listing please contact Fiona Ward.