Developed in response to an industry-wide survey indicating a lack of knowledge and guidance to help clients deliver net-zero buildings, the LETI Client Guide was created by London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) volunteers over three months. This document brings together resources in a useful guide and will help enable our clients, including developers, operators, contractors, owner occupiers and investors, to construct buildings that meet LETI performance objectives.

The guide covers the ways in which briefing, designing, procuring, constructing, occupying, managing and valuing buildings must change. It outlines exactly what clients should demand when creating and owning net zero carbon buildings, emphasising the necessity of acting now rather than waiting until 2050. It also recognises that each site or building requires a unique strategy to zero carbon – different locations, users, and typologies – not all projects are the same, and each building requires a unique methodology. It provides net zero objectives to clients who may lack the necessary knowledge in determining what questions to ask their design teams, contractors and management teams. Understanding whole-life carbon and breaking it down into its constituent parts – embodied carbon and operational carbon – is critical.

The guide highlights the necessity of a brief early on in the project's life cycle in order to define the project's best route. A roadmap lays out important stages that clients must follow while also notifying all other project stakeholders. The guide outlines the interventions needed inside each RIBA Plan of Work stage, which is useful not only for clients but also for architects.

A copy of the client guide is available here. There is also a recording of the launch event that featured speakers Sarah Ratcliffe of Better Buildings Partnership (BBP), Sarah Williams, a chair of RIBA client advisor group, and Miles Lewis, Head of Sustainability at Lendlease, at the same link.