Our people
Engineers who care, paid properly.
Employed terms, training budgets and good kit. We hire for the craft, then back the people who have it.
About Smart Energie
Built on fifteen yearsof doing the jobproperly.
Too many homeowners were let down by installers who cut corners and disappeared. We built the company we’d want to hire for our own homes.
How we got here
We started in West London, when retrofit was still working out what it wanted to be.
The opportunity was obvious. Millions of leaky, badly heated homes, energy costs climbing fast, and a government finally taking the carbon arithmetic seriously.
What was less obvious, from the outside, was how quickly that opportunity would pull in operators willing to take shortcuts. So we built the company we would want to hire for our own homes.
Every decision we make about how we work comes back to one question. Would we be happy if this was our house?
The company we refused to build
We had already seen exactly how retrofit goes wrong.
That is the company we were determined not to build.
01
Jobs sized to the subsidy, not the property.
02
Equipment chosen by margin, not by what the home actually needed.
03
Engineers handed a list of addresses and told to be on the next one by lunchtime.
04
Customers left with a certificate and a problem they did not have before.
What we did differently
A few decisions, held to from the very beginning.
Our survey
We start with the property, not the product range.
The recommendation follows the home in front of us. Never the catalogue, never the subsidy paying most that quarter.
Our word
We say no to work we cannot do well.
Slower growth in the early years. In return, a reputation that still brings most of our householder work through friends, neighbours and family.
The kit behind the recommendation
None of it is glamorous. All of it changes the answer we give you.
We invested early, and we keep investing, in the survey kit that lets us do the work well.
- Thermal imaging cameras across every team.
- LiDAR-capable scanning for heat pump and whole-house design.
- Drones and photogrammetry for solar.
- Borescopes, moisture meters and ventilation testing for fabric work.
What we stand for
The three things we keep coming back to.
01
We say what we mean.
No upselling. No jargon. No disappearing act after sign-off. We give you the honest recommendation, even when it’s not the most expensive one. If a measure isn’t right for your home, we’ll tell you. If we can’t take on your job well, we’ll tell you that too. And we’ll usually know someone who can. We’d rather lose a sale than win one we shouldn’t have.
02
We do what we say.
If we commit to a timeline, we hold to it. If we quote a price, that’s the price you pay. If we say we’ll call back by Friday, we call back by Friday. Trust isn’t built in the big moments. It’s built in the small details. The accurate invoice. The phone answered first time. The job that looks as careful on day three as it did on day one.
03
We care about the work.
Our engineers take genuine pride in leaving a home better than they found it. That’s not a slogan on a van. It’s something we look for when we hire, talk about constantly in how we train, and notice in how we review every finished job. It’s also the difference between work that holds up for twenty years and work that needs revisiting in three.
By the numbers
Fifteen years, measured at every step.
We are not the biggest retrofit company in the country, and we are not trying to be. We are trying to be the best, by every measure that genuinely matters to you.
0+
Years in the industry
0+
Homes upgraded
£0M+
In customer energy savings
0 t
CO₂ reduced
0%
Customer satisfaction
£0
Avg annual saving per home
Recent jobs we said no to
Most installers won’t talk about the work they don’t do.
We turn down roughly one in every six enquiries we survey. Sometimes because the house isn’t ready. Sometimes because what the customer wants isn’t what the house needs. Sometimes because we’re the wrong installer for the job. Three recent examples, anonymised but real:
Job 01 · We said no
Heat pump in a Victorian terrace, north London
Homeowner had budget. Wanted a heat pump to replace a gas boiler. Fabric hadn’t been touched. Single-pane sash windows, minimal loft insulation, suspended timber floor with no underfloor insulation. We recommended a high-efficiency condensing boiler now and a heat pump in 2–3 years after a phased insulation programme. Lost the heat-pump job. Kept the customer.
Job 02 · We said no
Cavity wall insulation, 1950s ex-council semi, Kent
Cavity was already filled with rockwool from a 1990s install. Borescope showed settlement and wetness in the east-facing wall. We recommended removal and remedial work before any new insulation, which wasn’t the job the homeowner wanted. They went with a competitor who filled over it. We hope it doesn’t cause damp in five years. If it does, we’ll still pick up the phone.
Job 03 · We said no
Solar PV, terraced house with north-facing roof, Manchester
Roof orientation meant payback would have been 17+ years even with generous assumptions. We said so. Customer went elsewhere and got a system anyway. We’d rather lose the work than sell a solar install we can’t stand behind.
These are the jobs we’re proud of not doing. If our survey says no, that’s a real answer. Not a sales decision.
Customer stories
The work speaks for itself.
They told me to sort the loft insulation before we talked about a heat pump. That single sentence was why I hired them. No one else had suggested the cheaper job first.
Quote matched the invoice to the pound. The team were in and out in four days, left the kitchen cleaner than they found it, and the new boiler's knocked about £40 a month off our bills.
We had three surveys before theirs. Theirs was the only one that explained what wouldn't work in our house. That's how we knew.
Our story
Work with people who care about the work
Not just about finishing the job. About doing it properly. Get in touch and find out what that actually feels like when someone is in your home for three days.
Monday–Friday, 09:30–17:30. A real person, every time.