Why HPI Should Start at Concept Stage
The Home Performance Index (HPI), developed by the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC), is Ireland’s national residential sustainability certification, with almost 38,000 homes certified to date (Aug 2026).
At WMA, HPI aligns closely with how we believe sustainable buildings should be designed. It takes a holistic view of performance — considering not only energy, but also areas such as embodied carbon, water, indoor environmental quality, ecology, transport and the quality of the home for its occupants.
Achieving a high Home Performance Index rating shouldn’t begin with a certification exercise at the end of the design process. The greatest opportunity to influence performance — and reduce the risk of costly design changes later — is at the outset.
Wain Morehead Architects recently completed a preliminary Home Performance Index assessment for a major mixed-use residential development on a complex brownfield city site with Limerick Twenty Thirty.
Our work on the project reinforced the value of establishing HPI targets from concept stage. This is where HPI consultancy can add the greatest value.
When introduced early, HPI assessment allows issues such as overheating, daylight, energy performance, embodied carbon and other HPI requirements to influence fundamental design decisions while there is still flexibility to respond. It also gives architects, engineers and specialist consultants an understanding of the wider HPI objectives, creating opportunities to resolve competing requirements collaboratively rather than addressing individual credits in isolation.
Our approach combines HPI expertise with WMA’s wider experience in building physics, Passive House, low-energy and low-carbon design. This allows us to look beyond the certification checklist and consider how HPI requirements interact with the predicted performance and design of the building.
For clients and design teams, early engagement provides a clearer pathway to certification, earlier identification of design risks and greater opportunity to develop integrated solutions before they become difficult or costly to change.
If HPI is a project objective, our advice is simple: start early.
Engaging an HPI consultant from concept stage can turn certification requirements into useful design parameters — helping the whole team work towards a better-performing building rather than simply demonstrating compliance at the end of the process.
At WMA, our aim is not simply to guide projects towards HPI certification. We use our building-performance expertise to help clients and design teams integrate HPI principles from the outset, with the ambition of delivering exemplar, healthy, low-energy and low-carbon buildings.
