Hudson Advisors Student Accommodation Portfolio

Building Size: Whole Portfolio

Location: Across the UK

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Overview

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Following the recent acquisition of 11 Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) sites across the UK, Trustek completed technical building assessments across all assets to understand the existing availability of energy optimisation solutions within each building.

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The Process

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As with any portfolio acquisition, a number of different energy optimisation and heating solutions were identified across the assets through the audit process, reflecting the varied technology stacks inherited as part of the transaction.

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Using both the existing technologies identified within the portfolio and inviting new entrants to market to submit proposals, Trustek ran the full RFP process within a tight timeline to identify the right energy management partner for Hudson Advisors to deploy across the entire portfolio.

With rising energy costs directly impacting the net operating income of these assets — and energy consumption typically equating to approximately 20% of monthly rent — there was a clear and high-value need to implement the right technology solution. This was essential not only to ensure buildings were optimised for the comfort of residents, but also to ensure that proactive energy management was in place from the point at which new operators took over each site across the country.

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Hudson Advisors maintains detailed sustainability metrics and targets across all assets within their portfolio, and understands the significance of these credentials to the institutional investors who may one day acquire the portfolio. As a result, it was important for Trustek to identify and confirm the specific data requirements of Hudson Advisors' sustainability team as part of the RFP process — ensuring they would have access to the information needed for proactive energy management, and enabling the automation and integration of utility data into their third-party software platform.

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The structured RFP invited five vendors to participate and, through detailed rounds of evaluation and negotiation, Trustek was able to identify Utopi as the chosen energy management partner, which was subsequently deployed across the entire portfolio.

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The portfolio presented distinct challenges with regard to both electric and wet heating systems, requiring flexibility within the chosen platform's ability to operate across different heating configurations. In addition, there was a deliberate focus on retaining usable hardware within the buildings rather than undertaking unnecessary rip-and-replace works on perfectly functional equipment. Whilst replacement may have been the simpler option, it would have carried a significantly greater embodied carbon impact — and so a core objective was to ensure that existing hardware could be retrospectively upgraded to become smart-enabled, or at minimum, capable of being remotely controlled and optimised.

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The Value

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By selecting a single partner across the entire portfolio, Hudson Advisors now benefits from a centralised platform through which they can view energy performance and energy intensity on a per-building basis, with the ability to drill down to individual room allocations and consumption data. This enables Hudson Advisors to work proactively alongside their operators to drive a continual improvement programme — minimising energy consumption without compromising resident comfort — ensuring all assets are optimised to improve net operating income while actively managing and reducing their sustainability impact.

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Image source: Caine Flanders, Pexels