Planarific

Planarific is delivering cutting‑edge spatial intelligence for the built environment, accelerating the UK’s transition to net‑zero housing retrofit.

UK residential buildings account for ~20% of all UK carbon emissions, and over half carry an EPC rating of D or below. Retrofitting at the pace and scale net zero demands is currently held back by a slow, costly process, with feasibility studies reliant on repeated physical site visits and bespoke designs.

Founded in 2022 by Dr Ran Xiao from the University of Cambridge, Planarific commercialises research that redefines how housing stock can be understood and upgraded. Planarific’s SaaS platform transforms drone and mobile imagery into precise, data‑rich 3D building models, enabling thousands of properties to be assessed simultaneously. It provides stakeholders with a shared, consistent digital view of their housing stock. Properties are classified by architectural typology, and both quantitative and qualitative data are surfaced to design retrofit programmes.

Planarific directly tackles one of the biggest barriers to decarbonising UK homes: the lack of fast, reliable, scalable building intelligence. By dramatically reducing the time, cost and carbon footprint of pre‑retrofit surveys, Planarific enables local authorities and housing providers to plan interventions earlier, target them more effectively, and accelerate emissions reductions across entire neighbourhoods. Supported early on by CISL’s Canopy Accelerator and the Maxwell Centre’s Impulse programme, Planarific has since secured a £650k grant from the Innovate UK Net Zero Heat Programme. The company finished work on the first phase of the Thames Freeport Sustainable Construction Programme across Thurrock, Barking & Dagenham and Havering via the TransformER project, covering over 5,000 homes.

Planarific aims to support the retrofit of up to 300,000 UK homes per year, while expanding its platform beyond retrofit into home improvement, valuation, insurance and asset management, establishing a foundational digital layer for the entire property lifecycle.