About Us
Since the RetroKit concept was created in 2017, we have been developing RetroKit with a dedicated team of experts
The residential sector is responsible for 25% of Ireland’s energy usage and is facing two major imperatives:
- Reducing its carbon emissions to net zero carbon by 2050.
- Eradicating fuel poverty (16% of Irish households surveyed by the Society of Vincent de Paul say they are not in a position to heat their home adequately).
Despite these challenges, only 2% of Irish homes receive an energy upgrade annually and 70% are still in need of an energy retrofit.
Our mission is to empower our clients to reduce the carbon footprint in housing, to alleviate fuel poverty, and improve the health and wellbeing of householders.
The Team
Xavier Dubuisson
Chief Executive Officer
Xavier is an engineer with 25 years’ experience in the field of sustainable energy in Ireland and Belgium. Xavier established XD Sustainable Energy Consulting Ltd in 2011 with the mission to ’empower our client for their transition to a low-carbon, resilient future’. He has been providing technical assistance to organisations and communities in Ireland and abroad at the fore of the transition to the low-carbon economy. Xavier works closely with sustainable energy communities and has in-depth knowledge of different retrofitting options for homes.
Susan O’Flaherty
Operations and Marketing
Susan is Co-founder and Operations Manager at RetroKit. She is also a Director of XD Sustainable Energy Consulting Ltd and operations manager there since its incorporation in 2012. She is responsible for external communications, HR, and financial management. She has a BA in French and German and a MA in Translation. She has co-founded 3 businesses including XD Consulting, SOF Translations and RetroKit. As well as managing her own translation business, she also has a background in project management and customer service, having worked most recently with Amazon Customer Service in Cork (2011-2014). Over the last 12 months, she has completed the Women in Business Course organised by the Local Enterprise Office and the Exxcel Programme female entrepreneurship programme at the Rubicon, CIT to support the business development of RetroKit. She has a keen interest in Service Design and recently completed a Course in “Designing Innovative Services” at MTU.s in-depth knowledge of different retrofitting options for homes.
Shay Kavanagh
Chief Technical Officer
Shay is a versatile chartered engineer and technical energy expert with more than two decades of professional engineering experience. He has substantial expertise in energy efficiency, Low Carbon Technologies (LCTs), energy conservation and associated policy and standards development and implementation. Shay is CTO and works on the technical development / specification at RetroKit.
Max Deasy
Software Engineer
Max is Software Developer at RetroKit. He studied Software Development, Computer Networking and completed a Msc in Artificial Intelligence before joining the RetroKit team. A keen technology enthusiast and a member of the maker community, regularly engineering custom IoT solutions and utilizing a combination of 3D modeling & printing to realize ideas or projects. Within RetroKit he is responsible for IT infrastructure, software architecture design & implementation, and on-going system development. His role involves getting his hands dirty with code and making data behave itself.
Ruairi Kay
Project Manager
Ruairi is an Architectural Technologist with 17 years’ experience in Ireland and the UK, specialising in low energy design and retrofit. Ruairi has extensive specialist experience in low energy design and retrofit from a practical perspective; supervising works, quality control, contract administration, detail design and specification of work. He also has a detailed understanding of retrofit, sustainability and energy efficiency issues relating to construction, building physics and moisture movement and has experience with several energy modelling tools (e.g. DEAP, PHPP, U-Value Calculations, RetroKit and WUFI). Ruairi is a registered BER assessor and technical advisor.
The Vision
“At RetroKit, innovation is the name of the game. Our vision is to become a market leader in supporting the digitalisation of the entire housing energy renovation value chain. We are actively exploring new technologies such as virtual reality, 3D scanning, Building Information Modelling, which offer exciting opportunities to increase speed, efficiency, and quality in home retrofit projects. But for now, we are focused on growing our solutions organically, with our client needs in mind, adding new features that will make our analytical tools even more intelligent and intuitive to use. We are also designing a new application for the RetroKit suite that will support innovative procurement solutions, moving housing retrofit projects from strategic planing towards implementation. So watch this space and join the conversation by letting us know how we can make RetroKit better and more relevant to your needs” Xavier Dubuisson, RetroKit CEO
With Thanks
RetroKit was made possible with funding from SEAI Research and Development Programme, Enterprise Ireland and the Local Enterprise Office.
Our vision is for everyone to be able to live in a comfortable, healthy and climate-friendly home.
