Provide Quality Assurance for Home Energy Score | Better Buildings & Better Plants Initiative

The Importance of Quality Assurance

To be a trusted source of energy information, there must be systems in place to verify that high-quality scores are consistently produced. To that end, the U.S. Department of Energy imposes three quality assurance requirements:

All Home Energy Score Certified Assessors™ must complete U.S. DOE’s free, online Simulation Training and Test. The standard training platform ensures that all Home Energy Score Assessors are introduced to the Tool with the same instruction and rigorous testing.
All new Assessors must conduct their first Home Energy Score™ with an experienced Assessor that has been deemed a Mentor by U.S. DOE.
The U.S. DOE requires a quality assurance (QA) review of at least 5% of randomly selected Home Energy Scores on a quarterly basis.

Home Energy Score Mentoring

Candidate Assessors must conduct their first Score with a Qualified Mentor. Mentorship ensures Assessors are prepared to score homes on their own. There are three implementation pathways:

In-Field Mentorship	Group Mentorship	Remote Mentorship
Mentor observes and assists the Assessor during the assessment. Counts toward QA re-scoring requirements. Easiest way to get a new Assessor in to an existing program.	Must be done in-field. Does not count toward QA re-scoring requirements. Easiest incorporation with group trainings.	Mentor reviews data inputs and photos over a video call. Does not count towards QA re-scoring requirements. Easiest way to get a new Assessor in to a new program.

Only select organizations are approved to conduct Remote Mentoring. See the Updated Quality Assurance and Mentoring Protocols for Home Energy Score for additional information and the list of approved providers on the Partner Resources page.

Quality Assurance (QA)

To meet the quality assurance requirement, Home Energy Score Partners use a qualified Assessor to re-score these homes and compare results with the original assessments. The Home Energy Score team tracks Partners’ quality assurance progress and highlights instances where the QA and original assessments vary by more than 1 point on the 10-point scale. In such cases, a paper review or third assessment is required to explain the variation and determine the correct Score. Partners are expected to provide ongoing training for Assessors to correct errors found during quality assurance reviews. There are two pathways available for organizations to meet quality assurance requirements:

In-field Validation	Desktop Review Validation
"Blind" 2nd assessment either at a later time or during the same visit, by a different individual. If necessary, homeowner is given the corrected Score. Easiest incorporation in existing programs with existing QA/QI protocols.	Side-by-side review of photos with inputted data points after the in-home visit. If necessary, homeowner is given the corrected Score Easiest incorporation with new, small, or home inspector programs.

DOE also provides guidance materials for Assessors providing photo and sketch packets for Desktop Quality Assurance and for Desktop Quality Assurance Auditors reviewing the submitted photos and sketches.