How to Get Work on Heat Network Projects in the UK

To get work on heat network projects in the UK, sell to whoever chooses the supply chain. That is usually the heat network developer, the company that operates the network once it is running, or the main contractor building it. In England's new heat network zones, you also need to know the zone coordinator, because the coordinator appoints the developer.

You can find these organizations in the government's heat network pipelines. Sort them by city or zone, and get in front of the right person before the scope of the job is written down.

A heat network is one central heat source serving more than one building through pipes, for heating, cooling or hot water. Ofgem's heat networks page lists the physical parts: pipes, heat interface units, heat exchangers, substations and energy centers. Each of those parts is something a supplier sells to somebody.

That somebody is rarely the person suppliers email first. Often the council is the sponsor or the landowner (how councils buy is in selling to local councils in England using spend data). The order for your pipe, plant or billing software then comes from a private developer, an operator or a contractor.

Two more facts shape the whole sales plan. First, the buyer set is small enough to count by name, so every conversation you waste costs you. Second, the work is local. Projects sit in specific towns, and in England they are being organized zone by zone. Zoning law covers England only, the Green Heat Network Fund covers England and Wales, and Ofgem's rules cover Great Britain, so this guide focuses on England and notes where a rule reaches further.

Who actually decides on a heat network job?

Five kinds of organization sit around a heat network project. A supplier needs to know which seat holds the budget for its own line item.

One organization can hold two seats. Ofgem notes that one company may be the operator and the heat supplier at once. A council running its own scheme can be sponsor, applicant and client at once.

When does the council matter more than anyone else? When it is leading the scheme on its own buildings or holds the funding. When a private developer has been appointed, the council's influence moves toward planning and connections, and your buyer is the developer or its contractor.

The titles in the table are a starting guess. Ask who signed off the last few jobs you won, and work forward from those names. Pull every past job and write next to it the person who chose you, their title and their employer type. If you have no heat network jobs yet, use the closest work you have: a district energy job, a large residential M&E package, a commercial plant room.

Then put the titles that came out of that exercise into your lead tool, instead of whatever sounds senior. Take Assistant, Associate and bare Manager titles out of the list before anything is sent. A title with "manager" in it is fine if your own records show that exact role placing orders. A plain "Manager" with no function attached is noise.

How do zoning and appointed developers change the buyer path?

Part 8 of the Energy Act 2023 lets areas in England be designated as heat network zones. Under section 226, these are areas judged suitable for building and running one or more district heat networks. Section 233 allows zone coordinators to decide "who will design, construct, operate and maintain" those networks.

The government response to the 2023 zoning consultation sets out how the appointment works. Zone coordination bodies hold a competitive selection for the zone's developer or developers. The zoning authority starts inside the government energy department (DESNZ) and later moves to the Warm Homes Agency.

Inside a zone, some buildings may be required to connect. That covers new buildings plus some existing ones, including non-domestic buildings with an average heat demand above 100 MWh a year.

Here is what that means for a supplier:

1. The developer appointment is the moment to be known. Bidders for a zone are worth meeting before the award, because whoever wins will need a supply chain, and firms it already knows start with an advantage.
2. Required connections create work inside existing buildings. Connection means substations, heat interface units, metering and M&E alterations, often in buildings owned by somebody other than the developer.
3. Every zone runs on its own clock. One city may have an appointed developer while the next has barely started.

Treat a market like this as a slow one; the pattern is in outbound results over time. B2B sales cycles are often 6, 9 or 12 months, and a conversation opened this quarter may only turn into an order much later. That calls for a different list and a different patience level than a market where buyers decide in a week.

Geography is the other half. I prefer a local audience whenever the market allows it, because buyers who know you sit in their city answer a first message more readily.

If your yard or office sits in a zone city, that fact belongs in your first message. The full sequence is in how I choose a market before any email goes out.

Make each zone, or each city without a zone yet, its own territory with its own list and its own timeline.

Where do suppliers find projects before they are locked up?

Start with the government's heat networks pipelines page. It holds three kinds of file, and each one answers a different question:

Use the planning database to find schemes by stage, and treat the pipeline files as a list of names to research rather than a live notice board.

The stage tells you who to call. At inception and planning, talk to the developer or council sponsor, because the design is still open. In construction, the large packages are probably placed already, and your opening is a variation, a late package or the next phase. In operation, the operator is your buyer.

Opportunities also travel the other way. The Zero Carbon Accelerator notes that an organization can write a prospectus about a possible heat network and send it to developers as an opportunity. So developers can see a scheme before any tender exists, and a supplier they already know is better placed to hear about it.

Your own version of that prospectus is a one-page capability sheet for one trade. It should list projects similar to theirs, the sizes you have delivered and the lead times you can hold.

Keep one distinction clear. Seeing a project in a spreadsheet tells you it exists. It does not tell you who decides, or whether the buying route is still open. Once tender documents are written, the specification is mostly set, and you are bidding on someone else's terms.

Not every project on those lists deserves a call this month. Decide in advance which ones get your time.

What does the Green Heat Network Fund mean for suppliers?

The Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF) gives capital grant money to heat network schemes. It helps pay for commercializing and building new low-carbon networks, and for retrofitting or expanding existing ones.

The GHNF application guidance sets out who can apply. Public, private and third sector organizations in England and Wales are eligible. Individuals, households and sole traders are not.

Triple Point Heat Networks Investment Management handles applications. Round 12 closed on 25 September 2026. Schemes awarded a grant can draw the money down up to the 2029 to 2030 financial year, which is what matters to a supplier.

Suppliers do not apply for this money, so read it as commercial context:

• Applicants are your buyer list. A council, a developer or a housing body that wins a grant now has capital and a reason to spend it.
• The draw-down window is a calendar. Grant money has to be used inside that period, so funded schemes have a deadline pushing design and construction forward.
• Retrofit and expansion money means operators buy too. An existing network adding connections or replacing plant is a sale for metering, controls, heat pumps and M&E, with no new zone involved.

What changes now that Ofgem regulates heat networks?

The government's zoning response puts every heat network in Great Britain under Ofgem's consumer protection rules from 27 January 2026.

Ofgem's heat networks page lists the focus: good customer service, less impact from supply reliability problems, transparent and easy-to-read bills, and fair pricing. Every heat network operator and heat supplier of a relevant network has until 26 January 2027 to give Ofgem its details. Any organization whose role includes supplying heat to customers must also register with the Energy Ombudsman's heat network supplier scheme. Here a heat supplier means the organization selling heat to residents and businesses, not a firm selling pipe, plant or software to the network. This is not legal advice.

The real shift for a supplier is in who feels the pressure. An operations director now answers to a regulator for outages, bill accuracy and pricing. Things that used to be internal housekeeping are now things they may have to explain.

So the pitch changes. A metering supplier should talk about bills a resident can check. A controls or maintenance supplier should talk about fewer interruptions. A billing platform should talk about pricing that is clear on the page. Lead with the outcome the operator is now judged on, send it to the operator rather than the developer, and back it with a past job. Never promise compliance you cannot prove.

Which suppliers fit heat network developers and operators best?

Each trade has a different first buyer and a different moment. Use this table to choose where to start, then confirm it against your own past jobs.

The table shows why a single deck sent to everyone fails. A civils firm and a billing platform both "work on heat networks", and they share almost no buyers.

When outreach in a niche goes quiet, I look at the packaging before I touch the copy or the volume, because packaging decides whether the tactics work at all.

A supplier who thinks it has a lead gen problem often has a packaging problem. "We supply heat network projects" gives a development director nothing to place. "We install substations in occupied buildings joining a zone network" does.

I push every client to pick a single offer for a single audience and hold it for a full year before widening.

Here that means one trade, one buyer seat and one territory. Two suppliers in the same trade may still need different starting points, depending on who has bought from them before.

How should a supplier actually prospect this market?

Once the territory and the offer are set, prospecting runs as five decisions.

1. Split the territory. Give each zone or city to one sender. On every account with several people writing, I split the map so that no two senders ever reach the same organization.
2. Build the list by organization first, then by person. Take the developers, operators, contractors and council teams active in your territory from the pipeline files, then find the people in the seats from the buyer map. A market this small needs depth over width, so reach several decision-makers per organization rather than chasing more organizations. What to check on the people side is in how I take a B2B lead list apart.
3. Use both channels, LinkedIn first. Start on LinkedIn, then move to email, plan at least five or six touches with real time between them, and keep an opt-out in every email and honor it.
4. Ask for a conversation, never a purchase. The first message offers a short call about their project, never the service itself.
5. Count conversations, not calls. Set the goal as real conversations started each month, not calls booked. Orders come later, on the slow clock described in the zoning section.

Sell pipework, plant or billing to heat networks? To sanity-check who your buyers really are, book a call and bring your list.