About Us

Bill Quigley and Patrick Duffy, both Chartered Engineers, founded the National Irish Centre for Energy Rating Ltd., "NICER".

Bill is a Civil Engineer who became the CRH group' energy and building materials expert, then developed solar air heating systems. To understand what happens in practice compared to theory, he measured the air changes and energy flows in a large number of houses and went on to fit this to modelling software. He holds several patents and is still active in this area Patrick graduated as an electrical engineer and became Managing Director of Moy Insulation, making glass wool, polystyrene and urethane insulations, and a director of Irish National Petroleum Corporation. He is an expert in insulation, votes on American (ASTM) insulation standards and is involved in electronics control patents.

In 1991, Bill and Patrick established NICER to use the measurement and software approach developed by Bill to offer energy audits and ratings for Irish houses. Since then, NICER has led or participated in 4 energy conservation projects under the EU SAVE programme, including Ireland's national pilot test of energy rating.

NICER produced studies and reports for a number of clients, including Eolas (now SEI), Bord Gáis (the national gas board of Ireland), Pilkington Glass of the UK: other partners include energy bodies in 5 other EU countries. Their main work was auditing and rating a variety of houses: other work included detailed hour-by-hour plotting of thermal responses of different structures, testing air infiltration rates and examining the efficiencies of insulations.