HHIC
Benchmark. The heating industry's checklist, made digital
Benchmark is the commissioning and service checklist for domestic heating and hot water systems in the UK. It has been recognised for Building Regulations compliance since 1999 and is run by HHIC, the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council. Since 2020, Red C has built and developed the digital version of Benchmark: installer and homeowner apps for iOS and Android, a web portal for installers, firms, manufacturers and HHIC, and the links that connect it to the rest of the industry.
The challenge
For most of its history, the Benchmark checklist was a paper form that the engineer filled in by hand and left with the homeowner. There was no central record of what had been installed or serviced, or by whom. HHIC wanted a digital record that installers could complete on site, homeowners could look up, and manufacturers could connect to.
That meant solving a few problems at once:
- One checklist, many appliances. The scheme started with boilers and now covers heat pumps, hot water storage and heat interface units, each with its own forms, some with more than 100 fields.
- Working on site. Engineers fill in long forms in lofts and plant rooms, often where signal is poor, and need to find the right model among thousands.
- A way in for the whole industry. Manufacturers, their own installer apps, installer firms and the MCS heat pump certification scheme all needed to connect.
- Records that last. A commissioning record has to stay accurate and readable for the life of the appliance, years after it was submitted.
The solution
We built the platform in 2020 and have developed it ever since, including a rebuild in 2022 that opened it up to new types of appliance.
Installer and homeowner apps
Both apps are native, on iOS and Android.
- Installers complete the commissioning and service checklists on their phone, save drafts, add photos and capture the engineer’s and customer’s signatures.
- The camera scans an appliance’s serial number, and the platform checks it against that brand’s format.
- Readings from Bluetooth flue gas analysers go straight into the form, so engineers don’t copy them across by hand.
- The catalogue of brands and models is stored on the phone and updated in the background, so finding a model stays quick on site.
- Homeowners find their appliance by serial number and postcode, see its installation and service history, and get a reminder by push notification, text or email when the annual service is due.
One form engine
Every checklist is defined once, as structured data. That one definition drives the forms in both apps and on the web, the checks on the server, the PDF certificate, and the form structure manufacturers see through the API.
Adding a new appliance type means adding new data, without building new screens in three codebases. Admins can also edit the form definitions directly in the portal.
Portal and integrations
The web portal has separate areas for installers, installer firms, manufacturers, customer service and HHIC. Firms invite their engineers and see every installation their team has completed.
Manufacturers connect through an API to look up installations and services and fetch certificates, and their own apps can hand a job over to Benchmark. Baxi added this to its Toolbelt app in 2021.
Since 2023, heat pump commissioning records have gone straight to the MCS installations database. MCS said the link would help around 1,700 certified heat pump contractors.
The result
The installer app launched in March 2021 and has more than 5,000 downloads on Google Play alone. Six years after we started, we’re still developing Benchmark with HHIC. It has grown from boilers to heat pumps and hot water systems, connected to MCS and manufacturers along the way, and the latest version of the installer app was released in September 2026.
