Doug Johnson and the Architecture of Understanding
How Mesh Energy and MeshWorks are rebuilding retrofit literacy from the inside out
There is a particular kind of credibility that only comes from having been inside the mess.
Not the polished consultancy version of retrofit slides, frameworks, compliance acronyms but the lived version: sites that do not quite work, technologies that should have performed better, clients who were promised simplicity and instead got disruption, dust, and doubt.
Doug Johnson is one of the distinct figures in the UK retrofit space who speaks fluently across all of those layers. Installer. Engineer. Consultant. Educator. Founder. And now, increasingly, a builder of shared knowledge infrastructure for an industry that still struggles to agree on what “good” looks like.
Doug is the Managing Director of Mesh Energy, but that title undersells both his role and his influence. Over the past decade, Mesh has evolved into a quietly formidable force in low carbon building design - not by scaling fast, taking VC money, or chasing policy headlines but by doing something far less fashionable and far more difficult: earning trust, project by project, mistake by mistake.
More recently, that same instinct has given rise to MeshWorks a platform that looks, on the surface, like CPD content and podcasts, but in practice operates as something closer to retrofit literacy infrastructure.
To understand why MeshWorks matters, you first have to understand where Doug comes from and why his version of retrofit thinking is shaped less by ideology than by friction.
3 February 2026
Mesh Energy - The Smart Renewable Energy ConsultancyA Mesh Energy Project A
From Aerospace to Muddy Boots
Doug’s professional origin story does not begin in sustainability policy or architecture studios. It begins in engineering and in disillusionment.
“I’ve got an engineering, an aerospace engineering background but I came into renewables via installer. I was a project manager for an installer back in 2008. I was learning what a heat pump was, and what a solar pump was, back in the day.”
That timing matters. In 2008, heat pumps were not a cultural object. Solar thermal was still widely misunderstood. Underfloor heating was exotic. Retrofit, as a concept, barely existed outside niche circles.
Dougs’s education was not abstract. It was applied under pressure: managing installations, dealing with customers whose expectations did not always align with reality, learning quickly where theory broke down when confronted with existing buildings.
“I was dealing with customers who had dreams and aspirations, and it wasn’t always smooth.”
Crucially, Mesh’s founder did not emerge from that phase as a product evangelist. If anything, the opposite.
“We were selling stuff that was capable, but we were selling stuff that we could make a margin on. We weren’t independent in that sense.”
That realisation that technical competence alone does not equal good outcomes becomes a recurring theme in Doug's thinking. Retrofit failure, in his telling, is rarely about malicious actors or bad intentions. It is about misaligned incentives, partial knowledge, and decisions made too late in the process.
The Pivot: Independence as a Design Principle
The defining shift in Mesh Energy’s trajectory came not with a new product, but with a structural decision: to stop selling things, and start selling independence.
Sitting in a spare mouldy bedroom with a laptop (Doug's own description), he made a choice that would limit short term growth but unlock long term credibility.
“I wanted to be that go between between the architect, the client, and the installer but act on the client’s behalf.”
This is not a trivial positioning change. It means refusing backhanders. It means not being tied to manufacturers. It means accepting that sometimes the best solution is not the most profitable one.
Mesh’s early growth strategy reflected this. Rather than chasing homeowners directly, Doug focused on architects not as sales targets, but as collaborators.
“Architects are the pivotal point of any construction project. I thought, I’ve got to build trust with architects. And then architects will introduce me to their clients.”
Trust, in this context, was built not through persuasion, but through education.
CPD as Trust Building, Not Lead Generation
One of the least glamorous but most effective choices Mesh made was to lean hard into CPD not as a marketing funnel, but as a service in its own right.
“We found a really, really good way of building trust with architects was to teach them.”
Doug is explicit about the logic: architects have to do CPD. If the content is genuinely useful, trust follows. If trust exists, work follows organically.
“They’d tell me what they wanted to learn about. I’d give it to them.”
This approach is almost unfashionably human. It rejects the growth hacking mindset in favour of something closer to professional reciprocity.
“I need to give something to a potential client before asking for anything. This idea of reciprocity is so powerful.”
Over time, this created a feedback loop: questions from architects revealed gaps in industry understanding; those gaps shaped new CPD material; that material informed better design decisions earlier in projects.
And earlier is the key word.
Getting Called In Before It’s Too Late
One of the clearest signals of Mesh Energy’s influence is when they now get involved in projects.
Five years ago, Doug explains, Mesh was usually brought in after planning when most critical design decisions were already locked.
“We used to get called in once somebody had planning permission. A lot of design decisions had been made by that point.”
Today, that has flipped.
“Now the bulk of what we’re doing is in this conceptual design phase, RIBA stage two.”
This shift did not happen by accident. It happened because information travelled ahead of demand.
CPD sessions, articles, podcasts, and conversations seeded an understanding that retrofit thinking cannot be bolted on at the end without cost, compromise, or disappointment.
Doug is modest about this, but the pattern is recognisable: education changes the decision window.
MeshWorks: Retrofit Knowledge as Infrastructure
MeshWorks emerges directly from this philosophy.
On paper, it is a platform: CPD modules, podcasts, tools, explainers. In practice, it functions as something rarer, a shared cognitive workspace for a fragmented industry.
Doug is blunt about the underlying problem.
“There’s just not enough good information out there. And people don’t know where to turn for an honest answer.”
MeshWorks does not promise certainty. It promises orientation.
“The question you’ve got, a hundred other people have got. They just haven’t asked it.”
This matters because retrofit is not failing for lack of technology. It is failing for lack of decision clarity.
“There are stupid ways of spending money and clever ways of spending money to solve a problem.”
Doug’s describes a cucumber and hammer analogy that is deliberately absurd, but it lands because it captures the frustration felt by clients who spent serious money and saw little benefit.
“If you get that first step wrong, you can have the world’s best installer and the world’s best products and it still hasn’t fixed the problem.”
MeshWorks exists to reduce the likelihood of that first step being wrong.
The MESHWORK platform
Retrofit as a Data Problem, Not a Product Problem
A recurring thread in Doug’s thinking is the insistence that retrofit is, fundamentally, a data and analysis challenge.
“Nobody will commit to telling you: these are the top three things, how much difference they’ll make, and what it will cost.”
This is not because people are lazy. It is because the work is hard, context specific, and under resourced.
Mesh Energy’s response has been to stand behind the data not just at concept stage, but through specification, tendering, construction, and commissioning.
“We stand behind the work that we do, not just hand it off and disappear.”
That continuity is rare and deeply valued by both clients and contractors.
“Contractors say: I see hundreds of these every year, and yours by a country mile is clear.”
In an industry plagued by silos, this kind of follow through is not just good practice. It is educational.
Learning as a Collective Act
One of the most striking aspects of MeshWorks is its refusal to frame learning as competitive advantage.
Doug does not talk about owning knowledge. He talks about circulating it.
“We need to work on this network effect, sharing genuinely good stuff with the masses.”
This is a radical stance in a sector where expertise is often hoarded as differentiation.
A MESHWORKS Webinar
It also explains Mesh’s increasing investment in podcasts, tools, and open explanations even when those resources could theoretically cut them out of early stage work.
“We’re actually giving people the tools to do some of this themselves.”
The logic is long term: better informed professionals make better projects; better projects raise expectations; raised expectations increase demand for proper consultancy when it matters.
AI, Tools, and the Future of Retrofit Work
Looking ahead, Doug is pragmatic but optimistic about AI.
Not as a replacement for judgment but as a multiplier of it.
“I’m imagining a 5x increase in output per team member in five years.”
Mesh is already integrating AI into admin, analysis, and design workflows not to deskill staff, but to free them for higher value thinking.
“Take the humans out of the equation in the right places.”
MeshWorks, in this context, becomes even more important: a place where tools, literacy, and judgment evolve together.
What we could learn by being 'more Doug'
Retrofit does not suffer from a lack of ambition. It suffers from uneven understanding.
Mesh Energy’s story and MeshWorks’ emergence suggest that the next phase of retrofit maturity will not be driven by louder claims or shinier tech, but by shared competence.
Doug’s career arc from installer to educator to platform builder embodies that shift.
“Rather than speaking to 1,000 people, how do we end up speaking to a million?”
The answer, it turns out, is not scale at all costs but clarity, generosity, and persistence.
In an industry still learning how to talk to itself, MeshWorks is less a product than a proposition: that understanding is something we can build together if we treat it as infrastructure, not IP.