BIM & DIGITAL
constructionmanagermagazine.com
BIM & Digital
L&Q PLANS OFFSITE GROWTH WITH NEW DIGITAL TOOLKIT THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING SECTOR’S USE OF OFFSITE MANUFACTURING COULD BE BOOSTED BY A NEW TOOLKIT DEVELOPED BY AN L&Q-LED CONSORTIUM. DENISE CHEVIN REPORTS
A housing association-led project is aiming to speed up the design and construction of homes in the affordable housing sector by as much as 30%, with the development of a digital toolkit that will make it easier to use standard components for housing delivery. Benefiting from Innovate UK funding, a partnership – the COLAB consortium – led by L&Q (alongside Virtual Viewing, Hawkins\Brown Architects and HTA Design) has set out to develop a digital design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) toolkit. The software will make it easier to deliver new homes using modern methods of construction (MMC) by creating a central database within which standard components can be stored and selected. These would include building elements such as bathroom pods, utility cupboards and balcony pods, as well as entire apartment layouts, ensuring housing associations think about how the homes will be built from the outset. Lanre Gbolade, production innovation lead at L&Q, says the toolkit could bring enormous benefits: “We anticipate
this project’s outcomes will provide an organisation like L&Q with 30% reduction in design and construction programmes and 25% increase in return on capital employed if applied across its development programme.” L&Q says that, delivered to the wider housing market and scaled, this approach could provide enormous savings. Increasing use of MMC L&Q is one of the UK’s leading charitable housing associations and developers and in 2018/2019 completed 2,862 homes. It has a development pipeline of 50,400 homes, with 16,000 on site. The use of MMC is currently limited to developments outside the capital, where it is in a joint venture with Stewart Milne, explains Gbolade. But the plan is to move incrementally towards an increasing use of MMC over the next 10 years. “What we have been doing for the last two years is focusing on R&D and developing that roadmap. The DfMA toolkit is part of that transition.” L&Q, Hawkins\Brown and HTA came up with the idea a couple of years ago. Winning government funding has
Delivered to the wider housing market and scaled, the digital toolkit could provide enormous savings
allowed them to take it forward, with Virtual Viewing coming on board to design and configure an easy-to-use graphic interface for the app. The 15-month programme is being part-funded by Innovate UK under the recently awarded Transforming UK Construction Round 2: MMC, Digital and Whole-Life Performance competition. The team is aiming to have the toolkit ready by June 2021. When completed in June 2021, COLAB will partner with housing associations, local authorities and housebuilders to roll it out. The idea was forged out of the need for the sector to start thinking differently to supply the homes needed. “We have this target of 300,000 new homes a year,” says Nigel Ostime, delivery director of Hawkins\Brown, “but there is no way we can achieve it using traditional means. On average, the UK has built around 155,000 homes per year over the last 30 years. It’s clear we need a smarter way of building, which will involve the greater use of MMC and digital technology.” It should, he says, also overcome barriers to using MMC by encouraging
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