BRISTOL HOUSING FESTIVAL
CLIMATE SMARTER CITIES
In Bristol and across the UK, we are facing a housing crisis, a climate crisis, an ecological emergency, as well as a construction skills shortage. But as Bristol Housing Festival, Project Director, Jez Sweetland explains, these challenges are a powerful opportunity to do things differently.
1 At the Bristol Housing Festival, we’re bringing together industry leaders, local governments, and Bristol residents to ensure that healthy and resilient communities are at the forefront of the conversation on housing. Some of the ways we’re doing this is through our Innovate UK funded project ‘Enabling Housing Innovation for Inclusive Growth,’ which we completed in September this year, our involvement with the global ‘Climate Smart Cities Challenge’ and our new ‘Workforce for the Future’ project.
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The Enabling Housing Innovation for Inclusive Growth project, began in April 2020 and was delivered by a consortium of partners led by YTKO, Bristol Housing Festival, BRE and nine leading modular housing companies among others. It was an 18-month program working towards the delivery of a major piece of research, development and innovation in the use of modern methods of construction (MMC) and helped enable 425 homes to be built in Bristol (estimated GDV of circa £90million). Of the nine demonstrator sites that formed part of the project, three are underway, and
two – Hope Rise and SNUG homes – are already complete with both having won awards (Hope Rise has won multiple awards and was featured at COP26 as one of 17 projects chosen by a global panel). We are working on post-occupancy evaluation of Hope Rise which will be available soon and have also completed a ‘lessons learnt’ report on this scheme. Another outcome of the project is constructing modern methods (CMM). CMM is a digital tool to help housing commissioners interrogate the MMC market and procure the best solutions.
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
