1. P03 Rebuilding the construction
Getting the UK building again
Building with smartwalls, 3D
industry to face fresh challenges
P10 will sustain economic recovery
P14 printing – and toothbrushes
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FUTURE OF
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Project Collaboration for
Building, Infrastructure, Energy
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EDITION #0265
CASE STUDY
FROM RUSSIA WITH
LESSONS TO LEARN
Building Information Modelling
SMARTER BUILDING SAVES
TIME AND MONEY Manufacturing techniques, combined with computer software
to fully integrate data management, have the potential to transform
the construction industry, as Ruth Slavid reports
It is one of the most important
and misunderstood aspects
of construction. Building
information modelling (BIM) is a topic
where, in the opinion of many, “build-ing”
and “modelling” dominate, where-as
in fact it is the “information” aspect
that is most important.
BIM is all about the sharing of infor-mation
between all parties to a pro-ject.
Ideally it involves the design and
construction teams, the client and the
people who will be managing the pro-ject
long after the other participants
have left.
The principle is very simple.
When somebody updates a piece of
information, everybody receives that
update. And it should be possible to
update a single element and have that
information referenced by all other
similar elements.
The benefits are obvious – savings
in working and reworking, avoidance
of clashes, misunderstandings and
errors on-site, and a new knowledge
by clients of what they actually have
and will get.
Getting to this point, however, is not
simple, and it has taken a major drive
by government to persuade construc-tion
companies to sign up to the idea
and go through the pain involved in
learning any new system.
This has come about through gov-ernment
requiring that Level 2 BIM is
used on all publicly funded work by
2016, much of which is already in the
pipeline. The government’s BIM Task
Force defines Level 2 BIM as a series of
domain-specific models, for example
architectural or structural, with the
provision of a single environment to
store shared data and information.
Data storage involves a procedure
known as COBie UK 2012. This is a
protocol that allows everybody to ex-change
information, even if some of
those people, who may be minor spe-cialist
players, are not using sophisti-cated
software.
Even the BIM Task Force concedes
that it is sometimes easier to say what
BIM isn’t than what it is. It’s not just 3D
computer-aided design. It’s not just a
new technology application. It’s not
next generation; it’s here and now.
For a long time, there was resistance
from the industry to implementing BIM.
But, partly because of pressures from
government, it is now making impres-sive
progress and is one area where the
UK is at the forefront.
According to Richard Waterhouse,
chief executive of NBS (National Build-ing
Specification) and RIBA (Royal
Institute of British Architects) Enter-prises:
“A majority of the industry has
now adopted BIM, using it for at least
one project in the last year. We have
travelled some distance since we start-ed
monitoring BIM adoption in 2010,
when only 13 per cent were using BIM
and 43 per cent were unaware of it.
“For the design team, there are
clear benefits of collaboration, vis-ualisation,
co-ordination and infor-mation
retrieval. This readily trans-lates
into increased cost efficiencies
and profitability.
MAINTENANCE
“For manufacturers, accurate
product information can be deliv-ered
into the heart of the building
information model through the crea-tion
and delivery of information-rich
BIM objects. These objects have
the potential to determine not only
product choice in construction, but
persistence and correct maintenance
through a building’s life.
“For clients, an information-rich
model allows design outcomes to be
modelled and agreed early in the build-ing
lifecycle, at the briefing and design
stages. The lifetime performance of a
building can be maximised and effi-ciencies
delivered, with standardised
information delivered in COBie drops.
Landings are made softer. Client out-comes
are improved.”
In the early days of BIM adoption,
there was a tendency for some architects
and other designers to miss the point.
By working in three dimensions – an ap-proach
that when you think about it is
far more representative of the real world
than are two-dimensional drawings
– and being able to make and commu-nicate
changes rapidly and accurately,
there is a decrease in misunderstandings
and disagreements.
As Mr Waterhouse notes, this is a
very real benefit to design teams, but it
is of less significance to clients who ex-pect
the designers to get things right,
whatever the challenges. For clients,
and it is of course clients who drive all
construction, the benefits are related,
but different.
Forward-thinking organisations
want the information that will allow
them to manage their assets in the
future and this means understanding
what they are getting from a project
in a way that is useful. They need,
for example, a real understanding of
costs so they can make an informed
decision about whether to replace or
refurbish an item.
Heathrow Airport, which is a leader
in this area, has set up a GIS-based sys-tem
called Heathrow Map Live that al-lows
all staff access to live information,
and gives them the ability to feedback
changes and corrections. In this way,
informed clients will come to under-stand
their assets better and use them
more effectively.
Over time, as these clients gain more
knowledge of what works in practice,
they should be able to make better de-cisions,
understanding whether and
when they need a new facility, and also
making precise demands about what
goes into a new building.
It has always been true that having
a good client is essential to achieve a
good building. By harnessing the pow-er
of BIM, good clients can become
even better. If knowledge is power,
BIM should give the construction
industry and its clients the power to
gather and implement knowledge in a
way that was never possible before.
It is all about the sharing
of information between
all parties to a project
International construction com-pany
Mace is pioneering the use
of building information modelling
(BIM) with a major project in the
Russian city of St Petersburg.
The $2-billion development for
client SPb Renovation consists of
medium and high-rise residential
buildings arranged along a river
frontage. For construction purpos-es
they are divided into five zones,
totalling just under one million
square metres of accommodation.
Mace has worked with the design
teams and client to come up with
a “chassis” approach to stand-ardise
manufacture and on-site
assembly of structures. Buildings
have varying forms and finishes,
as standardisation is at an un-derlying,
rather than immediately
visible, level.
After comparing different structur-al
approaches, the team settled
for hybrid construction – a mixture
of concrete and steel – rather
than precast concrete because
this offered a significant weight
saving, cutting the frame weight
to nearly a third. This meant foun-dations
could also be reduced,
which is particularly important
because St Petersburg has poor
ground conditions. As a result, the
embodied carbon of the buildings
was significantly reduced.
The project has a library of
standard components, which
everyone involved can access,
and both specify and procure
from local suppliers.
BIM data and subsequent pro-cesses
facilitate the co-ordina-tion
and interface between those
designing the vertical buildings,
the horizontal infrastructure
and the public realm, as well as
managing the project throughout
its lifecycle.
Mace has developed a method
of asset lifecycle integration,
called ALi 360, to implement BIM
and optimise asset performance,
sharing efficiency savings with
clients and supply chain part-ners.
The company is also using
ALi 360 for cost management,
schedule control, and sales and
marketing strategy.
It calculates this approach is cut-ting
building time on the largest
zone in St Petersburg by a year.
Resulting cost savings for the
client are further increased by
the ability to begin earlier gener-ation
of income from completed
accommodation.
It is the intention of Mace to use the
Russian project as an exemplar for
work in the UK and elsewhere.
of the largest UK
architects’ practices
are now using BIM 100%
Source: NBS National BIM Report
61%
say BIM brings
cost efficiencies
52%
say it increases
speed of delivery
45%
say it boosts
profitability
Source: The Architects’ Journal
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Workforce
SKILLED WORKERS
FROM DIVERSE GROUPS
The traditional image of the building site
needs to change with the times and a skilled
workforce recruited from unexpected places,
writes Mark Smulian
An outdated image of men
– and it usually was only
men - in filthy overalls, dig-ging
holes in pouring rain, still clings.
It has to change. With the begin-nings
of an economic recovery, the
country is building again and con-struction
does not want to be caught
out by yet another skills shortage
when demand increases.
As the Construction Industry
Training Board (CITB) has shown,
employment is picking up from the
depths of the recession to an expect-ed
2.65 million this year and pushing
2.7 million by 2016.
Perhaps the most radical ap-proach
is to change the nature of
construction itself by using com-ponents
made in factories, trans-ported
to sites and fitted together
into buildings, though convention-al
work, like excavation, would of
course still be needed.
Laing O’Rourke is among major
contractors promoting this ap-proach,
according to its sustainabil-ity
director Caroline Blackwell.
“Off-site work is the way we are
starting to go,” she says. “That
changes our needs from traditional
trades to being much more about
manufacturing, with a lot of empha-sis
on logistics, planning and design,
and on lifting and crane strategies.
“We think that has a totally different
skills profile with a lot more profession-al
and semi-professional jobs, which
suits the way the UK is going as more
people go into tertiary education.”
Ms Blackwell concedes the indus-try
must convince clients of the mer-its
of off-site construction, though
hopes that offering greater speed
will help.
Another persuasive factor, for both
conventional and off-site projects, is
the use of building information mod-elling,
so “you can show a client the
whole building in a virtual model”.
She adds: “Young people find
working with computers and en-gineering
very attractive, and it is
open to a far more diverse group
than construction was before.”
For traditional site work, Ms
Blackwell says: “Sites are now clean-er
and more attractive places to
work. In the past 20 years there has
been a fundamental change in safety
and this is now a good and exciting
place to work.”
Vicky Skene, director of employee
engagement and inclusion at Balfour
Beatty Construction Services UK,
puts emphasis on widening the pool
of potential recruits.
Only a few years ago, a construc-tion
contractor taking an initiative
on sexual orientation might, to say
the least, have provoked comment
and a disability initiative cause only
slightly less surprise.
But these have been among Bal-four
Beatty’s approaches. Ms Skene
says: “We are doing this because it’s
good for business. If you just recruit
among groups, which you always
recruited from, then when you’re
looking at a project, you are always
going to get the same answers; you
don’t get people who think differ-ently,
so you miss out on original
perspectives. There is a lot of evi-dence
for that.”
She says Balfour Beatty’s diversity
work is starting to make a difference
with, for example, more female staff
returning after maternity leave once
the company actively drew attention
to this possibility.
“It’s about not losing talent. For ex-ample,
if someone applied for a job,
but says family responsibilities mean
they want to work four days a week,
we’ll allow that if we can,” she says.
Balfour Beatty’s employee survey
this year will ask about sexual ori-entation
and the company has set
up a staff lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender network.
TRADITIONAL
Ms Skene says: “It is really brave,
given traditional attitudes, and we
were not sure how it would be re-ceived,
but it has landed really well
among our staff and allows the in-dustry
to be more open.”
Work on disabilities looks at how
people could be supported into work
appropriate to their capabilities.
“It could mean office work, but
could also be on-site,” Ms Skene
says. “For example, people with
dyslexia or dyspraxia may need only
some small adjustments made and
they can work.”
Unconscious bias training has
started with senior managers and
will be spread through the company
to site “toolbox talks”.
To more generally burnish the
industry’s image, younger Balfour
Beatty staff are working with school
students through the Duke of Edin-burgh’s
Award scheme to promote
construction “as an OK place to
work and not somewhere just con-cerned
with digging holes”, she says.
“My view is that the industry’s
problem is not one of pay, but rath-er
this perception that we just stick
spades in the ground – and there is
an education piece to be done.”
DIVERSITY
The CITB, which provides indus-trywide
training, is also at work on
diversity. Employer services director
Mike Bilayj says: “We are encourag-ing
the industry to ensure it has a
diverse intake. Ethnic minority
and women entrants are needed
because, with the recovery, the in-dustry
is already experiencing skills
shortage and it will only get worse
unless it can harness the skills of the
best people. The skills needed are
out there in groups the industry has
not reached before.”
Mr Bilayj says the industry “can-not
rely on careers services” to
solve its image problem and “we
need to get across the opportunities
and good long-term prospects in
everything from trade to technical
posts to professional ones”, in par-ticular
through work in schools.
Economic reasons will bring com-panies
round to embracing diversity
and improving the industry’s image,
as otherwise: “It will simply not have
the skilled workforce it needs.”
He concludes: “This is all in the
industry’s own interest.”
DO
The skills needed are
out there in groups
the industry has not
reached before
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Commercial Feature
Solving the construction jobs crisis
Steve Radley, the Construction Industry Training Board’s
policy and strategic planning director, warns of a
recruitment crisis facing the sector
To help address staff losses
and retirements, and fill
new jobs, an additional 120,000
apprenticeships will be required
by 2019 – about 25,000 new
starts a year
The recession might be over, but the
construction industry is still feeling
the effects of what have been a
tough few years for the sector.
In short, it is facing a recruit-ment
crisis.
The figures make stark reading.
Since 2008, 390,000 workers have
left the industry, reluctantly let go by
companies struggling to survive. As
previous recessions have shown, it’s
difficult to rehire employees once they
have left. Another 400,000 will reach
retirement age in the next five years.
This actual and potential depletion
of the workforce is becoming a real
issue now the industry is returning to
growth. Construction Industry Train-ing
Board (CITB) figures show that
more than 180,000 new construction
jobs will be created in the next five
years in the commercial, retail and
residential sectors.
To help address staff losses and re-tirements,
and fill the new jobs, an ad-ditional
120,000 apprenticeships will
be required by 2019 – about 25,000
new starts a year. This is a huge chal-lenge,
one that requires action by the
government and everyone involved in
the industry.
At CITB we are tackling the challenge
head on. In 2013, we helped 5,000
young people start a construction ap-prenticeship
in their local community
and are currently providing grants of up
to £10,250 for any construction em-ployer
looking to take on an apprentice.
Our Shared Apprenticeship
Schemes are being rolled out across
the country. These enable apprentic-es
to complete a full apprenticeship
programme with a number of different
employers. This spreads the costs for
businesses and makes it more likely
that longer-term investment in appren-ticeships
is maintained.
We have helped the industry devel-op
30 national skills academies for
construction, which provide hands-on
training, and have developed procure-ment
guidance, Working together to
boost local construction apprentice-ships
through public procurement, for
government departments, agencies
and local authorities.
But it’s not enough. More needs to
be done.
The government is trying to create
a training market where providers are
responsive to what employers need.
This is welcome, but it must make
sure that any new measures make it
as simple as possible for companies
to invest in training, especially smaller
businesses that don’t have the capac-ity
to invest in complex administration.
Apprenticeships are the lifeblood
of the construction industry, and the
best way of growing a talented and
diverse workforce for the future. So
getting the recruitment and training
model right is vital for the 309,000
companies – the majority of them
small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) – that make up the industry.
Acting on the recommendations
of the Richard Review of Apprentice-ships,
the government has thrown
down a gauntlet to the industry, intro-ducing
a fundamental shift in the way
apprenticeships are funded and deliv-ered,
to give employers more control
and access to the quality training their
businesses need.
To support this work, CITB is work-ing
with the industry to implement the
first trailblazer of the government’s ap-prenticeship
reforms and has set up a
high-level Apprenticeship Commission
to deliver an apprenticeship strategy
for the construction sector by the end
of the year.
Beyond recruitment, the govern-ment’s
Industrial Strategy has set
ambitious targets for construction
to meet by 2025 – 33 per cent lower
cost, 50 per cent faster delivery, 50
per cent lower emissions and halving
the export trade gap.
Reducing the trade gap is a lauda-ble
aim, but construction SMEs, which
make up 95 per cent of the sector, tell
us that to increase exports they need
support to identify foreign markets
and overcome export barriers.
If they get this support, SMEs will
not only be able to reduce the trade
deficit, but will also become resilient to
the volatility of economic cycles.
The government is a major custom-er
for the construction industry, wheth-er
through big national infrastructure
projects or local authority schemes.
While it has started to provide compa-nies
with more certainty on upcoming
infrastructure projects, the govern-ment
must now provide more detail
so businesses can plan the next four
or five years ahead.
The industry has a key role to play in
its own success, too.
Career advisers are out of touch
with what’s happening in the sector
and are not promoting careers. Recent
research shows that more than 35 per
cent of advisers think a career in con-struction
is unattractive, while 82 per
cent of teachers don’t believe they
have the appropriate knowledge to
advise pupils on their career choices.
Construction employers need to vis-it
schools and explain the benefits of a
career in the sector. They need to tell
youngsters how it’s becoming a highly
skilled, rewarding profession that, in
many cases, it is extremely well paid
and exciting – the building of the Olym-pic
Park and the use of cutting-edge
building information modelling are
evidence of that.
The industry also plays an impor-tant
role in tackling climate change
through designing and constructing
more energy-efficient buildings, de-veloping
smart materials and building
zero-carbon homes. Many young peo-ple
are motivated by climate change
and, if they choose to work in the con-struction
industry, can help address
the challenges it poses.
A high-performing, efficient con-struction
industry has a huge role to
play in delivering economic growth.
It is in all our interests to ensure that
construction, as one of the corner-stones
of the UK, delivering £2.84 to
the economy for each £1 invested, is
given every opportunity to succeed.
We must all work together to make
this happen.
Back to
work
Page 10
Cranes tower over
London as the
economy - and
construction - picks up
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Commercial Feature
Evolution of construction
The construction industry plays a vital role in the UK
economy, responsible for some 6 per cent of total
GDP and 10 per cent of employment – and it is
undergoing a radical transformation
The traditional view of construction
is seriously out of date as the intro-duction
of new processes, new tech-nologies
and new ways of working is
turning the industry on its head.
“We’re rapidly moving away from the
traditional model to one driven by digi-tal
engineering, offsite manufacturing
and component assembly,” accord-ing
to Andy Thomson, Laing O’Rourke
project director at the Alder Hey in the
Park project in Liverpool.
No longer is construction about
dirty, dangerous sites with hundreds
of people clambering around sky-high
scaffolds. Today it’s about harnessing
technology to plan a full development
virtually, testing every scenario that
may affect construction and opera-tion,
and building with components
manufactured offsite, to ensure qual-ity
and minimise disruption. Laing
O’Rourke call this Design for Manu-facture
and Assembly or DfMA.
There are a number of key elements
to the process, but the most funda-mental
are the use of digital engineer-ing
and modular construction. Alder
Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust’s
new 270-bed children’s hospital is a
prime example of the difference this
can make, both in terms of the con-struction
programme and ensuring
that the client’s – in this case patients’
– needs are fully met.
Mr Thomson says that one of the
major drivers of the new approach to
construction is “ensuring a compo-nent
assembly methodology is con-sidered
within the design right from
the outset” as this can transform the
ability to deploy resources rapidly.
What Laing O’Rourke’s process
ensures is the smooth running of a
project from start to finish. The rela-tionship
with the client from the ear-liest
stages ensures that delivery is
achieved as a partnership between
client and the engineering group, no
matter what sector.
David Houghton, NHS health park
project manager at Alder Hey, says:
“The architect took ideas from the
children and created a design that
had the necessary modern hospital
requirements, but also incorporated
the children’s needs.” The benefit of
the virtual engineering model, he says,
“is we can look at a wireframe model
in 3D, and have graphics and visuals
of how the design makes people feel
in the space”.
The process allows scenario testing
of anything that might impact a pro-ject,
from accessibility, maintenance
access, new energy-management
models and even water use. This can
make a critical difference in the devel-opment
of anything from a commer-cial
building to an energy plant, from
transport to wider infrastructure. The
use of such virtual engineering can
ensure that any and every project can
benefit from stress testing the design
before the ground is struck.
“It ensures that the structural, en-gineering
and architectural elements
are integrated into a virtual prototype,
allowing the whole scheme to be fully
visualised and co-ordinated on screen
before commencement on site. It also
enables a seamless information trans-fer
to our offsite manufacturing facili-ties,”
says Mr Thomson.
The second element that is trans-formational
is the use of modular
construction. It limits disruption to the
environment, delivering components
as and when needed, without the need
for space for materials. Not only does
this minimise disruption, but it also has
strong sustainability benefits, from few-er
vehicle movements to less waste.
faster delivery with Laing
O’Rourke’s new approach
With up to 70 per cent of a building
coming in as components, it allows a
move towards just-in-time manufac-turing
and delivery, therefore stream-lining
the construction process; effec-tively
it transforms that process into a
logistics exercise.
Composite rooms or pods can be
built for specific purposes, such as
bathrooms, and simply lifted into
place. With the flooring, electrics,
fittings and plumbing pre-installed
offsite, a crane can lift the pod into
position where it can be placed in line
with the schedule. Built in Laing O’Ro-urke’s
own factories, there is certainty
about the quality and how it integrates
into the rest of the build.
Modular construction is even
more important in the heart of the
city, through eliminating the need for
onsite storage. Effective delivery of a
major commercial development at The
Leadenhall Building in London meant
offsite manufacturing was essential.
With the development being deployed
in the heart of the City of London, it
was imperative not to impact commer-cial
flow in the area.
Through the deployment of mod-ular
construction units, which made
up 85 per cent of the Leadenhall
development, disruption was min-imised
and the build accelerated.
Mr Thomson says: “Nowadays the
expertise demanded in construc-tion
has changed dramatically, with
logistics and craneage utilisation of
paramount importance for example,
ensuring manufactured components
are installed into a building within a
rigorous production sequence.”
This new approach to construction
could have a vital role to play in the
UK’s future construction plans. There
is recognition that a growing economy
must invest in infrastructure and in-deed
the government’s Infrastructure
UK will oversee a 2015-16 spend of
more than £50 billion.
At the same time managing costs
and increasing carbon and resource ef-ficiency
is becoming critical. The 2013
government report Construction 2025
lays out plans to put UK construction at
the forefront of the global market. It pro-poses
a 33 per cent reduction in con-struction
costs, a 50 per cent reduction
in overall time to deployment, as well as
in greenhouse gas emissions. It seems
clear that lean construction approach-es,
such as DfMA, are very much the
way of the future for the sector.
Mr Houghton is clear that Alder Hey
didn’t select a partner because of the
process they use, but because of the
bid, design, time to delivery, costs
and quality. However, he acknowledg-es
that the impact of the process in
other Laing O’Rourke projects had im-pressed.
“We set them an impossible
task and they delivered,” he says.
To find out more, please visit
www.laingorourke.com
We knew at the outset that
delivering a project of the
scale and engineering complexity
of The Leadenhall Building, in the
heart of the City, would require the
most advanced and cutting-edge
construction techniques
… Nigel Webb, head of developments,
British Land
weeks to deliver 98,000sq-m
children’s hospital
weeks to deploy the
structure and facade
Pioneering architect Duncan Baker-Brown
makes the case for sustainable architecture
and argues that we cannot afford to be wasteful
Opinion
market for new materials like every-body
else and pay proper money.
At the other end of this linear
process is the reality that we all
get penalised hugely for throwing
stuff away – the cost of skips has
risen about threefold over the last
18 months. So, we live in a world
where raw materials are scarce,
which in turn affects the cost of
new stuff, much of which is wast-ed
– 20 per cent on building sites –
which in turn raises the cost of new
buildings. If you can avoid buying
raw material and throwing stuff
away so much, then today you will
make more money, and this will be-come
more prevalent in the future
as populations rise.
COST
The other issue is the rising cost, fi-nancial
and environmental, of acquir-ing
land for development. We need
to recognise the stuff that currently
fills our amazing cities and towns for
what it is – valuable infrastructure
to build upon, literally and meta-phorically.
The retrofitting or design
tweaking of our existing buildings,
amenities, landscapes and services
could, in my opinion, allow our cit-ies
to develop sustainably, to support
a growing population while
providing green energy,
low-energy buildings,
water reclamation
and clean air.
As a society we must realise that
we cannot go on demolishing our
previous generations “heroic”, but
perhaps failing, developments. We
have to be cleverer than that and
learn how to adapt without flatten-ing
them and the communities they
support. Our future eco-cities are
already around us. It is up to the de-sign
and construction industries to
respond to the challenge of realising
there is no such thing as waste, just
stuff in the wrong place.
There are enormous challenges
that present themselves. The good
news is that our designers and con-tractors
are already working on ways
to deal with issues of material and
land scarcity. They have to do this
now as we cannot afford the cost,
financially and environmentally, of
continuing with the old “slash-and-burn”
mentality that still prevails in
many national governments.
Make do and mend? It’s where the
money is to be made and it will help
us live in harmony with planet Earth.
Good news then. Not a new idea, but
a good one.
T Brighton's Waste
wenty years ago last month, my
practice partner Ian McKay and I
completed and opened the Royal
Institute of British Architect’s House
of the Future, a late-20th century
attempt to prove a four-bedroomed
contemporary dwelling could be “a
sustainable design”, which in the
mid-1990s meant extremely ener-gy-
efficient in use.
“FutureHouse”, as we called it,
employed “passive” devices such
as a two-storey south-facing con-servatory
and an earth plenum be-low
the ground floor, to pre-cool or
pre-warm air entering the building;
hot water from solar thermal panels
was dumped in a super-insulated
basement. These devices, together
with lots of insulation and exposed
thermal mass, ensured that Future-
House satisfied the RIBA brief for a
very low-energy building. At the time
it scored an implausible eleven out
of ten on the National Home Energy
Rating checklist.
Despite all of the above, a number
of informed individuals noted it was
the incorporation of a home office
that would have the biggest positive
effect on planet Earth, as it implied
that people living in FutureHouse
would commute to work far less than
most. Then as now, energy consump-tion
at home and in the workplace
was stable, while energy consumption
on our roads and in our skies was in-creasing
almost exponentially.
So, despite our careful selection
of materials, married with building
fabric airtightness and passive solar
technology, it was human behaviour
that really made the difference, as far
as reduction of energy and resource
consumption were concerned.
Fast forward 20 years – via my
own new-build home Sparrow-
House in 2004, designed to prove
eco-architecture can be cost effec-tive
to build as well as to run and
maintain; the House that Kevin Built
in 2008, for Kevin McCloud’s Grand
Designs Live, the UK’s first EPC
(Energy Performance Certificate)
A-star-rated dwelling and first pre-fabricated
house made from organic
compostable material; and the just-opened
Brighton Waste House, the
first permanent building in the UK
made from more than 85 per cent
waste material – and issues relating
to how to develop human settle-ments,
while existing in harmony
with the planet, are still largely un-answered.
PRICES
I believe there are a couple of
main drivers that will inform current
and future construction projects: the
issues of resource and land scarcity
or security. Whether you want to
build in Pimlico, Porto or Mumbai,
materials are scarce and expensive,
and land prices pretty much univer-sally
sky high.
If we focus on the UK construc-tion
industry, the clever money is
investing in realising the true value
in material and products that we
throw away every day. Apple has
just started to appreciate this. Their
latest must-have-today-obsolete-to-morrow
gadgets will be recycled by
Apple at the end of their useful lives.
This has involved a huge invest-ment
in gadget reclamation infra-structure
on Apple’s part because
they at last realise, as many other
large companies do, that they are
wasting a huge amount of money
and potential profit by allowing
their products to be thrown away
by others. So it’s not only poor com-munities
around the world that are
re-using and re-appropriating stuff,
it’s big business.
The issue is also affecting the UK
construction industry. Buying block
work or timber has never been more
difficult. That may partly be because
our building suppliers have been
virtually dormant for five years and
need time to start up production
again. However, it is also because the
cost of the raw materials required to
manufacture stuff is rising rapidly.
If we look back in time a couple
of hundred years, you will see the
wonderful Georgian and Victorian
infrastructure – buildings, roads, sew-ers
and so on – which we still rely on
and admire, was built with materials
which cost virtually nothing as we
plundered our empire for natural re-sources.
Today, we have to go to the
DON’T SCRAP STUFF THAT STILL HAS A LIFE
House is construct-ed
of mainly waste
materials
We cannot afford the cost, financially
and environmentally, of continuing with
the old ‘slash-and-burn’ mentality that
still prevails in many national governments
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Infrastructure
GETTING THE UK
BUILDING AGAIN
UK infrastructure is in urgent need of renewal and
major building projects represent an opportunity to
kick-start the construction industry as it emerges
from the Great Recession. Mike Scott reports
Infrastructure was a ma-jor
focus of the Queen’s
Speech earlier this month,
as the government put forward new
legislation designed to encourage in-vestment
in the sector.
Not before time, perhaps, as a
review last year by Sir John Armitt
pointed out there is growing evidence
the UK’s infrastructure has not been
renewed or enhanced when needed.
“Indeed in 2012, the World Eco-nomic
Forum ranked the UK 24th for
the overall quality of its infrastruc-ture,”
Sir John continued.
Causes for concern include:
• Fears that the cost of traffic con-gestion
in the UK could rise to an
estimated £36 billion a year by 2025;
• The threat posed to the UK’s
position as an international aviation
hub by a lack of investment in run-way
capacity in South-East England;
• That a fifth of the UK’s electricity
generating capacity is due to come
offline within ten years;
• And the fragility of the UK’s
water supply, demonstrated by the
droughts of 2011 and 2012.
Prime Minister David Cameron
acknowledges the problems and has
highlighted the importance of the in-frastructure
sector to the UK’s econ-omy
and future prosperity.
In a 2012 speech to the Institu-tion
for Civil Engineers, Mr Camer-on
conceded: “The truth is we are
falling behind; we are falling behind
our competitors and we are falling
behind the great world-beating, pi-oneering
tradition set by those who
came before us.
“There is now an urgent need to
repair the decades-long degradation
of our national infrastructure and
to build for the future with as much
confidence and ambition as the Vic-torians
once did.”
Yet little action followed those
stirring words because of the need to
tackle the UK debt crisis. However,
there are now signs that the sector is
picking up after a period of retrench-ment,
which came about as a result
of the most serious financial crisis
since the Second World War.
“We are at a moment when there
is a need for renewal. UK infrastruc-ture
is still in recovery mode, but it
is showing greater signs of life month
by month,” says Steve Morriss, chief
executive for Europe, the Middle
East and Africa at engineering con-sultancy
Aecom. “There is some
pretty exciting stuff going on.”
The extent to which the Prime
Minister’s words have been translat-ed
into action will be revealed in the
State of the Nation: Infrastructure 2014
report due to be launched tomorrow
by the Institution of Civil Engineers,
which will assess the government’s
progress on infrastructure develop-ment
since 2010 and grade each in-frastructure
network from A to E.
In its last report in 2010, energy
and local transport were graded D
“at risk”, so those sectors will be un-der
the spotlight this time around.
There will also be a focus on flood
defences given the impact of the
winter flooding.
FUNDING
According to the Department for
Transport, the government’s cur-rent
Infrastructure Bill, outlined in
the Queen’s Speech, should help
to create stable long-term funding
for work on the country’s major
road network, ensuring smoother,
quicker and quieter journeys. The
Bill should also make it easier to sell
surplus and redundant public sec-tor
land and property to help build
more homes on brownfield sites,
“Investment in infrastructure is
central to the government’s long-term
economic plan and that is
Number of
projects
why we are spending almost £73
billion over the period 2015 to 2021
on transport alone,” says Transport
Secretary Patrick McLoughlin. “This
Bill will hugely boost Britain’s com-petitiveness
in transport, energy
provision, housing development and
nationally significant infrastructure
projects. These powerful new meas-ures
will drive investment, making
it easier, quicker and simpler to get
Britain building for the future.”
“There is an element of catch-up,”
says Professor Denise Bower,
chairman of the Institution of Civil
9%
Engineers and executive director of
the Major Projects Association. “The
rate of spend had dropped, but it is
now picking up again.”
Major projects under way or moot-ed
include Crossrail, the High Speed 2
(HS2) rail route and Thames Tideway
Tunnel. The sector is also benefitting
from the success of the London 2012
Olympic Games, and the delivery of
the facilities without the disruption
and chaos that have dogged other
major events, such as this year’s foot-ball
World Cup in Brazil.
70 80
12%
88%
“As a nation, the Olympics
helped recreate a belief in Britain’s
ability to take on these challenges
and deliver a complex urban de-velopment
in a relatively short pe-riod
of time,” says Andrew Comer,
a partner in the environment and
infrastructure practice at engineer-ing
consultants Buro Happold, who
worked on the Olympics.
“There is a more positive mood,”
says Professor Bower. “We delivered
the Olympics on time and on budget,
and Crossrail is going well. Confi-dence
is building in our ability to
NORTH WEST
• M60 J24-27 and 1-4, the M62 J10-12, the
M56 J6-8, and the M6 J16-19 and 21a-26
managed motorway schemes
• Mersey Gateway Bridge government
investment and pre-qualification for a UK
Guarantee
• High Speed 2 rail
• Northern Hub rail link upgrade programme
• Manchester City deal finalised
• Rebuilding 39 schools as part of the Priority
School Building Programme
WEST MIDLANDS
SOUTH WEST
deliver, but we need to attract fund-ing
to keep the momentum going.”
Meanwhile, the industry is confi-dent
that many of the lessons being
learnt on the Crossrail project, par-ticularly
in relation to complex tun-nelling,
will make the development
of HS2 run more smoothly, when it
is finally approved
CERTAINTY
Yet there is also a feeling in the in-dustry
that the market needs more
certainty and quicker decision-mak-ing
from policymakers, who favour
infrastructure because it has the
potential to create jobs and enhance
other areas of the economy. But
politicians seem unable to take the
difficult decisions that are needed
because they have one eye on the
political calendar.
Part of the problem is that infra-structure
is intrinsically a long-term
issue, with projects taking many
years to plan, finance, build, operate
and then decommission.
“Taking the long-term view, it is
easy to see that these projects are
great for the country, but in the
short term they are often expensive
and controversial,” says Aecom’s Mr
Morriss, citing the need for more
capacity at Heathrow Airport as a
prime example of where more rapid
decision-making is needed.
In this regard, the National Infra-structure
Plan, introduced by the
Coalition government, has helped –
to an extent. It sets out the priorities
and framework for infrastructure
needs in the UK. “It’s a good starting
point,” says Richard Laudy, head of
infrastructure at Pinsent Masons, a
law firm specialising in the sector.
“But a number of commentators feel
that it is very much a wish list that
does not really tackle some of the
big issues around need and funding.”
The infrastructure plan is “only
a list of the key projects likely to be
delivered over the next four to six
years”, agrees Mr Comer. “No one
has really grasped the nettle and
started to think more strategically
about what the country needs in the
long term.”
Like the Armitt review, Mr Laudy
suggests setting up an independent
body, along the lines of Australia’s
YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER
• A63 Castle Street access improvements
to the Port of Hull to relieve congestion and
improve safety
• A160/180 Immingham dualing scheme
• Trans-Pennine rail electrification
• Additional rail capacity in Sheffield and Leeds
• Electric spine rail enhancement programme
• A1 Leeming to Barton conversion of dual
carriageway to three lanes
• York super-connected city
• UK Guarantee issued for Drax
biomass conversion
• Rebuilding 36 schools
EAST MIDLANDS
• A38 Derby junction improvements
• M1 J24-25 managed motorway scheme at
Long Eaton
• M1 J28-31 accelerated delivery pilot
• Electric spine rail enhancement programme
• MIRA Technology Park – Automotive Re-search
Centre*
• Derby super-connected city
• Rebuilding 28 schools
EAST OF ENGLAND
National Infrastructure Commission,
which is addressing tough questions
around priorities in a country that
has a major infrastructure deficit
like the UK. “But they have taken the
whole debate away from politicians
and have independent people mak-ing
the decisions,” he says.
Professor Bower concludes with a
note of caution: “I am not sure the
answer is just to build more things.
Smarter asset management is abso-lutely
crucial. It is about thinking
more intelligently about what we
want and how to get there.”
Confidence is building in
our ability to deliver, but
we need to attract funding
to keep the momentum going
OVERVIEW OF UK INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
LONDON
SOUTH EAST
• A19 Testos flyover construction
• A19/A1058 coast road near Newcastle to
improve access to Port of Tyne and major
employment sites
• A1 upgrade works at Lobley Hill
• High Speed 2
• Increased rail capacity on East Coast Main-line
and Newcastle line
• New InterCity Express rolling stock
• Rebuilding 31 schools
• M4 J3-12 London to Reading managed
motorway scheme
• M23 J8-10 managed motorway scheme
near Gatwick
• Managed motorway schemes on the M20 J3-5
• Maidstone, M27 J4-11 and the M3 J9-14 near
Southampton
• A21 upgrade Tonbridge to Pembury
• A27 Chichester Bypass improvements
• M20 J10a
• A2 Ebbsfleet Junction
• A2 Bean
• Lower Thames Crossing
• East-West rail project from Oxford to Bedford,
via Milton Keynes and Aylesbury
• Upgrade Harwell Science and Innovation
Campus*
• Rebuilding 27 school
• Crossrail 2 examining funding and financing
options
• Upgrades to Piccadilly and Bakerloo tube lines
• Gospel Oak and Barking electrification
• High Speed 2
• Thameslink upgrade
• Improvements to London Waterloo Station
• Increased capacity across London, including at
London Bridge, Victoria and St Pancras stations
• Rebuilding 46 schools
• Managed motorway schemes on M5 J4a-6
south of Birmingham, M1 J13-19 Rugby, M6
J2-4 and J13-15
• M54/M6 link road Wolverhampton
• High Speed 2
• Rebuilding 22 schools
• Electrification of Great Western Mainline
• Capacity upgrade to Bristol Temple Meads
Station
• New Heathrow link from the Great Western
Mainline
• Hinkley C Nuclear Power Station pre-quali-fication
for a UK Guarantee
• Rebuilding 17 schools
• A14 Huntingdon to Cambridge
• A5-M1 new link road
• M25 J30 improvement works
• Lower Thames Crossing
• Upgrade Barbraham Research Institute
• Alconbury Enterprise Campus*
• Cambridge super-connected city
• Rebuilding 15 schools
NORTH EAST
FUNDING MIX FOR EACH INFRASTRUCTURE SECTOR (£BN)
% Paid Taxpayer Consumer Both
OVERALL
£377.1
TRANSPORT
£121.4
ENERGY
£218.8
COMMUNICATIONS
£14.3
FLOOD
£3.9
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
£0.8
WASTE
£2.3
WATER
£15.1
NUMBER AND VALUE OF INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS AND PROGRAMMES
MAPPING INFRASTRUCTURE
£bn
East Midlands
10 20
5
30 40
10
50 60
15 20
East of England
North East
North West
South East
South West
West Midlands
Yorkshire &
Humber
31
65
45
67
27
34
45
35
Number of projects Capital value £bn
Source: HM Treasury, Major Infrastructure Tracking Unit, 2013
Source: HM Treasury, Major Infrastructure Tracking Unit, 2013
16%
18%
66%
5%
95%
88%%
46% 46%
10%
90%
32%
68%
80%
11%
100%
Source: HM Treasury, Investing in Britain’s
Future, 2013
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DO
BIM: The clock is ticking
– time to act is now
Adoption of efficient building information modelling
using shared data will bring UK construction into
the 21st century, says 4Projects by Viewpoint
Deadlines make things happen. On
May 31, 2011, the UK Government
Construction Strategy signalled the
intention to mandate collaborative
3D building information modelling
(BIM) as a minimum requirement
by 2016. Essentially, the clock had
started ticking for level 2 (L2) BIM
compliance on all public, centrally
procured projects.
Minister for the Cabinet Office Fran-cis
Maude heralded the introduction of
specific targets for BIM as a new dawn in
the development of a modern, compet-itive
industry. According to Mr Maude:
“This Government’s four-year strategy
for BIM implementation will change
the dynamics and behaviours of the
construction supply chain, unlocking
new, more efficient ways of working.
This whole sector adoption of BIM will
put us in the vanguard of a new digital
construction era and position the UK to
become world leaders in BIM.”
If we fast-forward to 2014, roughly
half-way towards the effective action
date, has the reality on the ground
matched the rhetoric?
The numbers are positive. The lat-est
NBS National BIM Report found
awareness of BIM has become almost
universal throughout construction, ris-ing
from 58 per cent in 2010 to 95 per
cent in 2013.
In terms of application on site,
figures from marketers Competitive
Advantage for 2013 show BIM be-ing
used for 3.9 per cent of all UK
construction projects, representing
some £3.8 billion in value. Come
2016, its penetration is forecast to
rise to 50.8 per cent of total work,
worth £55.1 billion.
Furthermore, an architecture, engi-neering
and construction (AEC) supply
chain survey, undertaken by BIM soft-ware
solutions 4Projects by Viewpoint
in February, found 75 per cent of re-spondents
believe the UK government
was right to mandate L2, along with
associated industry foundation class-es
(IFC) and construction operations
building information exchange (COBie).
However, only 2 per cent of that
same AEC sample believe they are ac-tually
L2 compliant and, to put matters
into perspective, 65 per cent still only
use e-mail as their primary informa-tion-
sharing mechanism.
It seems clear that, while under-standing
the direction of travel might
be one thing, determining the busi-ness
case for how and when to jump
aboard the BIM train is quite another.
The industry still has ground to make
up, as Rebecca Hodgson-Jones, head
of BIM at Sir Robert McAlpine, and
steering lead for the BIM 2050 Group,
acknowledges: “The government task
group have set solid foundations which
will enable the industry to deliver im-proved
outcomes and, although we
still have a long way to go, with many
challenges ahead, BIM is here to stay
and momentum is rapidly building.”
In her analysis, BIM opens the door
to the kind of industry-wide progress
the built environment sector has been
seeking for some time. “BIM provides
a golden opportunity to drive efficien-cies
and deliver safer, more sustaina-ble
solutions,” she says. “Numerous
industry leaders have commented on
the need for the construction industry
to become technology-enabled and
we now have the perfect storm. Capa-bility
in the market is evolving and the
gap between aspiration and capacity
is closing.”
Collaboration is key, she concludes:
“Successfully implementing BIM re-quires
co-operation from the complete
team. It is essential those engaged at
the outset are on board.”
With construction rethinking how it
does business, this technology-driven
cultural shift must be directly manifest
in appropriate contractual terms.
The existing legal landscape, how-ever,
is not an ideal place to start
such a journey, as Chris Hallam,
partner at law firm Pinsent Masons,
explains: “Collaboration is not a new
concept for the industry. For over a
generation, the government and in-dustry
stakeholders have striven to
create a Utopia of a more collabora-tive
construction industry.
Alun Baker, managing director, EMEA
BIM provides a
golden opportunity to
drive efficiencies and
deliver safer, more
sustainable solutions
The answer, according to Mr Spark,
is software-as-a-service (SaaS). “This
is the beauty of SaaS – it offers the
flexibility of having all the function-ality
of a comprehensive BIM eco
system, but simply in a browser,” he
says. “With the BIM boom imminent,
the priority is getting firms over the
decision-making hurdle and into the
game in time to make the most of the
opportunities emerging. SaaS takes
away the ‘fear factor’ and puts all your
players on the pitch.”
In the current market, with recov-ery
only recently the word on con-struction
lips, clients, designers,
contractors and suppliers alike are
all under pressure, both to ena-ble
innovation on live projects
as a matter of urgency and
future-proof investment
at the same time. The
combination of inclu-sive
interoperability
through CDE, plus
speed of deploy-ment,
affordability
and flexibility via
SaaS, help create
optimum condi-tions
for return on
investment (ROI).
A recent Smart-
Market report for
McGraw Hill Con-struction
found 75
per cent of BIM users
reported ROI benefits.
Market confidence is
building and a sense of
urgency growing. Latest
figures from the Royal Insti-tution
of Chartered Surveyors
(RICS) show 72 per cent surveyed
now believe it is crucial to invest in
BIM within the next 12 months.
Engagement is everywhere and the
benefits of BIM are all dependent on
who you are and what you do within
the construction lifecycle, concludes
Alun Baker, managing director EMEA,
4Projects by Viewpoint. “Clients are
concerned with whole life cost, from
concept to operation, and efficiencies
that can be made to bring this down,”
says Mr Baker.
“Contractors want to win BIM work
which could be adversely affected if
they don’t adapt. Driving the efficien-cies
of BIM helps them in their involve-ment
in the lifecycle.
“Therefore, across the board, the
business imperative is clear – the time
to act on BIM is now.”
To find out more contact 4Projects
by Viewpoint on 0845 330 9007
or e-mail info@4projects.com
www.4projects.com/4BIM
With the BIM boom imminent,
the priority is getting firms
over the decision-making hurdle and
into the game in time to make the
most of the opportunities emerging
“The problem is that the majority
of construction contracts are not very
collaborative. The relationship between
parties often ends up being an adver-sarial
one, with each party incentivised
to look after its own interests, rather
than the wider interests of a project.”
For the industry to get where it
wants to go, things will need to change.
Old ways of working will be out and, in
the opinion of Mr Hallam, BIM has the
potential to fulfil the transformative
role and be the engine of change need-ed,
pushing and pulling construction
across the innovation threshold.
The market is ready for new mindsets
and legal models, he concludes, as evi-denced
by the results of a recent survey
undertaken by Pinsent Masons. “There
is a feeling that BIM and associated
technological advances are fostering a
more connected, communicative and
joined-up approach in the construction
industry, particularly among the ‘lead-ers
of tomorrow’,” he says.
This could be a catalyst that finally
drives the construction sector towards
a truly collaborative way of working. If
so, it is inevitable that forms of con-tract
will need to change.
OF RICS DELEGATES SAY IT’S CRUCIAL TO
INVEST IN NEXT 12 MONTHS
“This sentiment is supported in the
survey,” says Mr Hallam. “Two-thirds
believed that the existing forms of
contract and approaches taken to
contracting are not fit for purpose in
a BIM-enabled world. Further, 69 per
cent said that existing contracts fail
to adequately address the means by
which collaborative contracting can be
achieved. This is evidence of an indus-try
crying out for a different approach.”
This appetite for change is being
fuelled not just by government policy,
but by opportunity for competitive ad-vantage
for business differentiators,
according to Steve Spark, vice presi-dent
business development, EMEA,
at 4Projects by Viewpoint. “For pro-ject
delivery teams, benefits can in-clude
improved cost efficiencies and
control, time savings, risk mitigation
and defect minimisation, reduced re-source
consumption and waste costs,
plus better workflow management,”
he says.
“For asset managers, on the other
hand, benefits are being realised in
terms of reduced cost of construc-tion,
operation and maintenance,
enhanced facilities management,
smarter decision-making on design
issues, better lifecycle management
and ‘soft landings’.
“For all concerned, supply-chain inte-gration
and process management hold
the keys to unlocking project and asset
data, and to bringing home the bene-fits.
Ultimately, it is all about the data.”
To turn information into intelligence,
project data communication needs to
be in a language and format that each
individual recipient can both under-stand
and use in their own business
environment, as well as share with
other actors, no matter what their re-spective
system.
The universal platform that enables
this degree of integrated workflow and
unleashes the true collaboration po-tential
of BIM,
the game-changer
for construction, is
a common data environ-ment
(CDE), as marketing pro-grammes
manager at 4Projects by
Viewpoint Adam Page explains.
“The 4Projects CDE brings together
all project information in one place. It
is the central point for data. Multiple
parties feed their data, such as doc-uments,
drawings and plans, into the
CDE and, even though each stakehold-er
might be using different software
within the BIM technology eco system,
it all integrates so it can be accessed
by everyone – there are no technology
barriers,” he says.
“Utilised across the full lifecycle,
the CDE is vital for control and visibil-ity,
efficiency and performance, plus
delivery of the quality of information
necessary for asset-phase utilisation.
Who you are dictates what data you
need from the CDE, with data the key
driver for BIM.”
Satisfying data requirements is not
just a matter of what is accessed or
shared, but how, when and where. Col-laborative
BIM needs to be easy and cost
effec-tive
to
rollout beyond or-ganisational
barriers across
a diverse supply chain. There should be
no limits on users and no need for IT or
procurement departments.
HAVE YOU BEEN ON A PROJECT USING BIM IN THE PAST YEAR?
2014
2013 54%
WHAT ISSUES DO YOU FACE WHEN IMPLEMENTING BIM?
TOP BENEFITS CITED BY CONTRACTORS IN EUROPE
YES NO
EUROPE ALL REGIONS
14%
Source: McGraw Hill Construction 2013
PROCESS BENEFITS OF BIM
COLLABORATE WITH
OWNERS/DESIGN FIRMS
BETTER COST
CONTROLS/
PREDICTABILITY
PROJECT BENEFITS OF BIM
REDUCE ERRORS
AND OMISSIONS
REDUCE OVERALL
PROJECT DURATION
INTERNAL BENEFITS OF BIM
ENHANCING YOUR
ORGANISATION’S IMAGE
INCREASED PROFITS
BIM
2014 2013
COST 5%
13%
TRAINING 17%
15%
CULTURE
CHANGE
53%
23%
LEGAL 1%
0%
SOFTWARE 10%
13%
EFFECTIVE
COLLABORATION
13%
15%
Source: RICS Conference Survey 2014
54%
47%
47%
BIM TECHNOLOGY
ECO SYSTEM
Commercial Feature
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Top-Five Materials Waste And Sustainability
1.
3.
5.
This innovation could one day replace traditional solar panels, providing a
near-transparent alternative that can be applied to glazing or other building
materials. University of Oxford offshoot company Oxford Photovoltaics has
developed the thin-film solar cells using the mineral crystal perovskite, a
semi-transparent material, which when applied in an ultra-thin layer to sur-faces
is able to generate power from the sun’s rays. The firm’s scientists are
currently able to achieve a 15 per cent power conversion rate using a scaled-down
version of the technology, but this is expected to rise to over 20 per
The first prototype building incorporating a bioreactive facade filled with
algae was opened in Hamburg last year. Designed by Austria’s Splitterwerk
Architects and structural engineer Arup, the four-storey residential block
incorporates 64 “double-glazed” panels filled with a mixture of water and
unicellular algae, which grow in response to direct sunlight. The algae is
harvested and processed to produce methane gas that is either stored locally
or used to help fuel the building. The system also provides a clever source
of shading, as sunlight speeds up the rate of algae growth the glass becomes
cloudy, blocking direct sunlight from entering the building.
CURRENT AD
WRONG SIZE
Property
development
Page 18
SMART WALLS,
3D PRINTING AND
TOOTHBRUSHES
STRAIGHT TALKING ON
CIRCULAR
ECONOMY Innovative and sometimes offbeat
building materials are revolutionising
construction. Stephen Cousins has
Raconteur’s top five Construction and demolition, the largest producers
of waste in the UK, may only be paying lip service
to green initiatives, writes Jim McClelland
THIN-FILM SOLAR CELLS
SMARTWALL
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing found its first application on a live
construction project last September. When installing a polymer ETFE roof
over a garden at the 6 Bevis Marks office project in the City of London, main
contractor Skanska drafted in industrial 3D printing firm Quickparts to pro-duce
cladding for eight complex interfaces at the tops of steel columns sup-porting
the roof. Quickparts used a selective laser sintering machine that
fuses layers of powdered Nylon PA 12, to build up the complex shapes based
on the architect’s original computer-aided design file. The process was faster
and cheaper than alternative spliced steel-plate options.
TOOTHBRUSH INSULATION
BIOREACTIVE FACADES
3D-PRINTED CLADDING
2.
4.
cent in the near future, more efficient than regular silicon-based solar panels.
Installing partition walls in large buildings can be complex and time consum-ing.
Tradesmen erect half the structure, then electrical engineers install and
test their kit, and finally walls are closed up taped, joined and decorated. The
SmartWall intelligent walling system, developed by contracting group Laing
O’Rourke, is manufactured in a factory and delivered to site in a finished
state, incorporating cables and ductwork plus external plasterboard, then
simply dropped into position by crane, simultaneous with the superstructure.
The system is pre-treated for weathering, and also avoids the large amount
of noise, dust and waste that can be generated when cutting plasterboard.
Brick walls filled with unconventional insulation materials, including more
than 2,000 toothbrushes, video cassettes, floppy disks, CD cases and old
denim jeans form part of an innovative Waste House currently on-site in
Brighton. The two-storey building, designed by architects BBM and built
by Mears Group in collaboration with the University of Brighton, is being
built entirely out of unwanted waste, including carpet tiles, car-tyre rubber,
and nuts and bolts and timber decking from an old promenade. It aims to
demonstrate how buildings can avoid the carbon emissions associated with
the manufacture and delivery of conventional products.
Truth is the built-environment sector has been
doing little more than paying lip service to actual
engagement with the circular economy
Construction is a big, hun-gry
and dirty beast. In
the UK it consumes more
than 400 million tonnes of materi-als
a year and, including demolition
and excavation, produces almost 80
million tonnes of waste.
Tidying up this mess is expensive.
Managing and disposing of waste has
been costing the industry around 1
per cent of turnover – 30 per cent or
more of pre-tax profits. The sector is,
however, getting cleaner.
Under recessionary pressures to
realise cost savings and resource
efficiencies, as well as operate with-in
tightening regulatory and fiscal
frameworks, construction has been
making steady, necessary progress
against waste reduction targets over
the last five years.
Albeit including a short-sight-ed
element of “downcycling” for
the sake of tax avoidance, positive
commercially motivated trends are
in evidence, acknowledges Richard
Buckingham, head of construction
and refurbishment at WRAP, an or-ganisation
which advises industry
on recycling more and wasting less.
“Waste management and minimi-sation,
recycling and landfill reduc-tions
have clear financial benefits,
and have gained ground. Among
major contractors, strong perfor-mance
is achieved regularly; it is not
unusual for landfill diversion rates
over 90 per cent.”Such incremen-tal
advances are beneficial in terms
of edging towards more sustainable
business models, but do not add up
to any overarching vision of strategic
and systemic change.
Holding the sector back from
making that imaginative leap into
the brave new world of the so-called
circular economy is a pervasive re-covery-
era tendency towards risk
aversion, according to Mr Bucking-ham,
with the result that inspiration-al
project success stories are, as yet,
in short supply.
“Examples of buildings or in-frastructure
addressing design for
deconstruction, solutions to enable
change of use, plus low embodied
carbon are rare,” he says. “Where is
the iPod building to revolutionise the
Walkman building?”
The Amsterdam Park 20|20 of-fice-
led development offers one
exemplar. Given that the primary
architect is William McDonough –
co-creator with Michael Braungart of
the cradle-to-cradle design standards
– this is perhaps not surprising. The
exception proves the rule.
Truth is the built-environment sec-tor
as a joined-up whole has been do-ing
little more than paying lip service
thus far to actual engagement with
the concept of the circular economy.
“I don’t believe the UK con-struction
industry has really en-tertained
the circular economy
as a serious proposition,” says
architect Nitesh Magdani, director
of sustainability at BAM Construct
UK. “The government needs to de-fine
the business case for UK plc,
understand potential benefits and
put some form of regulation in
place, as they have done with the
low-carbon agenda.”
Individual pieces of the jigsaw
are in place though, argues Martin
Clarke, director of the World Con-crete
Forum: “UK concrete gets it
– recycling, reuse, zero harm, more
from less are all mantras, we set tar-gets,
measure and report.”
However, the global problem is
getting bigger, not smaller, he coun-sels,
with a cultural shift needed
to get us off the current death-by-growth
trajectory.
“Concentration on change in
Western Europe only, in our sector,
will not change much. China and In-dia
must be put at the centre of our
attention – they have one shot to get
it right,” he says.
“Getting away from volume-re-lated
measurement of sales would
help. We must strive for more from
less right around the cycle of cra-dle-
to-cradle. Globally, we shift an
incredible 60 billion tonnes of raw
materials and finished products, a
volume that is growing rapidly. Get-ting
the same job done on any given
project with more profit but less vol-ume
is the key to circularity.”
A compelling commercial case for
building buyers and users is the cli-ent-
side catalyst for such a tectonic
shift, according to Graham Hilton,
director of the Alliance for Sus-tainable
Building Products (ASBP).
“Recognising cost and resource
benefits of extending building life
through adaptation and re-use of
components is the best way to drive
positive change, but requires a new
commercial approach which looks
at whole-life costs not just up-front
build costs,” he says.In terms of the
immediate game plan, he suggests
the biggest prize is to be found in the
public sector, where infrastructure
decisions are high risk, requiring
long-term financial commitments, in
danger of creating “stranded assets”.
“These assets become liabilities,
requiring expensive adaptation or
demolition to reclaim land, after
relatively modest changes in circum-stance
or use. Flexible techniques
for deconstruction and re-use
would extend building life and open
cheaper and lower-risk financing,”
says Mr Hilton.
DECONSTRUCTION
The ASBP is pioneering a circu-lar-
economy initiative called RE-Fab,
conceived to create a framework for
development of flexible-life build-ings,
underpinned by a series of de-sign,
build and operation principles
that will facilitate design for decon-struction
and re-use.
Looking down the track towards a
sustainable future for construction,
Mr Hilton imagines an industry very
different from the one on view today.
“In our RE-Fab world, in 2050, design
for adaptation deconstruction and re-use
would characterise mainstream
construction, with a massive reduc-tion
in abandonment and demolition
of unsuitable building stock,” he says.
“Buildings would consist of du-rable,
re-usable components, with
use and re-use part of a widespread
‘accounting’ system, based on BIM
[building information modelling],
and demonstrating the cost and en-vironmental
benefits.
“A building’s records would show
its impact in build, use, refurbish-ment
and at end-of-life, forming
part of the ongoing value chain in
all its forms.”
For Mr Buckingham, any such vi-sion
of the industry of tomorrow has
to be founded on the twin premises
that all new buildings are carbon pos-itive
and all refurbishments result in
carbon neutrality, so yoking together
the energy and waste agendas, and
placing carbon centre-circle.
Construction in the age of the cir-cular
economy would bring potential
benefits across the board, in the eyes
of Mr Magdani, who lists the win-ners,
in order of impact, as clients,
manufacturers, enlightened develop-ers,
demolition contractors (the new
brokers), designers and contractors.
He concludes: “Without exploring
benefits and impacts to the whole
value chain, we will probably be
slow to see change in our complex
industry.” For construction, closing
the loop is a team game. “There are
very few ‘experts’ in the field of cir-cular
economy at present, but for us
to embrace opportunities to increase
skills and employment, we need to
work together.”
The Floating Pavilion
at Rotterdam,
Netherlands is
an experiment
in sustainable
architecture and
climate-proof
development
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Opinion
Best-selling author on architecture
Phyllis Richardson calls for better design of small
homes to house a growing population with dignity
It’s not building less that gives
us more, but building better
FUTURE OF CONSTRUCTION
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P06
Commercial Feature
Shift from output to outcomes
Although there’s a huge amount of infrastructure investment
taking place, the future of construction will not be wholly about
building, but about delivering better service to customers – us
Functioning, efficient infrastruc-ture
is fundamental to the success
of economies and societies, yet
resource constraints, population
growth, climate change and limited
investment threaten infrastructure
in ways never experienced before.
The challenge to the UK infrastruc-ture
industry is to deliver ever-better
service despite the constraints. The
future of construction will be in help-ing
the infrastructure industry to meet
these challenges, but it needs to be
transformed to achieve this.
A paradigm shift is afoot in the infra-structure
industry as its focus moves
from building assets to providing bet-ter
customer service.
For an emerging economy’s infra-structure,
the primary aim is to build
new assets and to get them into use
fast – construction is all about output.
But in the UK today, our built envi-ronment
is characterised by highly de-veloped,
existing infrastructure. For ex-ample,
the total value of existing water
infrastructure in England and Wales is
£350 billion, while the value of new wa-ter
sector construction is £1.8 billion
a year. It’s a similar picture across the
road, rail, electricity and gas sectors.
It is the high level of development of
this established infrastructure that is
pivotal to the change under way: asset
owners and operators are increasingly
focusing on the service they provide to
their ultimate customers – the payers
of fares, bills and taxes, who use the
infrastructure: us.
And for the construction industry,
this has profound implications. In-stead
of focusing on output, construc-tion
needs to focus on outcomes for
the ultimate customer.
“We’re looking at a future for the
construction industry that is about
more than just construction; it’s
about customer outcomes, value and
efficiency,” says Mark Enzer, practice
manager for water at global engineer-ing
consultants Mott MacDonald.
Customers want better service,
lower bills and less disruption. The
fare-payer cares about getting a seat,
not about how the capacity on their
train line is going to be increased.
Therefore, the construction indus-try
can improve outcomes for the
customer in a variety of ways, not only
by building new assets, but also by in-creasing
the capacity, efficiency and
resilience of existing ones. This can
be achieved by managing demand,
exploiting technology and improving
delivery to increase efficiency, capaci-ty
and resilience.
With a focus on outcomes, con-struction
will not always be the right
answer. And if the right answer in-volves
less construction, the industry
should in future be rewarded for the
value they add for the customers, not
just for the assets they build.
A range of emerging new practices
are enabling the construction industry
to respond to the changing infrastruc-ture
landscape.
TRANSFORMATION IN DELIVERY
The use of building information mod-elling
(BIM) is already beginning to trans-form
construction. BIM facilitates both
design for manufacture and assembly
(DfMA) and offsite manufacture, offer-ing
manufacturing-style efficiencies and
making construction a matter of logis-tics
and assembly. DfMA enables new
assets or asset enhancements to be
slotted into place in a fraction of the time
required for traditional building. Benefits
for customers come in the form of less
disruption and lower bills.
outcomes can enable very substantial
efficiencies throughout the process of
delivery. Many potentially transforma-tive
solutions are produced by suppliers
and manufacturers, tiers of the supply
chain that historically have had a weak
voice. Integration helps them to realise
their innovative potential and get val-ue-
adding ideas to the customer.
TRANSFORMATION IN
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
The unstoppable rise of information
is one of the major trends that offers
more opportunity than threat for the
infrastructure industry. BIM is funda-mentally
about information, and it is
proving revolutionary in enabling col-laboration
and integration. But it is
only the tip of an information manage-ment
iceberg.
BIM can provide continuity of in-formation
throughout the delivery
process, from design to construc-tion.
But there is even more value in
managing information throughout
the asset’s whole lifecycle, combin-ing
data about its physical properties,
condition and performance.
“Smart infrastructure”, fitted with
instruments providing real-time feed-back
and control is now being created.
And, as information technology begins
to master big data management, an
“internet of infrastructure” is emerg-ing,
offering the potential for even
more customer-centred solutions that
are not predicated on construction.
“Asset owners must provide
leadership to shift the construction
industry’s focus from output to out-comes.
They understand the needs
and expectations of their customers
and can structure investment, pro-curement
and reward to drive the
industry to meet them,” says Richard
Shennan, practice manager for build-ings
at Mott MacDonald.
A number of leading infrastructure
industry organisations are already
showing the way, creating the environ-ment
and imperative for change.
Transformation is in the air and, as
the construction sector responds we,
the customers, will benefit.
To find out more: www.mottmac.com
e-mail: mark.enzer@mottmac.com
Instead of focusing on output,
construction needs to focus on
outcomes for the ultimate customer
Mark Enzer, practice manager, Mott MacDonald
BIM also facilitates product-based
delivery in which standard components
and assemblies are developed once,
but used many times across a whole
programme of work. This creates the
potential to develop designs by picking
from a BIM “product catalogue”.
Both approaches are closely al-lied
to carbon and cost-savings. The
government’s Infrastructure Carbon
Review, published in November 2013,
showed that reducing carbon reduces
cost in the construction and operation
of infrastructure assets. Simply, car-bon
is a measure of resource and en-ergy
efficiency. Companies that have
set out to reduce carbon have driven
innovation yielding better solutions
and commercial savings.
TRANSFORMATION IN INTEGRATION
The construction industry is made
up of numerous tiers, collectively
termed the supply chain. Historically,
this supply chain has been fractured,
but there is great value in integrating it,
particularly for long-term programmes
of work. Alliances based on aligning
business objectives with customer
Above: The UK’s
Anglian Water has
pioneered use of BIM
and product-based
delivery to enhance
its infrastructure
network with minimum
disruption and
cost to customers;
installation of this
water treatment unit
cost 20 per cent
less, was 90 per cent
faster and involved
40 per cent fewer
carbon emissions
than a conventional
construction solution
FOR BETTER HOUSING BIGGER IDEAS
The housing debate is a lot
about numbers. In fact, a
recent forum discussion
as part of the London Festival of
Architecture was titled Housing Lon-doners:
Is it Just a Numbers Game?
And there are some big numbers to
contend with. It is estimated that by
2050, 70 per cent of the world’s pop-ulation
will be living in cities. There
will be ten million people living in
London by 2031, 78 million in the
UK by 2050.
Statistics may vary, but there is
general agreement the overall urban
population will continue to grow,
and that there will be a greater need
for cities to provide housing and
amenities for those people. London
Mayor Boris Johnson has announced
in his 2020 Vision that the capital will
need to add 400,000 new homes in
the next decade, a million by the
mid-2030s.
As the think-tank New London
Architecture has discovered, there
are more than 200 towers approved
or in planning for the UK capital.
The answer to the increased urban
population, according to most peo-ple
who would preserve green-belt
land, is density.
But density alone is not a solution
and vertical living is not the only way
to achieve density. Even if we did all
agree to be housed in tower blocks,
what should they look like?
This isn’t a polemic about the
proliferation of high-rise buildings
in London, but an argument for
re-thinking space. As the author of
several books on small buildings, I
feel it’s more important now than
ever to appreciate the kind of inno-vation
and ingenuity that goes on at
the small scale, in order to help us
address issues such as housing.
In London most of us do not suffer
housing “obesity”, as in the United
States, where the average house size
continues to rise, and I am not advo-cating
small size for its own sake, but
to focus on better design.
In my local area, a particular land-lord
has been in the news for build-ing
flats under the pavement and
one consisting of “a bed in a kitch-en”.
These are all very compact and
they are also degrading to live in.
CARBUNCLE
Down the road from me, a student
accommodation scheme earned the
uncoveted Carbuncle Award for the
worst new building in the country.
Its designers didn’t think that stu-dents
would need much natural
light and so included windows that
looked on to a blank wall. These
are just a few examples of small,
suffocating rooms that most people
think of when they hear words like
“density”, and which point up the
difference between building small
and designing well.
But here I want to say that I have
seen, quite literally, the light. In
numerous award-winning schemes
for individual small houses and new
social housing projects, architects
are finding ways to create small-er-
size living environments that are
enhanced by natural light and hu-mane
proportions.
In the Netherlands, a mixed-use
development in Borneo Sporenburg
was one of the first to integrate sub-sidised
and market-value properties
– “mixed tenure”, as they’re called
– with houses of a modest size, but
quality several notches above mini-mum
requirements.
Natural light and good propor-tions
are key, as they are in a new
block of flats, commissioned by the
Peabody Trust and designed by ar-chitects
Pitman Tozer, which faces
on to a railway line in Bethnal Green.
It’s certainly not the most salubrious
site and a real challenge to develop
successfully. But even the 54 square
metres of a one-bedroom flat feel
much more expansive and liveable
than in any other local-authority de-velopments
I have ever visited.
In other projects too numerous
to name, I have seen architects use
light and materials to make entire
houses of 75sq m feel like glamorous
retreats. Anyone who is sceptical
of this claim need only have a look
at the entries for Solar Decathlon
Europe 2014 or last year’s event in
the US, which was won by the team
from Austria who created a house
that would put most developer-built
models of twice the size to shame.
Building small is also more ener-gy-
efficient. Like its competitors,
Team Austria’s LISI (Living Inspired
by Sustainable Innovation) generates
more energy than it uses.
SPECIFICATION
Of course, some of the success
of the small housing I’m citing is
down to a high-design specification,
but in a lot of cases it’s just down to
high-quality design, thoughtful use
of limited resources, including phys-ical
space.
As the Belgian architect Edith
Wouters once put it, it’s about build-ing
houses that “are healthy to live
in and full of delight”. I’ve seen a
house made of shipping containers
that has been so cleverly cut through
with windows and ventilation that it
looks and feels like a luxury hotel
suite, rather than a £30,000 self-build
in Costa Rica.
You only have to look at some
of the great projects being devel-oped
for emergency shelters, such
as Shigeru Ban’s famous card-board-
tube structures – his first
church lasted beyond its ten-year
prediction and is still in use, several
years later after having been moved
to a new site – to see that using mod-ern
technology and some spatial and
material creativity, we can do a lot
with a little.
Many architects, such as Richard
Horden, who created the 2.65-m
cube, super-flexible energy-efficient
Micro-Compact Home, have drawn
on marine and aeronautic design to
derive inspiration for ways to achieve
comfort in small spaces. I don’t think
anyone would call his home “a bed
in a kitchen”, though its design in-cludes
those elements and a whole
lot more besides.
So when people ask me, as they
often do, whether I agree with the
concept that “less is more”, I say it’s
not building less that gives us more,
but building better. This is what the
best designers working with small
spaces tend to do. Even if we are
driven by numbers, having to work
with a little less space is no excuse
for poor design.
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Property Development
NEW
WAVE WATERLOO
WHERE IT’S HOT TO
BUILD IN THE CAPITAL
Fortunately for London’s rebounding economy, the capital has
no shortage of what the property industry calls “oven-ready” sites.
Here’s a selection of future hotspots
BUILDING LONDON’S
James Roberts, head of commercial research
at property consultants Knight Frank, overviews
central London’s next generation of development
Central London’s com-mercial
property market
is being shaped by two
realities. The capital’s economy is
rebounding, but recent years have
seen the volume of new develop-ment
fail to keep pace with demand
for office space.
While on the face of it the London
skyline is littered with cranes, more
than 40 per cent of office space cur-rently
being built is already let to ten-ants
ahead of completion. If we look
at buildings completing this year the
figure is close to 50 per cent let.
Presently there is 4.5 million
square feet of office space under
construction on a speculative basis,
without a tenant yet secured. How-ever,
the last year has seen firms in
central London take 5.5 million sq ft
of new-build office space, partly by
raiding the pipeline and acquiring
space under construction, so clearly
there is a mismatch between supply
and demand.
The situation is of particular con-cern
given that demand for offices is
growing. A new wave of technology
and creative firms has been expand-ing
in the capital, forming the largest
source of demand for the last three
years. Tech giants Google and Ama-zon
have both acquired new London
headquarters and then decided they
needed to acquire additional space
on top.
Also, after years in the doldrums,
the financial sector is again taking
office space, with major deals in
the City by fund managers Schrod-
ers and M&G, and Dutch bank ING.
With financial demand re-emerging,
other City industries drawing work
from the finance industry, such as
law and accounting, have been more
active in the office market.
Consequently, London is faced
by a new wave of demand from the
technology sector, just as its tradi-tional
financial and business services
industries are starting to re-enter the
office market. Supply is consequent-ly
under pressure. Vacant office
space currently equates to 7 per cent
of built stock, down from 11 per cent
five years ago.
Given these supply and demand
pressures, property developers are
readying the next wave of projects.
Former industrial districts can
provide developers with a blank
canvas on which to build in scale.
Another option is redeveloping older
office buildings which are approach-ing
technical obsolescence. There
was a building spike in the late-1980s
and early-1990s, and many of the
buildings from this era are ripe for
redevelopment.
Demand up to now has been
strongest in trendy districts, such as
Shoreditch and Fitzrovia, which are
popular with technology and media
firms. However, increasing financial
demand will encourage developers
to look again at the traditional core
districts, such as the area around the
Bank of England and Mayfair, which
is popular with hedge funds and pri-vate
equity firms.
Recently approved by the Secretary
of State, the 1950s Shell Centre is set
to be redeveloped as One and Two
Southbank Place, with 550,000 sq
ft of office space, 764 homes and
80,000 sq ft of retail space. A rede-velopment
of the nearby Elizabeth
House site will deliver 740,000 sq
ft of office space and 142 homes
adjacent to Waterloo mainline rail-way
station.
NINE ELMS AND BATTERSEA
The Battersea Power Station site is to
see the development of 3,500 new
homes, 1.6m sq ft of offices, plus re-tail
and leisure, on the 42-acre site.
Work on the extension of the North-ern
Line to Nine Elms and Battersea
Power Station is expected to begin
next year. Also the United States
and Netherlands embassies are plan-ning
to relocate to new buildings in
Nine Elms.
VICTORIA
Demolition and redevelopment of
older stock on and around Victoria
Street is resulting in a transforma-tion
of this area. Next year will see
the completion of the Zig Zag Build-ing
on Victoria Street, delivering
188,000 sq ft of offices and 37,000 sq
ft of retail. Near the railway station,
the first phase of the Nova scheme,
comprising 480,000 sq ft of offices,
80,000 sq ft of retail and 170 luxury
apartments, is under construction,
with another 125,000 sq ft of offices
and retail to follow.
NORTHERN CITY
The White Collar Factory on City
Road is to be an urban campus in
London’s Tech City, consisting of five
buildings set around a courtyard.
The project comprises 215,000 sq ft
of offices and 11,000 sq ft of retail.
The urban campus concept is to be
explored further with the proposed
regeneration of the historic Smith-field
Market. The master plan for the
Smithfield Quarter is for 340,000 sq
ft of offices in three buildings above
retail and leisure. Vacant since a
fire in 1964, The Goodsyard site off
Shoreditch High Street could accom-modate
up to 2,000 homes, between
300-600,000 sq ft of offices, as well
as shops and leisure facilities, and 1.8
hectares of public areas.
CITY CORE
100 Bishopsgate is a scheme com-prising
a five-storey podium suited
to trading floors and a 40-storey
signature tower. It is set among the
City’s skyscraper cluster, between 30
St Mary Axe (aka The Gherkin) and
the Salesforce Tower, joining other
iconic towers such as 20 Fenchurch
Street and 122 Leadenhall Street. In
the next few years, several of the
1980s phase-one buildings in the
Broadgate estate will see lease expi-ries,
freeing them up for redevelop-ment.
This will provide an exciting
new phase for the world-famous
City estate.
MIDTOWN
Formerly known as the Internation-al
Press Centre, 1 New Street Square
will consist of 243,000 sq ft of offices
over 16 floors and 5,000 sq ft of re-tail.
Midtown’s future mega-project
will be the development of the new
Goldman Sachs headquarters. This
will be a one million sq ft building
at Plumtree Court and Fleet Build-ings,
and is expected to complete
around 2017.
MAYFAIR AND ST JAMES’S
Individual sites tend to be relatively
small in this district, but as build-ings
here command the highest
rents in the Western world, the de-velopments
are very exclusive. Up-and-
coming schemes include 1 New
Burlington Place with 80,000 sq
ft of offices, 8 St James’s Square at
65,500 sq ft, and 1 and 2 St James’s
Market at 214,000 sq ft. Just to the
north of Mayfair is the new Marble
Arch Tower scheme which will con-sist
of 57 luxury homes and 84,000
sq ft of offices.
BLACKFRIARS ROAD
Near the Tate Modern gallery, a pro-posed
new scheme at Ludgate and
Sampson houses, to be called The
Bankside Quarter, will include 1.5
million sq ft of offices, 489 homes
and retail space. The nearby 20
Blackfriars Road site has a proposed
42-storey residential skyscraper
scheme and a neighbouring 23-floor
office building.
PADDINGTON
There are plans to further expand
the Paddington Central estate with 4
and 5 Kingdom Street, which will to-tal
350,000 sq ft of office space. The
55 North Wharf Road office scheme
will add another 260,000 sq ft of of-fice
to stock. The final phase of the
Merchant Square scheme will deliv-er
a further 167,000 sq ft of office
space, while as a result of Crossrail,
the Triangle site on Bishop’s Bridge
Road could see 200,000 sq ft of of-fices
developed.
WOOD WHARF
To the east of the established Ca-nary
Wharf estate, Wood Wharf will
consist of 2.6 million sq ft of office
space, 340,000 sq ft of shops and
more than 3,000 homes set around
a water park.
The Zig Zag Building,
Victoria
Battersea Power Station site
Goodsyard, Shoreditch
10 Bishopsgate
1 New Street Square
Nova, Victoria
Bankside Quarter
1 and 2 Southbank Place, Waterloo
Merchant Square
DBOX for the Carlyle Group and PLP Architecture
![FUTURE OF CONSTRUCTION
25/06/14
EDITION #0265 P03 RACONTEUR.NET
/COMPANY/RACONTEUR-MEDIA
/RACONTEUR.NET
@RACONTEUR
1
i
f
t
Overview
or better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
the fortunes of the con-struction
industry and UK economy
appear wedded together.
In 2008, when the UK economy
went down as a whole, construction
fell faster and further, but bounced
back stronger, in 2009. Creating
outputs of £83 billion on the road to
recovery in 2012, the sector swelled
to provide one in every fifteen jobs
at the end of last year.
For growth to be sustainable,
however, it is not enough simply
that order books become fuller and
business more profitable – the sector
needs to change.
Unfortunately, change does not
suit everyone. Retreating to the com-fort
zone of “business as usual”, pur-suing
safe bets and fast bucks is slam-ming
the engine of transformation
into reverse. Chairman of Buildoff-site
Richard Ogden can already see
warning signs in rising material pric-es
and labour rates.
“There is little evidence that
growth is being driven by increased
productivity,” he says. “An absence
means inflation and a risk to jobs
and aspirations. The key is innova-tion
in product and process.”
Enabled by modern manufactur-ing,
digital technology and smart
logistics, the systemic innovation
Mr Ogden envisions takes place in a
global marketplace, where countries
and firms compete to produce what
is essentially a consumer product.
“I make no apologies for regarding
the construction industry as just an-other
manufacturing sector. I want
Construction may be booming, but the industry
must rebuild itself to face a challenging future,
writes Jim McClelland
choice in terms of size, specification
and performance – in short, I want to
be able to customise my purchase,”
he says. “I want rapid delivery and
assembly on-site, right-first-time
quality, performance in use that
matches the marketing. That is what
I expect when I buy a new car and I
can’t see why construction should be
any different.”
While not buying into the au-tomative
analogy, Shaun McCarthy,
chairman of the Supply Chain Sus-tainability
School, a collaboration
between 17 major contractors to
develop competence of more than
5,000 sub-contractors, still sees les-sons
to be learnt from manufactur-ing,
particularly around benefits of
integrated modelling.
“The BIM [building information
modelling] revolution is coming. It
can be transformational. However, it
requires completely different skillsets
from management and staff,” he says.
The revolution will be cultural,
not technical. Out go old adversarial
attitudes and in come new collabo-rative
ways of working. Citing “in-telligent
client” roles driving meg-aprojects,
such as Crossrail and the
Olympic Park, Mr McCarthy argues
that, without such a gearshift, tech-nological
potential may be wasted.
“We are seeing flat-pack houses
in Sweden, homes created using
3D-printing in China, concrete that
absorbs carbon, the list goes on. With-out
culture change these innovations
could wither on the vine,” he says.
Change will depend, of course,
not on a matter of either technology
or people, but both together. Head
of facilities management and Plan A
at Marks & Spencer Munish Datta ex-plains:
“I think the government’s In-dustrial
Strategy: Construction 2025
summarises transformative factors
rather well: ‘An industry that at-tracts
and retains a diverse group of
multi-talented people’ and ‘leads the
world in research and innovation,
transformed by digital design’. One
cannot be achieved without the oth-er
– technical innovation requires
cultural change and vice versa.”
What Whitehall strategy might
promise on paper is not, however,
being delivered with urgency or
certainty by Parliament in practice,
according to John Alker, director of
policy and communications at the
UK Green Building Council.
“The main thing that risks slow-ing
the rate of change is the state
of government policy – to date,
the main driver. Absolutely critical
policies are still in a state of flux,
notably regulations for minimum
performance in existing stock
and, despite the Queen’s Speech,
details of ‘zero carbon’ for new
build,” he says.
For construction, Mr Alker ar-gues,
taking the future of the sus-tainable
business model into its own
hands is starting to look like more
than just a desirable option; it is be-coming
essential.
“We have to make the business
case for sustainability in its own
right. That means taking into
account ‘whole-life’ value, not
just reduced resource and util-ity
costs, but also the benefit to
people in terms of health and pro-ductivity.
This is the hottest topic
in sustainable construction right
now,” he says.
Construction can yet rewrite its
own playbook and Mr Datta at M&S
sees grounds for optimism.
“I have high hopes the industry
can learn from the not-so-distant
past and define a new type of growth
borne out of a very different near-fu-ture
landscape – climate resistant,
frugal with resources, smart, cir-cular,
diverse, global and ultra-effi-cient,”
he says.
The question is who will step up
to the plate?
“The industry needs transforma-tional
players,” concludes Mr Mc-
Carthy. “In the 1960s, the Japanese
changed the way we thought about
cars; Microsoft made computers
accessible to all; Apple changed
mobile technology; Tesla is about
to transform the car industry again.
Where is the transformational lead-er
in construction?”
The future of construction is un-built;
the call for change-makers is out.
Prepare for business as unusual.
Distributed in
Publishing Manager
David Kells
Managing Editor
Peter Archer
Production Manager
Natalia Rosek
Commissioning Editor
Jim McClelland
Design, Infographics & Illustration
The Design Surgery
www.thedesignsurgery.co.uk
Contributors
STEPHEN COUSINS
Freelance journalist specialising in construction, architecture,
environment and technology, he writes regularly for RIBA
Journal, Construction Manager and Infoworks magazines.
MCCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, speaker, writer and social-media
commentator, his specialisms include built environment,
corporate social responsibility and ecosystem services.
JAMES ROBERTS
Head of commercial research at property consultants
Knight Frank.
MIKE SCOTT
Freelance journalist, specialising in environment and
business, he writes regularly for the Financial Times,
Bloomberg New Energy Finance and 2degrees Network.
RUTH SLAVID
Freelance journalist specialising in architecture, landscape
and lighting, she is the author of six books about architecture.
MARK SMULIAN
Freelance journalist, he is a former editor of Housing Today.
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feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3428 5230 or
e-mail info@raconteur.net
Raconteur Media is a leading European publisher of special interest
content and research. It covers a wide range of topics, including
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reports are exclusively published within The Times, The Sunday
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The information contained in this publication has been obtained
from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal
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© Raconteur Media
F
It is not enough simply that order books
become fuller and business more
profitable – the sector needs to change
THE FUTURE
IS UNBUILT
JIM McCLELLAND
London skyline in
2025 as visualised
by architectural
designer Dave
Edwards for the film,
The Machine](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)