Archive for month: October, 2021

The North East is famous for its walls – Hadrian’s is probably the best known but various town and city walls across the region are also of great historic significance.

Every year, millions of people visit them and marvel at the engineering skills displayed by their construction.

However, a similarly impressive set of walls has been built in recent months and the work has gone almost completely unnoticed.

With a combined length of more than a kilometre, reaching almost 8.8 metres at the highest point and with a surface area in excess of 4,800 square metres, the seven retaining walls now approaching completion at The Rise housing development, in Scotswood, are believed to be the biggest such structures built in the UK in recent years – and there are nine still to build.

They are creating a series of terraces on the steeply sloping Tyneside valley – allowing the construction of new homes which are part of a major regeneration programme in Newcastle’s west end.

The impressive engineering feat is being delivered for the New Tyne West Development Company (NTWDC) a public-private partnership comprising Newcastle City Council and Keepmoat Homes.  It is driving a £265 million project to deliver around 1,800 mixed tenure homes on the 148 acre site.  To date just over 400 have been completed.

Director, Lee McGray, said:  “This work has been steadily progressing for several months, almost unnoticed.  However, it deserves to be recognised as major piece of civil engineering, which is enabling the safe and cost-effective redevelopment of this steeply sloping site.”

Several specialist companies were engaged to determine the best solution  – 3E Consulting Engineers, Retain Solutions the retaining wall contractor, Remedy Geotechnics provided the detailed design and construction drawings for the reinforced soil walls and HMH Civils the groundworks and specialist civil engineering works.

McGray continued:  “After a huge amount of on site testing, technical planning and computer modelling, it was decided that, rather than cut into the hillside, terraces should be created using an Allan Block system, which met the overall stability requirements and offered lower ground bearing pressures.”

Allan Block systems are manufactured and supplied in the UK by Colinwell Masonry.

Remedy Geotechnics Technical Director, Daniel Simpson, explained:  “These are really quite big walls.   I’m not aware of anything of that size being built in the UK recently.  There was quite a lot of analysis involved, and we used a lot of test data in the detailed design of the reinforced soil retaining walls.

 

“This is a modular system, utilising specifically designed hollow blocks.  Starting from the bottom, a layer of blocks is set on a levelling pad and the drain is placed behind.  Granular fill is added and compacted up to the top of the block and the first layer of geogrid is laid.  The process is then continued until the required height is reached.”

The first seven walls so far created have enabled the second phase of housebuilding at The Rise to get fully underway.  The remaining nine walls will be completed as up to 1,400 more new homes are delivered.

Modular housing developer ilke Homes is eyeing a pipeline of 10,000 factory-built homes over the next five years after securing £60m in new funding from Homes England and several other investors.

The developer said that regulatory pressures and ESG criteria have pushed the industry to scale up its modular construction strategies.

Modular developers like ilke have ambitious green agendas. This year, for example, ilke launched ZERO, its initiative to build thousands of zero carbon homes.

Having already delivered five such sites, ilke is aiming to deliver nothing but zero carbon homes by the end of the decade at no extra cost to investors or housing associations.

As part of the £60m fundraise, Homes England, the government’s housing accelerator, provided £30m of debt to ilke Homes, having previously invested £30m in 2019.

Homes England’s backing reflects the government’s explicit support for factory-built homes in combating the country’s housing shortages.

The remaining £30m came from a number of other investors, including The Guinness Partnership, Middleton Enterprises, Sun Capital and TDR Capital.

High (initial) cost of modular

ilke said the new investment will be “transformational”, allowing it to scale up production and accelerate capacity, quadrupling delivery from two to eight homes a day – which would also bring down manufacturing costs.

The company plans to invest heavily in automating more of its manufacturing processes to drive efficiencies, secure more sites and expand its “package deal” strategy, which offers full development service of site, infrastructure and homes.

Being able to deliver that many homes will be crucial for ilke, which reported an operating loss of £34.6m in the year to March 2020 – the latest figures available.

In its annual report, the company said it “continued to be very much in its development phase” and, as a startup business, expected to incur further liabilities over the following year.

As a result, its housebuilding delivery has yet to offset the costs of setting up and expanding its production capacity.

Given growing support from the industry and from the government, ilke – which wants to become one of the 10 largest housebuilders in the UK – has remained optimistic about its potential. Being able to deliver zero carbon homes at no extra cost will become a reality by 2030, the company recently said at the Chartered Institute of Housing annual conference.

Gearing up for the green revolution

Stephen Stone, board member at ilke Homes, said: “This announcement proves that there is a shared ambition among the public and private sectors to find innovative solutions to structural issues that have dogged the construction and housebuilding industries for decades.”

Stone joined ilke Homes earlier this year after 13 years at FTSE 250-listed housebuilder Crest Nicholson where he was CEO and, later, chairman.

He added: “This new funding will help us create hundreds more highly skilled, green jobs for an economy that is gearing up for a green industrial revolution. The fact that our own clients continue to either invest or increase their stakes in the company is testament to the dynamic approach ilke Homes has taken to housebuilding in the past three years.

“Faced with regulatory pressures and a requirement to meet ESG criteria, we are finding that investors are increasingly scaling up their MMC strategies.”

Harry Swales, chief investment officer at Homes England, said: “Manufacturers like ilke Homes are vital if developers are to build new sustainable homes at the pace and scale the country needs.

“This debt facility from the Home Building Fund shows our commitment in increasing productivity and efficiency in construction to meet government’s housing delivery ambitions.”

Source: PlaceTech