Archive for category: Modular Construction

Work to breathe new life into brownfield land at Icknield Port Loop, close to the heart of Birmingham is being accelerated following a £4m investment by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).

The funding paves the way for developers Urban Splash and Places for People to build a further 138 homes using cutting edge construction technology.

At least 20% of these homes will be affordable under the WMCA’s unique definition of affordability.

The WMCA, led by Mayor Andy Street, is committed to a brownfield-first approach to housing, which sees derelict industrial sites cleaned up while precious greenbelt land is protected.

Pioneering brownfield remediation

Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “One of my key priorities since becoming Mayor has been to been build more homes to meet demand, whilst also protecting precious greenbelt land.

“Before the coronavirus outbreak we were building record numbers of homes, and doing so on old, derelict, industrial sites, thanks to our brownfield-first approach.

“Now housebuilding has an even more important role to play in the West Midlands. Not only do we still need to reach our target of 215,000 new homes by 2031 – protecting greenbelt land in the process – but we now need housebuilding and the wider construction sector to help re-boot our regional economy following the coronavirus pandemic.

“The government appears to be behind our plans, and last week wrote us a cheque for £84m to continue our pioneering brownfield remediation work.

“Icknield Port Loop is a prime example of what we are trying to achieve here in the West Midlands, and I am delighted to see this new waterside community come to life.”

Advanced Manufacturing in Construction

Components for many of the new homes at Port Loop, which will efficiently be part of a new 1,150 home waterside neighbourhood, are being built offsite in factory conditions using Advanced Manufacturing in Construction (AMC).

AMC allows entire building sections, complete with insulation, fitted plumbing, electrics and finishes to be manufactured off-site and installed more quickly and with less waste.

Last month, ten homes were craned in and assembled at Port Loop in just four days with social distancing in place.

Councillor Mike Bird, WMCA portfolio holder for housing and land and leader of Walsall Council, commented: “Having been awarded three Structural Timber Awards, a Sunday Times British Homes Award and the prestigious Housing Design Award, the quality of these new homes shows us just how good AMC can be.

“We’re proud that alongside design and construction excellence, we can offer 20% of the homes as affordable housing, under the WMCA’s own locally determined definition.

“What the project results in is a shining example of the sort of housing developments on derelict industrial land that will help us secure a green and inclusive economic recovery for the West Midlands.

“We are doing this through making homes more sustainable and affordable whilst also providing jobs, training courses and apprenticeships for local people to get the skills needed to work in the advanced manufacturing in construction sector.”

Mark Farmer, chair of the WMCA AMC advisory panel, added: “The announcement of this funding deal demonstrates the clear commitment that WMCA has towards not just delivering more high quality housing in the West Midlands but in driving forward its ambitious AMC agenda.

“Urban Splash are at the forefront of housing design and production innovation and through their MoU with WMCA both parties are now leading the way in modernising how we build new homes in this country.”

Port Loop development

The pioneering Port Loop development is being delivered by a joint venture partnership of Urban Splash and Places for People, alongside the landowners Canal & River Trust and Birmingham City Council.

Speaking on behalf of the joint venture partners, project director Adam Willets, commented: “Innovative and forward-thinking construction methods are helping us create a sustainable new community at Port Loop.

“We have been working alongside architects ShedKM and Glenn Howells to create a diverse housing offering, with typologies which have been designed with internal layouts that provide flexible space for residents.

“Using sustainable modular construction technology enables us to spend more time on developing quality inside and outside spaces for a growing city.”

When completed, Icknield Port Loop will include more than 1,000 homes over 43 acres and new spaces for walking and cycling along the Old Line canal.

Source: PBC Today

TLT Solicitors have advised social housing provider Stonewater on a multi-million pound deal with modular housing firm ilke Homes to deliver 120 new affordable homes in Herefordshire.

The partnership, worth £23m, will see ilke Homes provide Stonewater with land for the development, as well as manufacturing the homes in its factory in Knaresborough.

This is the first modular project that Stonewater has embarked on. TLT negotiated the land purchase and the development agreement for Stonewater, including bespoke contract clauses, against a short deadline. The team was led by legal director Sarah Hale alongside associate Andrew Russell.

Matthew Crucefix, director of development (West) at Stonewater, said: “Scaling-up the delivery of affordable homes is vital to ensuring that everyone in the UK has a place to call home.

“As a valued member of our legal services framework it’s really good for us to be able to share exciting new opportunities with firms like TLT.”

Sarah Hale, legal director at TLT, says:

“Modular construction has a critical role to play in addressing the housing crisis in the UK and meeting housebuilding targets, particularly because of the speed at which large numbers of attractive and eco-friendly homes can be delivered cost-effectively.

“It was a privilege to be involved in such a landmark scheme for Stonewater, and I hope we can continue to support social landlords with affordable modular housing in the coming year.”

Source: Business Leader

Here’s a question.: Are Modern Methods of Construction modern? Or are they old?  Or are they both? In 21st century Britain, they are as modern as the Pyramids were in their day, as modern as the Athens Parthenon, Roman Aqueducts, the Coliseum, medieval cathedrals, groin vaults, pointed arches, flying buttresses, flushing toilets or the Eiffel Tower. More than the mere appliance of science, they feature the key elements of modernity:  innovative thinking along with new materials and techniques which transform the construction landscape and the lives of those using them.

The Royal institute of Chartered Surveyors has identified key elements of MMC: these are offsite manufacturing, modular construction and design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA).  Green Life Buildings (GLB) and the expanded polystyrene sandwich panels of the company’s Advanced Building System tick all these boxes and more.
And now another question for a constructors convention quiz. What links a Surrey bungalow built in 2020 with the iconic Paris monument erected in 1889?  Answer: they are both examples of MMCs and share one critical feature: all their components are factory-created. From there, they are brought on site ready to be assembled and bolted together. For the Eiffel Tower, it took hundreds of trips by horse drawn wagons to transport more than 18,000 parts from a suburban Paris factory. By contrast, Green Life Buildings can ship all the Advanced Building System panels needed for a family home on the back of just one truck.

If consultant Mark Farmer is right, the prospects for the British building industry are grim. It faces strong competition from European suppliers of modular housing and shortages of skilled labour exacerbated by Brexit. As Mark Farmer sees it, the British construction sector must modernise or die.
One company helping the drive to modernise the British construction business is Green Life Buildings (GLB). For 15 years, company CEO Chris Williams – a highly qualified and experienced materials scientist – has lived with his family in a house constructed almost entirely of prefabricated expanded polystyrene panels. Chris imported the panels from Italy and with the help of friends built the house himself. It has proven to be an easy-to-run, comfortable home, warm in winter and cool in summer and very energy efficient.
In 2020, start-up GLB is manufacturing the panels in its Corby Northamptonshire factory for supply to the British construction industry. Using Emmedue (M2) Advanced Building System technology, the GLB factory will have a capacity of 700,000 square metres of panels a year, enough to build more than 3,000 average-sized family homes.
The ultra light EPS panels, enclosed in galvanised steel mesh with connectors, can be made to any specification and tailored to work with almost any design. They demonstrate high levels of fire, noise and heat resistance. Transporting the panels is easy and economical: they can be delivered flat-packed to any site. Once the panels are in position, onsite, a sprayer gives each panel a load-bearing concrete coat. Alternatively, the GLB factory can ship complete accommodation modules – using standard templates or bespoke designs – to serve as individual homes or even, if stacked, to create larger, multi-storey buildings. They can be delivered straight or curved in a wide range of sizes to meet demanding architectural specifications.
The M2 Building System may be little known in the UK, but it reflects 35 years of Italian engineering excellence and continuous technical innovation. Globally, these adaptable panels are the building blocks for structures of many shapes and sizes. These include simple homes and imaginatively designed factories, airport terminals, multi-storey hotels and corporate headquarters. They have proven their strength and stability in earthquake zones and their durability in widely varying climates and conditions. More than 100 million square meters of M2 panels in all shapes and sizes, already provide the basis for tens of thousands of buildings world-wide.
At the turn of the 20th century, when the internal combustion engine started to take over from horse power, cars were built by hand like the horse-drawn carriages they were replacing – until Henry Ford introduced the automobile equivalent of MMC. But even the great innovator would have been astonished at today’s electronically sophisticated cars and production technology. A visit to one of today’s automated factories would have had him staring agape at the agile, swivelling robots that outnumber their human co-workers. And who, today, wouldn’t opt to drive a smooth, modern car over one made with technology pre-dating Henry Ford?
Compare British home building with automobile production. How much has fundamentally changed in the last 100 or so years in how Britain builds its houses? Concrete, bricks, mortar, slates or tiles are still the norm with a complex, weather-dependent process taking skilled workers many months to complete. Take a look at a typical noisy, dirty British construction site. From start to finish, streams of trucks deliver the different building materials and components needed for the various stages of the construction process, polluting the neighbourhood and disturbing neighbours, while local traffic is disrupted or diverted to get cranes working onsite.
A number of companies now offer modular offsite construction and systems that qualify for official recognition as MMCs. But Green life Building and its Advanced Building System offer unique advantages to developers and building contractors: the lightness and strength of its basic panels obviate the need for cranes or other external equipment, reducing the risk of onsite accidents and greatly speeding the onsite building process.
Corporate giant JCB has recognised the unique benefits of Green Life Building’s methods and technology, choosing a demonstration of GLB’s Advanced Building System to show off its latest rotating telehandler. In an unusual example of David and Goliath teamwork, GLB and JCB showed how as partners they enhance safety and cut construction time and costs in new house building.
Simple and light to transport and manoeuvre in even the most adverse conditions, M2 panels weigh no more than 5kgs per square metre before concrete coating. This means that one worker, on his own, can easily handle and position a room-high wall panel before it gets its shotcrete treatment in situ. In a striking advance to simplify the whole construction process, M2 panels – used singly or doubled up – can serve as internal or external load-bearing walls, as floors, ceilings and even as stairs or roofs. The unique, unitary approach to construction components guarantees great cost benefits compared to traditional construction methods or to alternative modular MMC systems.
The Green Life Buildings business model also offers builders unique financial advantages compared with other offsite MMCs. Typically, an offsite MMC manufacturer will require 100% upfront payments on order, putting significant strain on a developer’s cash flow, especially where SMEs are concerned.  In stark contrast, GLB charges only a 15% deposit prior to delivery of its Advanced Building System materials.
The very first order for a GMB home is for a bungalow in Surrey; and plans are afoot to create more homes using GLB’s Advanced Building System in the South of England.  With the Green Life Buildings factory gearing up to full production capacity, the GLB team is busily creating networks and partnerships in the construction, housing and finance industries.
With sophisticated finance partners, GLB is working to offer turnkey funded solutions for cash conscious Housing Associations, Local Authorities and developers.  In return for a minimum 20-year lease agreement, GLB’s partners will fund a project, thereby relieving financially constrained or prudent housing bodies of the major burden of raising or finding upfront capital to cover the cost of building works.  With GLB focusing on design and product supply, this financing model should help speed the development of sorely needed new homes. With architects already at work, a Birmingham Housing Association will this year build 30 homes using the scheme.
A survey by the NHBC asked builders and housing associations to list in order of importance the benefits they look for in an MMC. Green Life Buildings meets each one of these goals:

Faster build programme – Complete a watertight shell with GLB in 7-10 days.

Improved build quality – GLB’s Advanced Building System delivers precision tooled components.

Tackle skills shortage – GLB’s factory panels reduce need for a high-skilled, high-cost workforce.

Reduce costs – No cranes needed using GLB materials – one truck delivers a family home.

Improve profitability – Speedier completion with GLB materials minimise capital costs.

To learn more details about how the GLB Advanced Building System can help you build houses better, cheaper and faster, go to the company website, where you can ask questions and get answers from the company’s experts.

www.greenlifebuildings.co.uk

A variety of wall construction membranes, roofing underlays and accessories from Protect Membranes has been used by modular construction specialists Totally Modular as part of an innovative pilot scheme, built offsite on behalf of social housing provider Citizen in partnership with Coventry City Council.

Built in compliance with BOPAS, CML and LA Building Control requirements, the scheme involved the manufacture of a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom two-storey dwelling in light gauge steel frame, built in controlled factory conditions in Totally Modular’s premises in Birmingham. Using this volumetric modular approach, a series of four fully furnished modules were created, delivered to former disused land in Willenhall and craned into place before being connected together onsite.  Taking just twenty weeks from build to delivery, time on site was reduced significantly in comparison to traditional housebuilding construction.  With offsite construction seen as an ideal way to combat the national housing crisis and deliver a quality, precision product, the pilot was deemed to be successful with the potential for roll out across Citizen’s housing stock where suitable land is available.

A number of Protect products were supplied and installed in both dwellings to help ensure the management of moisture within the structures. This ensured condensation control and strict airtightness levels were met to help meet a minimum levels of 4.00m³/h.m.² or lower. This included Protect BarriAir, an internal airtightness and vapour control layer to contribute to energy efficiency and Protect Zytec, a roofing underlay offering strong wind uplift resistance and good vapour permeability.  The roof structure also included Protect RediRoll, a universal dry fixed ventilated ridge and hip system, to deliver 5,000mm2/m of ventilation as well as the Protect Eaves Skirt and dry verge system.
Mick Pettitt, Director at Totally Modular commented, “Protect’s comprehensive package of solutions was the perfect fit for this project to help us meet the detailed specification, using materials that we know are tried and trusted.  In particular, the use of BarriAir helped to achieve strict airtightness and vapour control, contributing to an outstanding energy efficiency rating for both properties that exceeded Building Regulation requirements. The dwellings achieved a 97 and 98 EPC ‘A’ rating, which compares very well to the average rating of band ‘D’ for properties built in England and Wales.   Protect understood our needs and provided detailed technical support along the way, whilst ensuring our products were delivered on time to meet our busy schedule.”
Richard Whittaker, Director of Development at Citizen, said: “The products supplied by Protect were ideal for the modular homes and helped them achieve a high energy rating. There are so many benefits to modular housing which include reduced disruption at site, high thermal efficiency and quick completion. We’re looking forward to seeing the use of modular homes increase in future.”
Protect’s range of wall, ceiling and floor construction membranes together with its roofing underlays and accessories provides a comprehensive solution to the modular build sector, helping to ensure the whole building envelope and internal structure can be controlled in terms of moisture management, condensation control and thermal resistance.
For details of how Protect products can be incorporated into both residential and commercial builds constructed offsite,

please email info@protectmembranes.com

or call 0161 905 5700, quoting ‘Totally Modular’

or visit www.protectmembranes.com