6 INDUSTRY NEWS
Home of 2030 competition launched
A competition to submit proposals for the design and delivery of new homes has been announced, open to housing providers, designers and others. The Government-sponsored ‘Home of 2030’ competition is a response to two “Grand Challenges” affecting future housing need: an ageing society, and “clean growth.” Run by a consortium led by BRE, and including partners RIBA competitions, Design Council and MOBIE, Home of 2030 is a cross-departmental initiative between MHCLG, BEIS and DHSC, and is asking housebuilding professionals to propose practical and scalable ideas for future homes, which are suitable for all ages and are environmentally sustainable over their entire lifespan.
Designs submitted will be evaluated against a range of criteria, including scalability, sustainability, accessibility and durability. Affordability and “health integration” also will be key factors, as will solutions for homes that can adapt to the needs of changing demographics. Through the competition’s dialogue with industry and consumers, successful consortia will be created to produce and showcase housing solutions for mainstream adoption.
The competition’s initial stage is an Innovation Challenge, which is now open for applications. Entrants to the Innovation Challenge who meet the crite- ria will be included in a directory of “market-ready innovations.” The directory will be provided to the entrants of the two-phase Design and Delivery competi- tion which begins in January 2020. The competition is intended to be a national focus for innovation in housing, and is expected to attract submissions for individual home designs together with community and neighbourhood schemes. It is also expected to include innovation at individual product and component level. Alan Somerville, head of building performance group at BRE commented: “Making new homes desirable to all demographics is key to the Home of 2030 challenge. We need to ensure that homes can positively impact people’s lives and communities and adapt to changing needs resulting from developments such as an ageing society. Home of 2030 is an excit- ing opportunity to show how homes should be designed for the future.”
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Construction product information found to be lacking
The current difficulties of accessing relevant information required to assess the performance of a product have been highlighted in a recent report. Surveying a range of providers and users of construction product information, the Construction Products Association (CPA) explored how product information is presented and made available to the entire construction supply chain. The need for a comprehensive regime
that ensures all construction products are properly labelled and marketed was one of the many recommendations in the Hackitt Review, which made suggestions to improve Building Regulations and fire safety in the built environment – something which the survey was launched to directly respond to.
Among its findings were a preference for the digital preference for the digital provision of product information, as well as a desire for standardised and more complete information, including highlight- ing applications where the product may or may not be suitable for use.
It also makes clear that there is strong industry support for the introduction of competence levels for those specifying, installing or maintaining products and the systems they make up, as well as an industry code of conduct for manufactur- ers to ensure that product information has been properly verified before publication. Commenting on the report, CPA’s interim chief executive Peter Caplehorn said: “The importance of this survey will not be lost to those working in construc- tion post-Grenfell. It was spearheaded by the CPA’s Marketing Integrity Group – a group of marketing professionals within the manufacturing industry – and repre- sents a proactive and collaborative industry drive to improve the performance of construction products. I have no doubt it will prove a useful contribution as the industry embraces new regulatory reforms in the coming years.”
The survey represents the views of 524 construction industry professionals who use product and performance data as part of their jobs, including manufacturers, merchants, architects, engineers, survey- ors, contractors, local authorities and FM providers.
Contracts awards up, but residential slows
A 4.1 per cent increase in construction contract awards from the previous month has been reported in October 2019 – though in the residential sector awards were shown to slow.
In the latest edition of its Economic & Construction Market Review, Barbour ABI showed the value of all construction contracts awards in the month to be £4.9bn based on a three-month rolling average, up on the previous month, and an increase of 28.5 per cent when compared with October 2018. The residential sector in particular accounted for 28 per cent of all these contract awards. The total contract awards value for the residential sector was £1.7bn however, which is a decrease of 9.5 per cent on September, and is 12.5 per cent lower than for October 2018. The number of contract awards from the whole sector increased by 22.4 per cent in October to 864, which is 4.0 per cent higher than for October 2018. Although contract awards numbers have increased in October, they reportedly remain “volatile with evidence of a downward trend for overall contract awards since January 2019.” In the three-month period ending
October 2019, the total value of contract awards was £14.5bn, which is 14.0 per cent lower than the previous quarter, and 14.4 per cent lower than for the compara- ble quarter ending October 2018. Commenting on the figures, Tom Hall, chief economist at Barbour ABI and AMA Research, said: “The residential sector has experienced slightly slower activity throughout 2019, there has been a small pick up in London, but data shows that there is a cooling off in activity through- out the rest of the UK. The most recent help to buy data shows reduced volumes which would also support this view.”
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