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Building Homes Quality Awards - 12th October 2004

The Hilton, Park Lane

The fourth annual Building Homes Quality Awards organised by Building in association with The Housing Forum was hosted this year by Michael Portillo. Winners included many Housing Forum Members and organizations involved in the Housing Forum's demonstration programme.

Executive member Countryside Properties came away with two awards, one for Best Company-wide Sustainability Strategy, showing how they monitored against 30 sustainability actions and targets established last year. Countryside Properties is also taking part in a Housing Forum demonstration, Build Europe, in Waltham, Essex. The £6m project has developed an online, on-site scheduling, procurement and project management system for house builders and their suppliers and subcontractors. It is aimed at reducing build times and minimizing wastage and the need to carry excess inventories by suppliers. The second award was for Company - wide Design Innovation.

Other winners involved in the Housing Forum demonstration programme included:

• Miller Homes won the Most Creative Marketing Award for its emotional rollercoaster research which charted how homebuyers feel at every stage of the buying process.
• Fusion 21 won the Best Approach to Partnering and Supply Chain Management for its joint procurement initiative with seven Merseyside- based housing associations and Knowsley council, established to create a new approach to housing stock reinvestment.
• London and Quadrant Housing Trust won the Best Training/ People Development Award for its competency-based framework for recruiting and appraising staff.
• Circle 33 has been involved in numerous Housing Forum demonstration projects and won the Affordable Housing Provider of the Year Award for its diverse build programme over the last year of 659 homes consisting of general needs, shared ownership, key worker, commercial and outright sale properties.

The associated Future Homes conference 2004 held at the Hilton featured the Rt Hon Keith Hill MP, economic forecasts by Mark Pragnell of CEBR and John Wriglesworth of Wriglesworth Consultancy, and analysis of the results of the Fred Wellings Report 2004 by Adrian Barrick of Building Magazine. The entrants of the e-scape House Competition run by David Wilson Homes in association with Design for Homes and the Wood for Good campaign were reviewed by David Birkbeck of Design for Homes. The competition challenged entrants to design a fresh model for a townhouse. PCKO, the winners, responded by creating a two or three storey home with a central atrium for maximum light.

The Refabulous Home - High Rise Reprise

..... Or how to recycle the residential tower

A seminar at The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1 Monday 15th November, 2pm to 6pm

Is the hated tower block ready for an image makeover? How do you co-opt the local community to reinvent the notorious as aspirational? How does refurbishment fit with the Sustainable Communities agenda?

Four leading consultants illustrate how their designs breathed new life into the assets of previous urban development:

Ben Jones of Assael Architecture on Century Building, Manchester, a listed commercial building transformed into 121 flats for Crest Nicholson. Hans van Der Heiden of BIQ Architecten on a European winning design which transformed a concrete system-built block in Liverpool. Ben Derbyshire of HTA Architects on Winterton House, East London, where 138 flats were created from an asbestos ridden nightmare.

Housing Forum Demonstration of the Month - October

No. 1187 - Fusion 21

Fusion 21 is a groundbreaking partnership of 7 Merseyside Housing Associations and a local authority established to develop a unique procurement initiative to link the massive demand for repair and maintenance services on 85,000 housing units with an integrated supply chain.

In the first two years the partnership has achieved the following:

• Contract values on site £7.8m circa £1.8m completed Dec 03
• A networking and learning culture has been established
• The Product Teams have been established and have:
  • agreed common performance specifications across all the Housing Association Partners
  • designed and implemented Partner Installer and Supplier selection processes based on quality, service and cost.
  • maintained a very high level of quality whilst achieving significant cost savings
  • managed specific issues by establishing specialist corrective action teams
  • They have identified numerous opportunities for improvement and added value.

Fusion 21 has also signed up to the Housing Forum/ CITB ConstructionSkills joint initiative, Sustainable Training for Sustainable Communities, to focus on the skills shortages in the industry. The achievements in this demonstration project have been recognised by collecting the award for Best Approach to Partnering and Supply Chain Management at the Building Homes Quality Awards organised by Building and in association with the Housing Forum.

For more information on how to become a demonstration project or become a member of the Housing Forum, go to our website: www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/sectors/housingforum

Membership News

Why become a member of the Housing Forum?

What are the benefits? Click here to link to the membership section of the Housing Forum website and find out ...

Events

The Thames Gateway Forum 24-25th November 2004 Excel, London

The conference is made up of nineteen 75 minute "modules" and features over 100 renowned speakers drawn from both the public and private sectors- the highest number and quality of speakers ever assembled to discuss the Thames Gateway.

Speakers include:

• Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Co-chair, Thames Gateway Forum
• Alan Cherry, Chairman, Countryside Properties
• The Rt Hon Keith Hill, Minister for Housing and Planning
• Mitesh Dhanak, Head of the ODPM Thames Gateway Delivery Unit
• David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
• Jon Rouse, Chief Executive, Housing Corporation
• Dennis Lenard, Chief Executive, Constructing Excellence

Amongst many others

Please go to the Thames Gateway Forum site here for further information

Tuesday 26th October 2004, 8.45am to 11.15am.

Please click here to download the flyer for this event

To register please go to www.concretecentre.com or email: here.

Items of Interest

Scoping Housing Construction for the Future

13th October, Warwick House, 25 Buckingham Palace Rd

As part of National Construction Week the Housing Forum invited a cross section of those involved in the housing sector to an open discussion on the future of Housing Construction. The event was chaired Steve Lidgate, Chairman of the Housing Forum. The panel of four speakers included Dennis Lenard, Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence, Canda Smith, Head of Urban Design and Sustainable Buildings at ODPM, Prof James Woudhuysen, Housing Forum Board Member and George Ferguson, President of the RIBA. The discussion focused on key policy issues and barriers affecting planning consents, modern methods of construction, housing supply and sustainabililty.

The Housing Forum is putting together a programme of similar events for the near future so watch this space.

Website update

In response to recent feedback the Housing Forum website is easier to locate on the Constructing Excellence homepage. Just click on the Housing Forum logo to go straight through to the Housing Forum pages.

Contact details

The Housing Forum has moved to Constructing Excellence's new offices. They can now be found at 25 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0PP.

The following people can be contacted through the switchboard number
020 7592 1100:

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