What's New

The Prefabulous Home 25th November 2004

The latest event in the successful Prefabulous Home series was the first to combine a seminar with a site visit to a manufacturer- The Corus Living Solutions new £4m modular manufacturing line at Shotton, North Wales. At around a third of a mile long, it is one of Europe's most advanced and automated production lines for volumetric building systems targeting the single living accommodation market. At the seminar which preceded the site visit, Stephen Mullin gave valuable insight into the history of prefabricated housing in the UK, based on his book "Non- traditional Houses", co- authored by H Harrison, B Reeves and A Stevens. Further information on "Non-traditional Houses" see www.brebookshop.com. Martin Goss of Mtech explained how Peabody's Lillie Road scheme, designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects, included the first use of structural load bearing bathroom pods. Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects then gave a presentation on Timber Wharf in Manchester, which is the first new build scheme for developer Urban Splash. It uses concrete wall panels faced with bespoke wall-to-ceiling glazing panels.

ODPM Delivering Sustainable Communities Summit

The Housing Forum's masterclass at the ODPM's Sustainable Communities summit will be held on Tuesday 1st February from 6.00-7.00pm, it is entitled "The Vision for a new Housing Industry". The masterclass will be opened by Nigel Griffiths, Minister for Construction, who will give the government's view for future housing innovation in the construction industry.

Dennis Lenard, Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence, will chair the session and introduce it with a view of what is happening in housing construction industries abroad and what lessons can be learned from this.

Charlie Adams, Chief Executive of the Hyde Housing Group, will provide a client's view of the historical development of Modern Methods of Construction and the lessons learned.

Ashley Lane, Director of Westbury Partnerships and Chair of the Barker Review Recommendation 33 Steering Group (facilitated by the House Builders Federation), will look at the manufacturing experience of Space 4 and the barriers and strategic issues faced by HBF's membership in the house building industry in using MMC for the delivery of mixed tenure Sustainable Communities.

Bob White, Chief Executive of Mace, will highlight the lessons from other sectors of the construction industry which can be brought into the design, manufacture and delivery of new homes in order to achieve the targets in the Sustainable Communities Plan.

The floor will then be opened for a public debate.

Sustainable Training for Sustainable Communities, a project run jointly by The Housing Forum and CITB Construction Skills, is leading the way in addressing the housing sector's skills gap. The key findings from the project's first year are being launched on the Housing Forum stand (F1A) at 4pm on the 1st February. A full interim report will be available in March 2005 at www.constructingexcellence.org.uk

As part of the fringe events at the summit, The Housing Forum, Design for Homes and The Building Centre Trust have organised site visits for the Prefabulous Home series. Delegates will be given presentations by key personnel of the companies and will then proceed to sites at East Beswick (New East Manchester / Lovell Partnerships) and Moho @ Castlefields (Urban Splash / Yorkon). The visits take place on 31st January 2005 12pm- 4pm.

A report based on the Prefabulous Home seminar case studies, entitled "Prefabulous Homes: The New Housebuilding Agenda", by David Birkbeck and Andrew Scoones, is due to be published shortly. Keep an eye on www.constructingexcellence.org.uk, www.designforhomes.org and www.buildingcentretrust.org.uk for details.

Housing Forum Demonstration of the Month - January

Name: St Quintin Park Estate, North Kensington
No: 1026
Region: London
Team: William Sutton Trust, Durkan
Value: £7m
Start date: 1st October 1999
Finish date: 11th March 2003

William Sutton Trust entered into a "partnering" contract with Durkan to undertake a £7m phased refurbishment of mansion block flats following Durkan's successful completion of previous works on the site. Feedback from tenant satisfaction surveys carried out after former modernization programmes was always good and this formed the basis for adopting a partnering approach with Durkan. The contract was executed under a JCT Design & Build contract but with no retentions held. The decision not to hold retentions was passed on to sub-contractors, generating some real savings.

Below is a list of the team's most notable achievements, and their KPI results where applicable:

• Resident design input. Open design days have helped to identify possible future problems and have contributed to the continuous improvement of the scheme. This has encouraged the residents to communicate with William Sutton Trust more and has resulted in a high satisfaction level KPI of 9/10.
• High standard of finish. Tenants keen to accept tenancy offers and pass on their delight to other tenants, which in turn helps assist towards greater co-operation and satisfaction on the estate.
• Good quality products. Because of repeat phases, better quality products could be afforded, which will help to reduce future maintenance costs. Feedback on defects reports from completed phases has also identified problem areas.
  Both of these points are reflected in the KPI score for customer satisfaction (product) of 8/10.
• Completion achieved on dates advised 8 weeks in advance. This was a very important factor because it enabled arrangements for moving tenants in on the day of handover to be made with confidence, thus maximising rental income and minimising costs on security, void losses, etc. In total the construction phase of the project completed 9% sooner than originally predicted.
• Early completion of show flat, enabled William Sutton Trust residents and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea nominations to be determined well in advance.
• Zero defects at handover. In the majority of flats, zero defects have been achieved and only very minor items found in the occasional flat which were corrected within the day - resulting in a KPI score of 8/10.
• Completion of "as built" drawings prior to handover. This always proves difficult to get from contractors on a design and build contract and therefore is a major plus for Durkan and "partnering".
• Completion of CDM file at handover. Again contractors say that this is impossible to achieve at handover but this project has proved it can be done and relieves the Trust of any legal problems by having a CDM file available from day one of tenancies.
• Agreement of the Final Account within a month of handover. This helps both William Sutton Trust and Durkan to budget more accurately.
• Reduced costs have allowed for more extras to be included. Because of savings from no retention, and bulk ordering, together with design savings achieved by the partnering discussion process, a wish list of extras could be, included which will be of benefit to the tenants and also improve the desirability factor and long term stability of lettings.
• Continuous employment. Durkan and their sub-contractors have been able to maintain a steady workforce, keeping the same staff involved (only a 3% staff turnover) and as a result the learning curve from phase to phase is less but the quality and standards achieved are higher. This has also helped to achieve reasonable profit margins on the scheme - a staggering 40%.
• Good team rapport. A good understanding of everyone's needs and expectations and a genuine desire for the projects to succeed have gelled the team and led to an employee satisfaction of 8/10 on average.

This project features in The Housing Forum Partnering Toolkit, which can be found at www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/sectors/housingforum

Housebench Update

The Housing Forum Benchmarking Club: HouseBench.com - was the first Housing Industry Benchmarking Club specifically set up to meet the needs of the UK Housing Industry. The club champions performance measurement in all aspects of housing Construction, offering its members effective tools and support for shared learning and the implementation of continuous improvement.

Latest news from HouseBench is that membership has grown to 125 member organizations. Two levels of membership have been introduced:

HouseBench Base, which provides access to the Headline questionnaire, also used for the collection of Housing Forum Demonstration Project data. Entry of data for Base projects will allow the system to calculate the headline KPIs in a graphical format.

HouseBench Plus which, amongst other things, allows members to enter data to calculate housing specific and environmental KPIs at project level, and organisational data on a quarterly basis for the calculation of KPIs related to housing voids, repairs and respect for people.

New fields for the data collection of Qualifications & Skills, Employee Satisfaction and Staff Turnover have been added to the system. For more information please see www.housebench.com.

Membership News

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Events

Prefabulous Homes at the Delivering Sustainable Communities Summit

On Monday 31st January 2005 12pm - 4pm in Manchester

Dates for your diary:

Prefabulous Home Seminars:
24th January 2005
4th July 2005
3rd October 2005 (including a site visit)
7th November 2005

There will also be two more seminars in the new Refabulous Home series which looks at refurbishment solutions:
16th May 2005
19th September 2005

Items of Interest

EU Procurement Regulations for Housing Associations

The Housing Forum Executive Steering Group meeting held on the 9th December raised the issue of EU Regulations for the RSL Sector and the effects on partnering arrangements. It was agreed at the meeting that the message needs to be put across to RSLs that the EU procurement process reinforces the need for partnering best practice through the requirements to set out the arrangements clearly at the earliest possible stage. The Housing Forum is in the process of updating The Housing Forum Partnering toolkit to clarify the EU Regulations for the RSL sector linked in under the appropriate sections covering the regulations in more detail, the procedures, award criteria, frameworks and partnering.

Please go to www.constructin... to see the latest updates.

CWC is also running free EU Procurement Training for RSLs, please see this flyer for details.

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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