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The 1,500 home development that sprang up in 14 months
Two linked developments providing 1,500 homes have sprung up in little over a year to house workers on a nuclear power station. Martin Hilditch visits to find out if the modular scheme provides a vision of the future for the housing sector.
In the construction world’s equivalent of the blink of an eye a new settlement has sprung up on the outskirts of the historic Somerset town of Bridgwater.
The Bridgwater Campus development contains 29 blocks of low-rise housing and will house a total of 986 people (roughly equivalent to adding 3% to Bridgwater’s population). It started on site in November last year and, when Inside Housing visits at the start of September, the finishing touches are just being made ahead of residents moving in next month. As Paul Lang, chief executive of offsite manufacturer Caledonian Modular, states, the campus is basically “a small town”.
“It was a green field less than 12 months ago,” he says.
While a quick look at Google Maps suggests the site was a not very green field prior to the development, the point stands about the pace of delivery. The buildings, clad in various shades of grey, form one half of a pair of modular developments in the area. A short hop down the road Caledonian have already delivered fifteen further buildings, this time timber clad. Between them the two developments – which cost £50m - will house almost 1,500 key workers needed to construct two new nuclear reactors at the nearby Hinkley Point C power station.
Inside Housing has come to look at this scheme because it has managed to deliver something that social landlords in England thus far have, by and large, not – a large-scale offsite development. Our survey of the top 50 biggest builders this year found that the sector delivered just 4,667 homes using modern methods of construction in 2017/18 (or three Hinkleys, if you prefer). This represented 13% of the total and a tiny fraction of the 300,000 homes a year that the government wants to deliver. In its 2017 housing white paper, the government suggested that offsite homes can be built up to 30% more quickly than traditional methods and said that ministers want to stimulate its growth in order to up overall delivery.
Inside Housing wanted to explore one of the largest offsite schemes in England in a bid to find out more about its delivery and find out what light the modular developer behind it can shed on why the social housing sector has been slow to embrace modular to date.
With handover of the site just weeks away, Inside Housing visits on a busy day as finishing touches are made to the buildings (although these were 96% completed in Caledonian Modular’s vast factory in Newark, Nottinghamshire, according to the company). We tour the site with Debansu Das, residential sector lead with Caledonian Modular and Steve Tate, project director at the firm.
“It’s been hard work,” Mr Tate admits, as we talk about the pace of delivery while sticking closely to the designated walkways as various site vehicles trundle past.
“”We started on this site in November and we put the last module in on the 12th of July. It was actually four weeks ahead of schedule.”
Typically about seven modules were installed on site a day. When the basic integrity of the building is sorted and temporary electrics put in, a stream of workers such as joiners, electricians and plumbers come in – a process that takes five or six weeks. By the time finishing touches like decorations, carpets and ceiling tiles are added and electrics switched on, about ten weeks has been spent installing an individual building on site, Mr Tate suggests. “That is literally the point where all the buzzers are working, the fire alarm is on and you are ready to move in if you want,” he states.
While the scheme itself is yet to see people move in, the buildings – which, because of their specific time-limited function basically contain hotel rooms with en-suite bathrooms for each worker - were completed in the factory in March this year. In order to avoid problems three full buildings were stored in dockyards in nearby Avonmouth (or nearby compared to Newark, anyway). “The biggest risk you have as a modular business is getting the product from the factory to the site and getting it installed,” Mr Tate says. “So on a large job we like to bring some of the assets close to site.”
He adds that work on the site has been “like clockwork”. “If a computer was to decide how to build buildings this is how we would do it,” he adds. “Rather than take lots of labour and individual components to a remote site we would construct the building in a controlled, cellular format and then take the whole thing to site.”
The computer, however, is clearly saying no more often than yes in the social housing sector, where, as mentioned, offsite provision is still a relatively minority sport. So what’s holding people back?
Bad forward planning is one of the main reasons, Mr Tate thinks.
“In my experience what puts clients off is the fact you need to have a design brief very early,” he states. “You need to know what you want. And not a lot of clients know what they want until after they have got it.”
There are clearly other concerns too. Insurance company Zurich Insurance raised some of these in its written evidence to a House of Lord science and technology committee inquiry into off-site manufacture this year.
In its evidence it states that: “trends are emerging around serious problems that can be experienced when implementing modern methods of construction (MMC), particularly issues relating to the durability of the development, and the increased risk of larger scale flood and fire damage”.
It raised concerns that “the use of combustible lightweight materials such as wood, polystyrene and recycled materials have the potential for a greater degree of fire spread, leading to an increase in repair costs and timescales”.
The insurance company states that it would like to see “clearer and simpler building regulations and the need for clear enforcement mechanisms to ensure that new buildings built using MMC are truly fit for purpose”. And its evidence adds that “developers and owners need to consider how the use of MMC will affect costs over the lifespan of the building”.
Mr Tate agrees that the clarity of building regulations could be improved but states that Caledonian’s testing with International Fire Consultants reveal that each individual room would contain a fire for an hour – as required - before it could spread. He says there has been more scrutiny than usual from its external partners too, given that the job commenced shortly after the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
“This job in particular has been scrutinised because of Grenfell,” he states. “Everybody was all over it.”
While the Bridgwater Campus was designed to last for the ten year duration of the work at Hinkley Point C, Mr Das, Caledonian’s residential sector lead says that its housing products are designed for at least 60 years durability – and that clients should carry out normal due diligence before signing up with any contractor.
For Mr Das, the relatively slow pace at which the social housing sector is embracing offsite construction is probably “a fear of the unknown”.
“The right noises are happening but getting it over the line takes a different attitude,” he states.
“We are working with a few housing associations where there are a few internal champions but we need more of them who understand the process,” he adds. “I think the housing sector is still gearing up towards it.”
Housing providers may have different opinions of course. Swan Housing Association, which set up its own modular factory, also provided written evidence to the House of Lords inquiry. It said it was influenced to do so because it felt the “existing market [for modular] was quite immature and had limited capacity” along with “very high overheads, which we believed arose from the need to build in contingency for lack of continuity of work”.
The Hinkley Point developments certainly suggest that there is some existing capacity out there.
While social housing providers may be embracing offsite with some caution, Caledonian Modular’s chief executive, Mr Lang, says there is “huge momentum” in the PRS and build to rent sector. At the moment it is in this part of the sector that the company sees the majority of its sales opportunities arising in the short term, he adds. “They can see the quality benefits of having it done in a factory,” he states.
Despite noises from government, Mr Lang thinks it has taken little meaningful action to push offsite forward.
Mr Das agrees – and ultimately he thinks it is government who holds the key.
“All these people [in the social housing sector] are waiting to see a large project being delivered,” he states. “I think it would be great if the government saw the scope for an exemplar project on scale. The government needs to take the initiative.”
The hotel-style accommodation might be different from the type of homes a social housing provider would look to provide – but it certainly delivers on the scale Mr Das is talking about. And it is easy to see how a similar approach could work for large housing schemes. Certainly if government rhetoric translates into action, Bridgwater Campus is the shape of things to come.
For now, though, there is a job to be finished before the workers at Hinkley Point C can start to move into their new home from home. There should be no nasty surprises for the client, EDF Energy, when it comes to handover, however.
“They saw the product in the factory,” Mr Tate adds. “They essentially signed it off before it got here.”
