We’d like to congratulate two of our CE Midlands Awards winners (Kier and Speller Metcalfe) who went through to win at the CE National Awards last month.
Kier for winning the Building Project of the Year for their Heartlands Treatment Centre
What the Judges said:
An extremely close category for our judges to make a decision so we will announce the highly commended before the winner. This was not just a challenging project for the team but one that brought such joy especially to the surrounding local community. The project achieved a 44% social value return, got over 30 unemployed persons back into work and placed aside £150K to set up a fund to share amongst seven different local community projects.
The challenges were overcome by closely working with all parties above and beyond ground including a very small iconic pub and student accommodation above and the rail network below. It is the first building in their region to achieve SmartScore certification and Wired Score Platinum along with an EPC A+ rating and BREEAM Excellent. The highly commended goes to Ask Real Estate Ltd, BAM Construction North East, Home Group, Ryder Architecture, AtkinsRealis, BGP Consulting Engineers, Shaw Construction Management, SES Engineering for One Strawberry Place Through the use of early collaboration with key stakeholders, innovation, intelligent solutions this winning project was delivered on time, on budget and without any defects.
One of the challenges was the project being a live hospital, with this being one of the first of a large scale capital investment not only for the client but delivering this for the wider community covering 1,500 patients per day. This project achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating with Carbon reduction measures running throughout, including rooftop PV panels, district heating and energy saving lighting.
Adhering to the Construction Playbook guidelines and implementing BIM Level 2 ensured a well-organized and streamlined construction process. Creation of a value management scheme saved the project over £1m through lowering façade costs through prefabricated SFS techniques. The 2023 Building Project of the Year Award goes to University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust – Kier Construction, Archus, Design Buro-Architects, WSP, Couch Consulting, WT Partnership and Acivico for Heartlands Treatment Centre
Speller Metcalfe for winning a special Social Value Award for their Skylon Campus project.
“We’re delighted that the hard work of the team at Skylon Campus has been recognised for the Social Value award. This project is a testament to the team’s commitment to delivering value both during the construction phase and in the completed building itself. We know how beneficial the Centre for Advanced Timber Technology will be for students joining from across the UK and the high-quality of learning opportunities that it provides. This award continues Speller Metcalfe’s reputation as an award-winning and innovative regional contractor.”
Adrian Speller, Technical Director, Speller Metcalfe.
What the Judges said:
The judges fought tirelessly in this category and literally couldn’t agreed but they have come up with a solution to award three projects as it was exceptionally close.
The first is a state of the art project which was originally two separate buildings with different finance streams. The client brought both together and redesigned the facility to become ‘one’. Through a number of social value initiatives they have undertaken a range of presentations, site visits, guest lectures as well as holding events on mental health, international women’s day and much more.
A special Social Value Award goes to Speller Metcalfe, NMITE (New Model in Technology and Engineering), Bond Bryan, Shires, Hybrid Structures, Hydrock and Osbornes for Syklon Campus
The highly commended goes to a project that has gone above and beyond expectations, especially for the client and end users of this facility. The project was delivered within 10 months from inception to completion, this has meant up to 16,000 operations taking place sooner and benefitting many thousands of people. Weekly sessions with all parties involved were delivered to ensure the team ethos ‘all for one and one for all’ was achieved to the clients aspirations. The building also provides a ‘fabric first’ approach with enhanced levels of insulation, triple glazed windows and space for future Low and Zero Carbon technologies. The 2023 Highly Commended Award goes to The Newcastle upon
Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, P+HS Architects, Robertson Construction. CAD21,Gen North, Portland Consulting, DPP Planning for Day Treatment Centre And lastly our winner. This project was delivered safely, on time, to budget, meeting the quality standards of the client, they have achieved a BREEAM Outstanding rating: a first for a facility of this kind. This was done through early engagement and continuous collaboration of all parties. The scheme has flourished due to an implementation of a cultural shift for the establishment, construction personnel and inmate operatives. They provided the prisoners life skills such as CV workshops, training, skills and more.
Developing protocols from their existing ISO45001 underpinned the scheme, ensured the safety and security of all involved to align with MoJ requirements. The project was delivered safely, with zero RIDDOR incidents. We are delighted to Award the 2023 Value Award to the Ministry of Justice, Galliford Try, HMP High Down, Carbon Plan, CTG Architects for HMP High Down Training Facility
The results from our recent survey are in. We wanted to know what you thought CE Midlands could do more of and what you find of value in your membership and if you’re not already members what might inspire you to joins us.
CLICK HERE to view the results
Presentation given by Mark Wakeford, Chair Evo Energy, Vice Chair Construction Excellence Midlands, Member of Government’s Solar Task Force at the event “West Midlands Bright Solar Future” (Climate Change Solutions Ltd) on 1st November 2023.
Solar power offers the largest potential source, maximising financial benefit with large clusters of collocated building sharing generation and consumption with minimum National Grid interaction.
A major solar mapping of large south facing and flat roof building together with some car parks offers the prospect for 12 million solar panels making a major contribution to the UK objective of a 500% increase capacity to 70GW by 2030.
We would like to invite you to contribute to our preset partnership project, to increase the pace and scale of delivery bearing in mind after 20 years only 1% of businesses have installed solar, a little more for public buildings and just over 1 million of 25 million homes.
Please see below the link for the presentation to the attached West Midlands Bright Solar Future 1 November 2023 showcasing a range of actions addressing the 2030 Climate Emergency imperative within the region, central to which is generating large quantities of clean, and cheaper green energy.
Event Presentations – Climate Change Solutions (climate-change-solutions.co.uk)
CE Midlands is considering a project on productivity for which it will apply for CITB funding.
We are working with Adrian Jones of Orbiz to take a tried and tested project and turn it into something suitable for the UK. Projects they have previously and currently applied these principles on are the Level Crossing Removal Programme in Victoria Australia and the Cairo Monorail Mega project in Egypt.
It centres around Productivity through Standardisation & AI. We need a team of CE Members to come together to consider a number of issues before we submit an application to the CITB. The following needs to be considered:
- How it relates to skills and/or recruitment
- How we turn ‘best practice’ from Israel into real innovation for the UK
- How we may measure impact
- The commerciality of the project if successful
- IPR i.e. who owns it
Adrian Jones will lead the project but we need a team of member volunteers, who have knowledge if productivity, to meet in a one-off meeting to scope out our application.
The meeting will take place in Nottingham on the morning of 30th January 2024. Any interested parties should contact Andrew.carpenter@cemidlands.org please.
The CE Midlands Conservation and Regeneration Award 2023 was won by Spenbeck, a female-only, family micro-SME in a male-dominated environment.
CLICK HERE to view the case study for Spenbeck’s Birkin Building Project
With COP28 underway, this month Martyn Jones considers how we might utilise our knowledge and experience of Supply Chain Management (SCM) – built up over the past 20 years or so – to help us in our transition to ‘green’ construction.
Clearly, we have a huge obligation to ‘green’ our industry given that buildings are responsible for so much of global energy-related carbon emissions. And our consumption of 50% of all extracted materials means that our sector’s demand for natural resources is accelerating climate change.
But looking through the other end of the telescope, we have huge scope to turn things around. And there’s more, we’re not starting from square one as many ‘green’ solutions already exist within some of our existing buildings, cities, and infrastructure.
Although much of the expertise, knowledge, and technologies we need to combat climate change may already be available, we still need the necessary vision, sense of purposefulness, and the means to deploy that expertise in our projects.
Well-led, creative supply chains with a strong common focus on sustainability must surely be part of the answer. A sustainable supply chain is one that fully integrates ethical and environmentally responsible principles and practices into a SCM model with end-to-end supply chain transparency – extending from raw materials sourcing, through manufacturing, logistics to assembly, and on to reuse or recycling processes.
Then there are circular supply chains, where products are disassembled or reduced to their raw materials form, and remade into sellable, reusable products – thus allowing businesses to achieve the environmental benefits of recycling while recouping costs in the process.
In integrating SCM and sustainability principles, what forms of SCM are available? Well, there’s Lean SCM, strongly advocated for adoption in construction by Lathan and Egan in the 1990s, largely based on its success in other industries, particularly automotive.
In the Lean approach, anything in the process that does not add value for customers is eliminated as the aim is lower the cost base and reduce waste, whilst achieving quality. It has been applied most successfully in manufacturing, where the focus is on efficient, reliable, predictable, streamlined operations aimed at producing high volume product at low cost.
But in project-based construction we often need a different approach based on flexibility and adaptability and we have come to realise that the Lean approach is unsuitable for much of construction given the variability and churn of our clients and projects, our lack of continuity of work (or flow), our deliberately fragmented processes, and our transitory – and all too often – adversarial relationships.
Agile supply chains are more in tune with construction, being structured to be highly flexible, quickly adapting to changing situations and responding to market volatility. Having the adaptability, agility, nimbleness, and the ability to quickly conjure up scarce resources are crucial factors in responding speedily to fluctuations in the type and volume of construction demand. This surely puts Agile firmly in our toolbox for our fight against climate change.
But our understanding of SCM has moved on and we’ve come to the realisation that it’s not a case of either being Lean or Agile. Both approaches are not mutually exclusive alternatives.
As argued in a previous Thought for the Month, they can be used separately or jointly, depending on the demands of the marketplace and the characteristics of product and processes. The two approaches can in fact complement each other, and in many cases, a hybrid Lean/Agile (Leagile) strategy is needed.
Hybrid or Leagile supply chains could be part of our transition to a ‘green’ industry with the agility to reconfigure our traditional operating system, procurement strategies and supply chain assets to create the new sustainable value chains we need. But alongside this, Lean has a part to play too in driving out waste and using resources efficiently.
All supply chains are different but here are some general principles that we might apply:
Lead by example to demonstrate how supply chain sustainability initiatives can bring measurable benefits – environmentally of course, but financially too.
Build consensus on the model of SCM that best suits the specificities of your supply chain whilst delivering on sustainability.
Gain insights into existing and potential partners in your ecosystem, assessing their capabilities to deliver on sustainability by working creatively together, but, if necessary, pivot to new partners when things change or gaps appear.
Collaborate within your refashioned network or ecosystem, working together around a collective vision and purpose, consistent and shared standards, sharing learning and innovation, and sending a message that sustainability is at the heart of doing business.
Work together as one enterprise, eliminating process silos, predicting disruptions, and creating feedback loops to improve performance, support innovation, and operationalize sustainability, using AI to guide decision making.
Communicate successes by sharing accomplishments and best practices through Constructing Excellence and others, to associate your evolving brand with innovation and thought leadership in sustainability.
Welcome to the December edition of our Constructing Excellence Newsletter. It has been an exciting and busy year for Constructing Excellence and we look forward to some well deserved downtime over the festive period and spending time with family and friends. A review of the events and achievements of CE in 2023 is better served by reference to the soon to be published Annual Review which will also act as a reminder of how of our key themes of Building Safety, Climate Crisis, Future Skills and Smart Construction remain relevant as the cornerstones of our organisation going forwards.
Let’s look forward to the events planned for 2024 not least of which are the G4C awards on April 5th and The West and East Midlands Awards on 2nd May and 27th June respectively. The deadlines for nominations for these fantastic events will be upon us early in 2024 so put a marker in your calendar to make a nomination before the holiday period – or when you are relaxing with a mince pie during your downtime – if you have not done so already. If you have yet to attend one of these events then from personal experience I would recommend booking a table or even sponsoring a category while the opportunity remains.
From a personal perspective and having taken the role of Chair of the Building Safety Theme Group for CE Midlands in July this was swiftly followed in August by the publication of a raft of secondary legislation resulting from the Building Safety Act 2022 much of which took effect on October 1st. Our theme group will be working to publish guidance to clients, contractors, designers and Approved Inspectors all of whom will need to be rapidly up to speed with what has been described in some quarters as the as the most important change in legislation to affect the construction industry since the Building Act in 1984
For now I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and successful New Year, thank you all for your continued support of CE Midlands and we look forward working together and sharing knowledge and best practice in 2024 and beyond.
