A beautiful friendship

Designing and building the concept homes and school at the BRE Innovation Park has been a frantic task for all involved. However, everyone who worked on it agrees they’ve learned a lot not only about how these new buildings operate but also how they are procured and constructed.

“We call it whole-brain project management,” says Charles Tincknell of Willmott Dixon.

“The success of these projects depends on getting the entire supply chain to buy-in on technical and emotional levels in order

for the end result to be fully achieved. It’s a different ethos to conventional project management, but it is paramount if you are going to make innovative projects work.”

His thoughts are echoed by Stewart Dalgarno, product development director at Stewart Milne Group. “The Sigma home was three years of learning crammed into six months and to do that we had to have everyone on board from the outset. We procured the supply chain first and then got the architect to design the house around the best systems available.

“There had to be a lot of trust on the project due to its informal nature but it worked really well.” Since completion, Stewart Milne has held debriefing sessions and begun to look at how best to move into production of a Sigma village. “The partnerships we’ve forged are blossoming,” says Dalgarno, “and we are evolving as a team.

“Suppliers are coming forward with new ideas and innovations: one has shown how we can combine three elements of the services the solar hot water, gas boiler and heat recovery system into one solution.”

‘It was three years of learning crammed into six months. We had to have everyone on board’

Stewart Dalgarno, Stewart Milne Group

Rob Ingle, national key account manager at window manufacturer Velfac, believes working as a team at the earliest stages of a project makes for the best possible result: “We supplied composite windows and opening mechanisms to the school. Having real project knowledge and agreeing interfaces from the outset enabled us to concentrate on the best solution from day one. Our partnership with Willmott Dixon gave us confidence to really take the initiative.”

Steve Coup, R&D manager at Hanson Formpave, adds: “On real projects we provide a drainage design, only to see the contract be passed on to another supplier at times. Here, it was good to retain ownership throughout and know that what we were doing would be the best possible solution.”

DuPont has found that this microcosm of the building trade was a great gauge as to the direction innovators in the construction industry are going. Jay MacDonald, construction business manager at DuPont, says: “The feedback we have received about our phase-change product Energain made us realise that we really must fast-track it to the general market because designers are already clamouring to use it.”

It’s a tired old word, bandied around far too often with no real conviction in the building trade, but “partnerships” really have been the driving force behind much of the work at the innovation park. In this idealistic atmosphere, main contractors, suppliers, architects and clients have worked together without the spectre of budgets and payment weighing heavily on them.

“The biggest impact of the innovation park is the partnerships that are being formed,” says Jaya Skandamoorthy, director of enterprise and innovation at BRE. “Nearly 300 companies have contributed to these buildings and all are now networking in a way that they wouldn’t have dreamed of before.

“The park is a convergence of companies between whom an element of trust is developing in a way not seen in the construction industry before. These companies are the ones that are pushing boundaries: with this comes risk but trust and true partnerships will ensure success.”