Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Carisbrooke Tennis win National Club League - Midlands.
Carisbrooke Tennis Club of Knighton, sponsored by Landmark Planning, have won the Midlands Division of the Men’s National Club League by beating Cardiff on Sunday 10-2. They have won every match this season and with one left against Warwick cannot now be overtaken. From here the club proceed to the national finals in September for the top 8 clubs in the country, where they hope to be seeded in the top four.
As coach Jack Simpson said: “It is a tough division to get out of, as you have to get your best players out nearly every week and likely win all your matches to top the division. We beat Cardiff without our best player, Henry Searle, last year’s Junior Wimbledon champion, which is testimony to the depth of the squad. I am really looking forward to September and particularly putting the team up against the top London clubs."
Thursday, 2 May 2024
Modern Methods of Construction: Are they a Good Thing?
Essentially MMC are different forms of innovative construction or methodologies, which focus on off-site techniques such as mass production and factory assembly, as alternatives to traditional build. You can see the potential advantages from less need for specialist skills to factory-controlled quality, speed and less on-site waste. Considering the concept and the related issues is important to all those in the development industry, from the initial planning to sales personnel.
Simon Jones, Technical Innovation Manager of the Vistry Group, a top 1 / 2 housebuilder first of all went through the seven categories of MMC. He obviously concentrated on Categories 1 & 2 which related to 3D primary or volumetric systems and 2D primary structural systems and which Vistry are promoting from their own factories. At present these are focussed on manufacturing a closed timber frame timber product, but hope to move to adding external cladding, roofing, doors and windows (Cat 2c).
He then discussed some of the potential advantages listed above, but at the same time talked about the challenges, including payment stages, early design freezes and the need for level sites.
Edward Jezeph is responsible for encouraging offsite construction and innovation for Homes England, the Government’s housing and regeneration agency. He went through the various tools that they use to try and increase the supply of affordable, quality homes (last year 190k against a target of 300k so work to do). These include giving funding to get sites ready for development, loans, grants for affordable homes and guarantees.
Construction is a tough job with limited productivity improvements constantly lagging behind the rest of the economy with a poor safety record and a dearth of skills. One third of UK waste comes from construction with 25% of materials taken to site wasted.
As with Simon, Edward pressed the concept of offsite timber frame construction with further advantages from cost certainty, improved health and safety and greater labour force diversity. He concluded with some case examples, including the famous and impressive timber framed, Goldsmith Street, Norwich.
James Wilson, MD of Davidsons, a major regional housebuilder focussed on commercial risk in the light of companies, such as Ilke Homes, an MMC advocate, entering liquidation with £319m of debts. He talked through a case study of, for him, the inflexibility of relying on a MMC contractor supply that puts the whole project at financial risk.
For his brand that introduces a lot of design detail and variety into its product it makes the timber frame designs more complex and therefore less economic. It is also more inflexible in terms of labour requirements and therefore less cost effective, having greater peaks and troughs in the need for specialised skills such as plumbers and electricians, which is less efficient.
He is not opposed to MMC as such, being disappointed that he is building in essentially the same way as 30 years ago when he entered the profession. At the moment for him MMC is better suited to such schemes as student housing, where repetition is the key.
There then followed a lively and very civilised debate. For low rise housing there is clearly a long way to go to reap the obvious benefits of off-site production, but it should ultimately be the way to go. At present sufficient benefits will probably be restricted to say the largest 5 housebuilders with scale to work with large production runs.
Simon Jones, Technical Innovation Manager of the Vistry Group, a top 1 / 2 housebuilder first of all went through the seven categories of MMC. He obviously concentrated on Categories 1 & 2 which related to 3D primary or volumetric systems and 2D primary structural systems and which Vistry are promoting from their own factories. At present these are focussed on manufacturing a closed timber frame timber product, but hope to move to adding external cladding, roofing, doors and windows (Cat 2c).
He then discussed some of the potential advantages listed above, but at the same time talked about the challenges, including payment stages, early design freezes and the need for level sites.
Edward Jezeph is responsible for encouraging offsite construction and innovation for Homes England, the Government’s housing and regeneration agency. He went through the various tools that they use to try and increase the supply of affordable, quality homes (last year 190k against a target of 300k so work to do). These include giving funding to get sites ready for development, loans, grants for affordable homes and guarantees.
Construction is a tough job with limited productivity improvements constantly lagging behind the rest of the economy with a poor safety record and a dearth of skills. One third of UK waste comes from construction with 25% of materials taken to site wasted.
As with Simon, Edward pressed the concept of offsite timber frame construction with further advantages from cost certainty, improved health and safety and greater labour force diversity. He concluded with some case examples, including the famous and impressive timber framed, Goldsmith Street, Norwich.
James Wilson, MD of Davidsons, a major regional housebuilder focussed on commercial risk in the light of companies, such as Ilke Homes, an MMC advocate, entering liquidation with £319m of debts. He talked through a case study of, for him, the inflexibility of relying on a MMC contractor supply that puts the whole project at financial risk.
For his brand that introduces a lot of design detail and variety into its product it makes the timber frame designs more complex and therefore less economic. It is also more inflexible in terms of labour requirements and therefore less cost effective, having greater peaks and troughs in the need for specialised skills such as plumbers and electricians, which is less efficient.
He is not opposed to MMC as such, being disappointed that he is building in essentially the same way as 30 years ago when he entered the profession. At the moment for him MMC is better suited to such schemes as student housing, where repetition is the key.
There then followed a lively and very civilised debate. For low rise housing there is clearly a long way to go to reap the obvious benefits of off-site production, but it should ultimately be the way to go. At present sufficient benefits will probably be restricted to say the largest 5 housebuilders with scale to work with large production runs.
Our speakers could all speak from a position of substantial experience and authority, so it was a real privilege for myself and hopefully the 80 odd people in the audience. And everyone should have learnt a lot – the speakers said they did!
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