Two of the most influential construction procurement bodies Crown Commercial Service and SCAPE have adopted the Building a Safer Future (BSF) initiative and are embedding it within their frameworks.
Demonstrating clear sectoral leadership and taking proactive steps and action ahead of regulation, the procurement organisations will use their influence to drive change through their UK wide partner and supply chain networks.
The adoption of BSF will support the construction industry to address critical areas of challenge in relation to building safety – particularly focussed on driving a step change in culture and leadership.
Crown Commercial Service and SCAPE will include both ‘BSF Champion’ status and ‘Registered Signatory’ status as requirements at different levels within their procurement frameworks and, working with BSF, will collaborate to encourage industry-wide adoption of this important initiative.
The BSF Charter was created to drive culture change in the built environment to help ensure that buildings are safe for those living and working in them and to protect life by putting safety first, ahead of all other building priorities. It is focussed on driving up standards, changing culture and behaviours and raising the bar in relation to building safety from design through to management and maintenance.
Construction companies can engage through becoming:
- A BSF Signatory – publicly and proactively supporting five pledges that demonstrate a commitment to protecting life by putting safety first, ahead of all other building priorities.
- A BSF Champion – through robust self-assessment, benchmarking and independent. verification, BSF helps companies identify potential issues and, in turn, develop continuous improvement plans to advance their overall approach and performance on leadership and culture in relation to building safety and drive up standards across the sector.
Crown Commercial Service is an executive agency of the Cabinet Office and the UK’s largest public procurement organisation. They offer the largest construction frameworks in the country, driving industry change in support of the Government’s construction strategy
SCAPE is one of the UK’s leading public sector procurement authorities, dedicated to creating spaces and places that leave a sustainable legacy within the community. The SCAPE group of companies also includes Arc Partnership, an innovative joint venture between SCAPE and Nottinghamshire County Council and Lungfish Architects. Each of the companies within SCAPE have committed to adopting the principles contained within the BSF Charter and to participating themselves in the BSF Champions programme where this is applicable.
Amanda Long, Chief Executive, Building a Safer Future, said: “I am delighted that two major procurement frameworks, Crown Commercial Service and SCAPE have chosen to adopt Building a Safer Future as a critical lever of change. This trailblazing development will further support the construction industry to take the critical steps to put building safety first, and recognise those that do so. I encourage other procurement frameworks to follow their lead.”
Here are links to press coverage that CESW has had in December
Creative Building Magazine – CESW launches 2022 Awards
Building Products – CESW awards set for 2022 return
Construction.co.uk – Dan Macey appointed new chair of CESW
BDC Magazine – Dan Macey appointed new chair of CESW
BDC Magazine – Industry leaders gather for crucial CESW Summit
Building Products – CESW brings indusrty leaders together at Exeter Summit
BDC magazine social posts about the Construction Summit:
PBC Today reports “Constructing Excellence South West (CESW) has appointed Dan Macey as the new chair, to lead a strategy for positive change in the construction industry.
Macey will work with the board and CESW partners to develop and lead a strategy that will positively shape the future of the South West construction industry. With six years of experience on the CESW board already under his belt, Macey said: “Construction faces challenges around safety and hitting net zero carbon targets and we must come together collaboratively to find the solution.”
Read full article on PBC Today HERE
Two Bristol Housing Reports have been published by the Bristol Housing Festival
One (BRE) looking at MMC data and two (BCC and the whole consortium) looking at the project and how BCC was able to learn lessons about how best to unlock MMC.
Enabling Housing Innovation for Inclusive Growth: Project Summary https://www.bristolhousingfestival.org.uk/resources/ehifrg-final-report
In April 2020, a consortium of partners was awarded an Innovate UK grant for their project Enabling Housing Innovation for Inclusive Growth. This project was led by YTKO and included Bristol City Council, Bristol Housing Festival, BRE, Arcadis, Unit 9, and nine leading modular housing companies.
This is an 18-month programme working with multiple partners towards the delivery of a major Research, Development, and Innovation project in the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC).
This report summarises the outputs from the project from the consortium of partners and the lessons learnt throughout the project.
Benefits of Modern Methods of Construction in housing: Performance data and case studies
https://www.bristolhousingfestival.org.uk/resources/bre-report
Bristol projects featured twice at COP26 – Watch this A ten-minute film on the Innovate UK funded project https://www.bristolhousingfestival.org.uk/news/2021/hoperisecop26
COP26 reaffirmed the need to combat climate change and our CEO neatly encapsulated the challenge we in the built environment face: “[We] are responsible for a shocking 40% of global carbon emissions – and that means when it comes to achieving a net zero future, building matters. The sector has an urgent responsibility to reduce its carbon footprint.”
This will require innovation at scale and pace. This month Martyn Jones explores the role of trust in crafting the innovativeness that is needed to play out part in achieving net-zero.
By definition, innovation is about doing something new and different. It involves exploring unknown territory. On beginning the journey, we are not entirely sure of the final destination. There is no certainty, little transparency and therefore considerable risk.
Trust is needed if people are to work together, take risks and be comfortable with not knowing the exact outcome. And the more radical the innovation the greater the possible reward, but also the greater the risk. Innovation at scale requires a high tolerance of uncertainty and potential loss, and it is trust that carries people through.
But trust is very complex, not clearly defined and interpreted differently by the literature. It is commonly associated with the confidence that a partner will deliver the required mutually beneficial behaviour and desired outcomes.
Our experience of adopting Supply Chain Management in construction over the past 20 years or so has demonstrated that trust needs to be painstakingly developed beyond the basic ‘contractual trust’ and developing into ‘competence trust’, as partners demonstrate their accomplishments over time. ‘Goodwill trust’ emerges where partners driven by mutual benefits do more than expected, going beyond predictability and reliability and surpassing past achievements.
What distinguishes ‘goodwill trust’ from ‘contractual trust’ is the expectation in the former that the partners commit to taking initiatives to exploit new opportunities over and above what was explicitly promised. The key difference here is that a partner is not only looking after their own interests but is also seeking to offer their partner a competitive advantage too. If both partners do the same then the combined efforts of both will lead to better outcomes and build mutual competitive advantage.
When asking people, as we are now, to go through a major transformation, trust is vital. Given the current imperatives to combat climate change we need to go beyond ‘goodwill trust’ to ‘goodwill trust +’, or ‘co-creation trust’, to unleash the radical innovation that is now needed. As we did back in the 1990s, when clients and suppliers took a leap in trust to adopt the new technologies and ways of working associated with the ICT revolution, we need to take that leap now. But alongside that we also learnt how difficult it is to change and to place faith in each other.
So how do we get people and organisations to take the leap of faith that is needed to repair the planet? Leaders entering a joint innovation partnership with existing long-term partners may well already have the required levels of ‘goodwill trust’ in place to support the co-creativity and innovation that is needed.
But, the current nature and scale of the changes we face means that we will need to forge relationships with new partners, and quite possibly with those who are currently to be found outside construction. This means we may need to remind ourselves of the keys to building creative partnerships:
- Patience: Despite the current imperative for fast and radical change, we need to be patient. We know now not to expect too much too soon from new partners, new relationships and new teams. It takes time for trust and the consequent openness and collaborative behaviour that generates new ideas and mutual benefit to develop.
- Support: Newly formed teams involved in a joint innovation project will need help to build trust early in the process. This may involve revisiting trust-building activities that have proved effective in the past.
- Nurturing and monitoring: The level of mutual trust during innovation projects needs to be nurtured and monitored. Too often, leaders pay insufficient attention to trust with it being left to develop, or degrade, haphazardly. Proper monitoring should include a clear warning system of lapses in relationships and trust.
- Constructive criticism: Ensure that there is an appropriate level of healthy criticism within the team. If too much trust develops, it might be necessary to remind the team of its objectives and priorities. Here again, careful monitoring can alert leaders to an excessive build-up of cosy relationships and groupthink.
We must not forget that change is not just about technology. We are dealing with an innately human process and there are some key human traits that we need to be aware of when it comes to building trust, especially on this scale.
Of course, there must be technical competence, experience, perceptiveness, and judgement in the partnership but beyond those we also need benevolence: How much partners care. And, empathy: How much understanding they have for each other’s needs and the situation? And then there’s integrity: Whether the partners’ intentions are aligned.
The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) is leading the sector’s response to the Net Zero challenge, through the Construct Zerochange programme. Building on the success of the sector’s collaborations during COVID, the CLC has engaged the industry to start to develop the Performance Framework, which sets out how the sector will commit to, and measure it’s progress towards, Net Zero.
What is the Performance Framework?
The Performance Framework has been developed to provide the CLC with a sector level dashboard on our progress towards Net Zero aimed at motivating businesses to action and to help those outside the sectorunderstand our progress. We intend to collate data for the dashboard on a quarterly basis albeit not every metric will be available quarterly. The data itself will be drawn from sources which already aggregate it, known as data point owners.
The Performance Framework is very closely aligned with Government policy and draws on emerging thinking on carbon measurement and assessment, as such it will evolve over time and we will no doubt update and improve the metrics. The current metrics and performance published today is a starting point so we can review, test and refine. The framework is being published this quarter to provide early sight of the metrics available to enable the industry to comment. It will take multiple quarters before all metrics are available and longer to refine, to make this as effective as it can be for the industry, but we are keen to publish this version early for comment and reviews.
CLICK HERE to see the full November 2021 Report
Business Champions Interview Questions
The questions have been developed as a structured interview to capture the approach and commitment of businesses across the sector to achieving Net Zero by 2050 in line with the Construct Zero priorities. The interview can be captured in writing or filmed
Please CLICK HERE to download the interview questions if you would like to get invloved and help provide data for the CZ Performance Framework
The Constructing Excellence Awards are back for 2022 to recognise the very best of the construction and built environment across the South West. We officially open the CESW Awards this Wednesday the 8th December.
Open to all organisations and project teams, they celebrate those involved in delivering building and civil engineering projects in the region.
The awards are a clear demonstration of the core strength of construction in the South West and highlights the industry professionals’ commitment to deliver buildings, housing, infrastructure and facilities of all kinds in a collaborative and sustainable manner.
Andrew Carpenter, CEO of Constructing Excellence South West, said: “Being recognised by your peers for excellence in construction brings enormous benefits to your business. It not only helps to attract new clients but it also cements existing relationships and raises staff morale.
“We welcome entries from developers, clients, contractors, engineers, consultants and members of the design team. If the project contributes to the South West built environment, we want to celebrate it as an example of best practice.
“This year is key for the construction sector as it navigates many challenges. Working collaboratively across the industry will be essential to tackle the issues, like building safety and the net zero targets, head on, and our awards are a great way to showcase how our region is already paving the way for the future.”
Companies who are interested in applying have until Friday 11 March 2022. To find out more information about the 16 categories and how to enter visit: https://constructingexcellencesw.org.uk/about-the-awards/http://www.ce-awards.co.uk/
Hosted by Fred Mills, The B1M is the world’s largest, most subscribed-to video channel for construction.
Do take a look at this video on their YouTube channel. The completion of the first-ever 3D-printed home to be fully certified under a national government’s building regulations is a huge moment – both for construction and for the buildings we all use everyday.
Fred Mills spoke to the expert team at PERI’s Disruptive Products and Technologies department to see how it was done. Watch now on YouTube
BIM4Housing has been supporting the L&Q/DLUCH Golden Thread Initiative to help advise what information should be collected and how buildings can be safer.
We tapped into the sterling efforts of the Fire Safety Workstream and the first tranche of Roundtables conducted by Will and Scott at the tail-end of last year and have run 12 Roundtable workshops covering:
· Fire Doors
· Cavity Barriers
· AOVs
· Fire Dampers and Fire Stopping assets
· Emergency Lighting, Fire Signage
· Alarms & Detection for Fire, Smoke, Heat and Gas
· Sprinkler Systems and Dry & Wet risers
· Dry lining/Partitioning
It has taken a lot of effort from all concerned, but we are now ready to present the outputs from the BIM4Housing Round Tables to the BIM4Housing Working Groups – who set the whole train in motion in the first place.
Context is important in understanding how this information can be used by different stakeholders for different purposes so we will hold individual 90 min workshops with each Group. This will give us the opportunity to decide how we might best apply what we have learned.
Many of you will be interested in more than one stakeholder group so we are running them on separate days to allow you to attend more than one. These will be on Teams so we need to manage the numbers – and if the demand for “seats” if too high, we can split that in two.
Therefore, we would ask that you use the Forms link below to tell us which you would like to attend.
Moving forward, we are looking to hold working Group meetings every 2 months, on the following dates. These will define topics and issues to feed through to our Workstreams.
LEGO COMPETITION – Inspiring the future workforce
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter is holding ‘Brick by Brick: A Lego brick history of Exeter’ exhibition next summer, which will feature buildings in Exeter through history, made out of Lego. Building Greater Exeter are teaming up with RAMM to run a competition to ‘Design and build a model of a building for Exeter’s future’ in Lego.
The competition will launch in January 2022 and is open to all the primary schools in Exeter, Teignbridge and East Devon, with a particular focus on years 4-6 (age 7-12). There are 126 primaryschools across Greater Exeter, with a total of 28,729 pupils (average 224 per school). Not only will the competition engage the pupils, but in addition the teachers and families of the students at each school. The competition is open to all students and will therefore include pupils from different genders, backgrounds and those with disabilities. The competition will be promoted directly to the head teacher at every school and via the communication channels at Exeter, Teignbridge, East Devon and Devon councils.
Building Greater Exeter have allocated budget for 15 schools to participate and the aim is to attract additional funding to ensure at least 30 schools can participate. We are therefore looking for sponsorship to maximize impact and to help inspire the future workforce.
Should you wish to support this initiative, your logo and company bio will be included in all the communications surrounding the event such as social media, website promotion, the promotional pack, video and school literature, with prominence given to the larger sponsors.
To allow enough time to order all the Lego sets for a January 2022 launch the deadline to offer support is Thursday 16 December 2021
