The other partners in the Seismic consortium are technology-led design practice Bryden Wood, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), and two of the UK’s leading offsite specialists, Elliott and The McAvoy Group.

The challenges of the demand for new primary schools

Around 100 new and replacement primary schools are needed every year in the UK at a cost of £5bn.
This demand far exceeds current capacity in the construction industry.

Also the construction sector is generally inefficient compared to UK manufacturing. Every primary school construction project has a bespoke design, is procured individually and is delivered by a fragmented supply chain. This process leads to varying levels of quality, low productivity and increased risk of time and budget overruns.

The vision of ‘a brave new world for UK construction’

The new consortium has been established to carry out extensive research and development to engineer a range of standardised offsite solutions which will radically increase productivity and efficiency, drive down costs and reduce lead times in the delivery of exemplary primary schools.

Richard Crosby, Director of Blacc, said “Through greater standardisation, we aim to develop a series of components to enable multiple offsite specialists to achieve unprecedented economies of scale and efficiency in manufacturing. This will bring a higher degree of stability, predictability and transparency to the procurement process – to the benefit of both the client and the supply chain.”

An innovotive open source app to enable community involvement in primary school design

Currently in development is the creation of a pioneering digital tool to accelerate the initial design phase for new primary schools. This user-friendly web-based app, which can be used by teaching professionals, will configure a primary school building on a specific site in line with DfE requirements, and using a standardised offsite solution to optimise efficiency. This will significantly reduce the time and cost of the initial feasibility and design phase and will facilitate the input of stakeholders.

“By digitising the process of designing a primary school, we believe we can deliver significant reductions in lead times and build costs whilst accommodating individual design requirements. More time can actually be spent on the bespoke elements of the design of each school” said Jami Cresser-Brown, Director of Bryden Wood”.

Standardising components

The Seismic project will also look at how standardised module sizes and steel-framed offsite solutions can be developed, costed and manufactured to achieve greater economies of scale and cost efficiencies for the construction of new primary schools.

Susan Hone-Brookes, Chief Engineer for Construction and Infrastructure at the MTC said, “This project will not only standardise different, market-leading offsite solutions for primary school construction, but it will act as a trailblazer to demonstrate the very latest offsite manufacturing technologies”.

A ground-breaking project

David Clark, Head of Manufacturing and Innovation at The McAvoy Group, said, “It is fantastic to be part of such a ground-breaking project which we think will be a catalyst for revolutionising not just school design, procurement and delivery but the wider construction industry.

“There is also huge potential to take the best of UK manufacturing and apply that to offsite construction to realise even greater cost and programme efficiencies - with no compromise on design - to the benefit of the communities we serve”.

James Cowell, Technical Director of Elliott, said, “This is a tremendous opportunity to take offsite to the next level whilst developing even more innovative solutions to meet the rising demand for primary school places”.