2000 Innovation Awards

Tee-U-Tec is a closed timber panel system developed by Beazer Partnerships in response to the recommendations put forward in the Egan and Latham reports. The timber panels and roof cassettes are manufactured at Beazer's Torwood factories in Scotland and Ipswich. Panels can be used with concrete, beam and block ground floors and fink, attic or cassette type roof structures. What particularly impressed the Innovation Awards' judges was the interlocking joint developed by Beazer for the wall panels.

The system's first application has come with projects by the Amphion consortium of housing associations. Walls 140 mm thick are fitted with mineral wool, a 15 mm OSB board on the inside face and a 6.4 mm Paneline medium density fibreboard on the outside face, so creating a reverse wall where the adhesive in the OSB acts as the vapour barrier.

Beazer is already working on improving Tee-U-Tec. Within several months, it expects to be able to erect frames without scaffolding. Beazer is committed to researching and implementing innovations as part of its partnering arrangement with the Amphion consortium.

In a diminishing market of bricklaying skills Celcon has come up with a system that allows more block to be laid with less skill

Mike Freshney

Silver award
Celcon's Thin-Joint system
Celcon's Thin-Joint system is designed to bring blockmaking up to date, replacing the traditional mortar and aircrete blocks used widely in the homebuilding industry. The system uses a glue mortar rather than a traditional sand and concrete mix, which means that the mortar is only 3 mm thick and hardens in ten minutes. This allows bricklayers to use large blocks and helps them to avoid a messy working environment.

Celcon says the advantages of its Celfix Thin-Joint mortar are that less of it is needed and that its use does not require a special mixing plant on site.

At 430 by 440 mm, Celcon's Jumbo blocks are twice as big as a traditional block but can still be handled by one person. The manufacturer estimates the use of larger blocks can increase productivity by up to 200%. Spray, tiles or render can also be applied direct to internal blockwork.

What you can do with claddings is, to a large extent, restricted in the marketplace, because of planning and mortgageability. The big move forward will be when there are more products available for external cladding

Kendrick Jackson

The manufacturer has developed a range of specialist tools and ancillaries especially for the Thin-Joint system. The package contains a sanding board and rasp, a saw and cutting square, scoops and sledges, cavity wall ties, movement joint ties and bed joint reinforcement. Celcon also provides two demonstrators on-site to ensure that contractors use Thin-Joint correctly.

Runner up
Concrete tunnelform
An east London site is currently the focus for the first large-scale trial of concrete tunnelform construction in UK homebuilding. Success in this trial could give a new lease of life to a construction material that has been out of favour in UK homebuilding since the 1970s.

Homes at housing association Southern Housing Group's Nightingale Estate in Hackney, east London are created by pouring concrete into huge Outinord steel moulds, and then curing the concrete overnight with the aid of heaters to allow moulds to be stripped away and re-assembled next day. In this way side walls and floors for homes can be cast in a rolling 24-hour cycle that brings factory production-line principles to the building site.

We tried to make houses in the factory in the 1960s and we couldn’t make it pay, and we still can’t make it pay. Site build is more economic and quality is good

Tony Bingham

The system relies for efficiency on repetition of units and Southern Housing Group is developing 235 apartments and houses at the Millennium Plus scheme at the Nightingale Estate. Steel shutters can be adjusted to create rooms and modules of different sizes, and can be used up to 600 times.

At Millennium Plus, Southern Housing Group is combining concrete tunnelform with other innovative technology, including timber wall panels, flexible twin-wall heating pipes, gypsum block walls and doorsets in what is a Housing Forum demonstration project.

Runner up
Britspace's modular house
Modular buildings manufacturer Britspace has spent well over a year working with Wimpey Homes and housing association The Guinness Trust to develop a house that will initially be trialled by the HA partner in the joint initiative. So far a pair of semi-detached prototype homes have been built at Britspace's factory, and The Guinness Trust expects to develop homes at two Essex sites.

Modular is so fast that on the seventh day you are effectively resting, but what is the general public’s reaction to that?

Mike McCarthy

Each of the prototype homes is made from four galvanised steel frame modules with steel stud wall panels and brick slip cladding and has a steel frame, steel tiled roof. Bathrooms and kitchens are fully fitted in the modules on the factory production line, and the steel roof provides usable loftspace. The manufacturer is targeting a 20% reduction in energy consumption for the finished homes.

Britspace believes that its modular system can produce many of the improvements pressed for in Sir John Egan's Rethinking Construction. It is claimed to reduce defects, reduce site build time and waste levels by 50%, and produce a superstructure that arrives on site 80% complete.

The system has, however, yet to gain total acceptance as planners have not responded with universal approval to the first schemes. These total around 50 units, and will provide a major test of occupant reaction to modular housing.

There are skills shortages so the industry has got to look at ways of doing things differently

John Stambollouian

Runner up
Elliott Group's e.House
Two Elliott Group modular e.Houses have already been built at Sunley Estates' Port Regent site in Eastbourne, and the manufacturer's own researches have shown that its system could suit more than 85% of traditionally constructed house designs. Elliott Group has been working on the e.House principle for two years with the objective of developing a cost-effective factory-produced volumetric modular housing system, and the Sunley homes gave the technology its first on-site test.

Modules have a galvanised steel warm perimeter frame with steel or timber matrix panels and are fitted with Elliott's own innovation, the Durapanel. This is a brick-faced composite panel which has a 50 mm cavity and insulation on the inner structural frame for thermal efficiency.

Elliott Group reckons that it can reduce on-site construction and lead in period by 50%, and can have its homes designed and installed on site in less than 10 weeks from receipt of order. It currently has a production capacity of around 250 homes a year.

We have a planning framework that wants us all to be more adventurous. But with any build system you take on board the limitations of that system

Steve Prismall

The first Sunley home has been occupied by one of the homebuilder's staff for six months, and has so far shown a 20% reduction in energy costs, and has suffered no drying shrinkage cracking.

Runner up
Yorkon's room modules
While other manufacturers are trialling modular versions of the conventional house, Yorkon has firmly targeted the apartment market with its room modules. The best test of Yorkon's room modules so far has been on housing association The Peabody Trust's ultra-modern looking Murray Grove scheme in Hackney, east London.

For this scheme, designed by Cartwright Pickard Architects, modules were stacked five-high, clad in terracotta tile and Western Red Cedar, and finished with steel frame balconies and walkways. Because most of the finishing was carried out on site, Yorkon's Murray Grove was only 60% factory-built.

Modules are steel monocoques with insulation injected between the internal plasterboard and galvanised steel sheet exterior. Internal walls, kitchens and bathrooms are all factory fitted. At Murray Grove, one-bed apartments were made from two modules, and two-bed units from three.