Holliday homes

What better operating region could a housebuilder have than a state-designated growth area? And Holliday's 350-unit-a-year business is ready to take every type of development opportunity going. So far this year, Ward has announced an alliance with a housing association to develop key worker housing, it has come up with an agenda to establish its credentials on sustainability, and it has targeted the aspirational buyer with its glossy Visions catalogue of lighting, flooring and garden sheds, which is the most visible element of a computer-based optional extras service.

There have been other innovations, too, such as a move into the retirement village market and the appointment of a director of innovation with a brief to look at the long-term improvement of the business, through changing processes, updating specifications or investigating the potential for off-site manufacturing techniques.

But it hasn't always been like this. When Holliday arrived at Ward in 1998, it was a firm with a 62-year history that, in Holliday's words, "needed revamping".

The conundrum is how to use off-site manufacturing at a time when sites are getting ever more complex

The man with an OBE "for energy", as he jokes, or more precisely for energy-efficient housing, was a good candidate for the job. One of housebuilding's larger-than-life characters, Holliday had run Laing Homes, founded Admiral Homes and been president of the House Builders Federation, so he brought not only the business skills that took Ward through a management buyout three years ago, he had a high profile. "Ward had a good reputation but very few people knew what the company did before David came here," says Janet Burnell, Ward's sales and marketing director.

Now the business could be helping to build the government's sustainable community in the Thames Gateway – if it is buildable. "It will happen," asserts Holliday. "That is clear from the fact that it has gone up the agenda and the prime minister is chairing a subcommittee on the region." But he is not blind to the obstacles. "There is an awful lot of land in the Thames Gateway that is incredibly marginal and it will stay that way. The government will have to lever in money as it did in Docklands."

Ashford, where the government wants 31,000 new homes by 2031 is the chosen location for the first 40-unit key worker housing scheme by Hyward, the partnership between Ward and Hyde Housing Association. Ward has been working on sites with Hyde for some time, but under this formal partnership the two will be developing key-worker homes for low rent and shared ownership using land from Ward's landbank, through Section 106 agreements and by bidding for sites. "We're recognising that life is changing and that to be a one-track developer will be more difficult," says Holliday. "And it will appeal to our local authority clients. They have large tracts of land and are reluctant to put it in the hands of private developers."

There are a few areas where Holliday is keen to learn from his affordable counterpart. "Housing associations are leading in off-site manufacture. They tend to be bolder. Because they do lifetime costing, they specify different products. We'll learn from that and get a better balance between value and lifetime cost."

When it comes to off-site manufacture, however, Holliday is something of an expert. He has made an international study tour of system-building methods and has run a business coupling off-site manufacturing techniques with supply-chain management, to supply homes in container-packed kit form and erect them. Holliday did all this 20 years ago, when he was running Laing's Superhomes operation. "It was moderately successful, and it was fun, but it was miles ahead of its time," he says. "I cut my teeth on systems like Jesperson, a Swedish heavy concrete system. The systems were great as long as you stuck to them, which people didn't. The conundrum now is that we're trying to use off-site manufacturing at a time when sites are getting even more complex and there is more need for attached housing."

Twenty-first century prefabricators have some significant advantages over their ancestors, says Holliday. "Since then, computer technology has moved on and multidisciplinary working is taking off. We've still got to work hard to get prime costs down, but we have to do it. In 10 years' time we are not going to have the labour to build traditionally." Ward is fortunate enough not yet to have encountered problems getting or retaining subcontract labour. "We've been around a long time, we pay subcontractors on time and we partner a lot – we have 12 major partnering contracts," explains Holliday.

A very different form of innovation is in progress at the company's 160-unit Castle Village scheme in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The scheme is a retirement village, targeted at affluent retired professionals, with on-site restaurant and bar and apartments of up to 1200 ft². "I first saw these schemes in the mid-1980s in the USA, but the UK wasn't ready for them then," says Holliday. Castle Village, which is close to Holliday's own home, has sold fast to buyers including Holliday's parents, and the housebuilder is now planning several follow-on schemes.