Share of £4m pot will go towards work on industrialising and digitising sector
The government has launched a new research fund, challenging UK innovators to find ways to cut the cost and time taken to build new infrastructure and buildings.
The Industrialising and Digitising Construction Research and Innovation Challenge was first announced as part of a suite of investments last week at UK Research and Innovation’s growth summit.
The summit, held at the Science Museum, saw the launch of the government’s broader £500m Research and Development Missions Accelerator Programme, which is backing research and innovation to tackle the biggest challenges facing the country.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has now revealed further details of the construction challenge, which will benefit from a share of a £4m fund.
The challenge will bring together the construction industry, manufacturers and public sector organisations to create a digital marketplace that allows industrialised building components and processes to be developed and delivered at scale.
This platform is meant to enable firms and suppliers to develop, share and configure standardised digital designs for infrastructure and buildings.
It aims to deliver 10% savings in construction costs and time for government-funded projects like social housing, schools, hospitals, and transport infrastructure by 2030.
DSIT hopes it will achieve this by introducing manufacturing approaches to construction and providing certainty of demand and specification for suppliers, enabling them to scale production.
It said the platform would also verify that building products meet safety and quality standards.
The £4m fund will also support another research and innovation challenge, which is focused on developing the infrastructure for the government’s creative content exchange.
Addressing the summit last week, technology secretary Liz Kendall said there was “no route to stronger growth in this country, no answer to how we pay our way, or compete with the rest of the world, without science, technology and innovation leading front and centre”.
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