In fact, when you look at the targets for forum - the body pushing technological change in housebuilding - you begin to wonder whether there's a typing error somewhere.
Capital costs and construction time set to fall by ten per cent, defects by 20 per cent and accidents by 20 per cent. while, the number of projects completed on time and within budget will rise 20 per cent, as will productivity and profits.
Impressive stuff, but it is no one-off. According to the forum these levels of annual improvement will be achieved year after year, with no indication of when it may stop.
And the housing forum is the organisation that will make it happen in housebuilding.
Nameed jointly by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Housing Corporation, the forum is composed of housing associations, private housebuilders, architects and suppliers.
It came about as a result of the Sir John Egan's Construction Task Force, which concluded that the savings mentioned above could be achieved if a number of new building methods were employed.
According to Egan a combination of a clear focus on the customer, a quality driven agenda and committed leadership could make these improvements real.
In short, improvement would be achieved by the development of a generic construction product, long term partnering through the supply chain and the application of manufacturing processes to construction.
As part of its work to achieve its aims, the Housing Forum will be developing demonstration projects - construction projects adhering to the Egan principles.
Already projects worth over £300m have been put forward by housebuilders as potential demonstration projects. Of that, around £22m comes from the social housing sector.
It is the job of the forum's demonstration project panel, led by construction expert Professor David Gann, of the University of Sussex, to decide which bids will be chosen.
He says: "Approval as a demonstration project will be an important signal to the industry as a whole."
"We are very much in the first phase and more demonstration projects will follow later. The Housing Forum will be holding a series of regional workshops and surgeries over the next few months to assist those interested in preparing proposals for demonstration projects," he explains.
And after the projects have been selected, the panel will visit projects on a regular basis, to offer assistance and encouragement and helping with monitoring of improvements, says Gann.
As can be seen from the selection below, the range of new ideas is vast. Plans for super-energy efficiency vie with homes made from hemp, and tenant participation, supply chain partnering and prefabrication.
In Hackney, east London, tenant involvement has been central to plans for 208 new units by Samuel Lewis Housing Trust.
"We are embracing the latest available and tested technology," says trust chief executive Tom Dacey, "but only innovations acceptable to the residents will be used. We will not repeat the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s, when new-technology housing solutions, which later failed, were imposed on communities."
Swan housing association director of operations Adrian Davey says his plans for 19 "integer" homes in Harlow, Essex are a variation on Building Research Establishment's "greenhouse" prototype, adapted for social housing.
He says: "We took out some bits but left the central idea intact."
The houses will have high security, good computer access, grey water recycling, a timber frame and will cost an estimated £2 a month to heat, he reckons (Housing Today, issue 129).
All these schemes embrace one or more of the Egan principles of product development, project implementation, supply chain partnering and factory-style production.
But some do seem to be going much further than a narrow interpretation of his ideas would suggest.
In a couple of years, even Peabody's hi-tech factory-built 30-flat scheme in Hackney, east London (see below) could be seen as old-hat.
And as former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev found to his cost, carefully crafted and controlled revolutions to improve efficiency do have a history of taking on a life of their own.
Only time will tell how far the "Egan revolution" will go.
There are currently 25 potential housing forum demonstration project contenders from the social housing sector, all funded by the Housing Corporation under the 1999/2000 Approved Development Programme. Here is a selection:
Swan HA - Primrose Hill, Harlow. 19 units. The project involves an "intelligent and green" housing brief for social housing, and promotes partnering throughout the supply chain. Construction costs £860,000.
Suffolk housing society - Cullum Road, Bury St Edmunds. 4 units. The construction of two pairs of semis - one traditional brick and block, and one hemp waste and lime construction (Housing Today, issue 127). The process will be monitored to compare timescales, workability, waste generation and monitoring will be conducted of the hemp homes for thermal, acoustic and structural performance. Construction costs £98,000.
Samuel Lewis Housing Trust - Nightingale estate, Hackney, London. 208 units for rent and shared ownership. The project includes supply chain management, tenant participation, use of new products and processes to improved space standards and cost in use. Construction costs £13.5m.
Anchor Trust - Coolfin Road, Newham, east London. Timber frame construction for two extra care sheltered schemes. Construction will be monitored and supply partnering agreements are anticipated after completion. Construction costs £2.1m.
Riverside HA - White Rock Court, Liverpool. Adaptation of a previous project to construct 21 sustainable pre-fabricated units. They will show examples of low pollution, energy production, water saving and hi-tech communications. Construction costs £1.1m.
York HA - St Nicholas Court, York. Sustainable housing scheme using as many sustainable resources as possible. The housing association fully endorses the Egan principles and will select the project team on their commitment to Egan. Construction costs £1.1m.
Collingwood HA - Preston. Redevelopment of four sites using standardised design and components. The association also intends to partner throughout the supply chain including the tenants as end users. Construction costs £2.2m.
Collingwood HA - project in Morecambe. The construction of 47 units including two disabled bungalows. Partnering includes design, construction, final review, training, consultants and contractors. Construction costs £2.6m.
The other contenders are projects by Circle 33, Home, Hastoe, High Weald, Hyde Rosebery, Ealing Family, Fosseway, Jephson and Midland Area.
Last week marked a remarkable comeback. Not since Abba's subliminal 1970s music was rediscovered by the record-buying public or John Travolta relaunched his career in the film Pulp Fiction has the world seen anything like it.
Because this week, system-built, deck access, multi-storey social housing is back.
The final modules of the £2.2m 30 flat, Murray Grove scheme by Peabody Trust were swung into place in Hackney east London after being built and fully-fitted at a factory in York.
And fully-fitted means just that - fully wired, fully plumbed, even containing a fridge.
The scheme is not be demonstration project - it was underway well before the Housing Forum was launched.
But it is being seen very much as a pathfinder, incorporating several Egan principles such as system-built, factory-style production, component standardisation and partnering in the supply chain.
But what is happening here? Isn't this the very thing the social housing has been struggling to rid itself of for the past twenty years? Are we witnessing a repeat performance of one of the greatest failures of the post-war era?
The first thing visitors to the Yorkon "housing factory" in York are told is that these apartments are most certainly not "prefabs" - they are the result of a "modular" production process.
Semantics maybe, but for Portakabin subsidiary Yorkon it's an important difference, considering the stigma surrounding prefabs and system-building.
One major advantage of the process is that site clearance and preparation can be undertaken at the same time as the modules themselves are built, which are then simply taken to site and assembled.
This can cut construction time by 50 per cent, says marketing manager Andy Atkins.
Neither is it a low-quality option. McDonald's restaurants and four-star hotel chains are convinced by it, and it's not an enormous leap from that to residential apartments.
Most importantly, he maintains, the mistakes of the 1960s have been learned - for instance on the Peabody project, there are only three doors to each deck, and a maximum height of five storeys.
He says: "In the 1950s and 1960s they built in condensation problems, they built in degradation problems. Now, we've had 30 odd years experience and we know the problems with condensation we know the problems with certain materials. They didn't have that experience in those days and we are building that experience into this product." Coupled with the technological improvements over the past 30 years, the factory process can iron out problems, he says.
Atkins says: "If you buy a car now there is a reasonable chance you'll get air conditioning. But you didn't get that ten years ago. It's because they are producing all the time and improving the technology and factory management. You can do that with a production process but you can't in a construction process."
But it is inside the factory the new face of construction is most vivid. Inside the hangar-like building, hotels and McDonald's restaurants slowly take shape on the production line.
But hang on a minute. New designs, improvements. Doesn't this all have an eerie echo - haven't we been here before? Weren't these all the same arguments that were used in the sixties?
According to Atkins it is this negative perception and stigma which is the main thing holding back the modular process.
"I don't really know how to change those perceptions apart from showing people. The technology that lies behind these buildings is very different to the technology used before, and it has been tested in other markets. But in order to change perceptions people have to see for themselves which is why Murray Grove is so important," he says.
Ultimately, no-one knows how far the modular concept can go, but a great deal rests on the Peabody prototype. And it all depends if the sector - most especially tenants - can be convinced.
But it does seem ominous that for all its talk, the company has no plans to market the idea in the private sector. If it really was so good, why wouldn't the private sector be interested? What better way to break down the stigma of prefabrication - sorry, modular construction - than to show that people were buying into it on their own free will and with their own money.
Certainly, there seems to have been little tenant input into the design, despite all the protests that previous mistakes have been learned.
It could well be that twenty years down the line that the proponents of the new style of system-built housing were right along, and that the fears were unfounded.
But as it is now, it does seems that once again it is social housing tenants that are to be the guinea pigs in another grand design for urban living.
Let's hope they really have got it right this time.
Source
Housing Today
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