Offsite HUB (Scotland): establishing a collaborative regional framework for knowledge exchange in the UK

Abstract

The UK has been identified as the standout construction market in Europe and is set to become Europe's largest construction market by 2030. However, UK construction productivity performance is regarded as weak with low skills levels considered to be a key contributory factor. Consequently, Offsite construction has been identified by UK Government as a vehicle for improving productivity levels if the skills deficiencies in this particular market segment can be addressed. A series of projects were therefore launched by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) to encourage an R&D approach to skills and development application in the workplace. This paper reports on one of these research projects, a University and Industry collaboration between two of the largest offsite timber platform frame manufacturers in the UK. The paper explains how a needs analysis process was utilised to develop skills training content tailored to the immediate needs of the industry partners. It also explores how working with academia and a wider community of stakeholders allowed this training content to result in sector level impact via knowledge exchange activities and generic skills material creation.Finally, the novel approach of utilising 'Hoshin' planning to form a larger regional Offsite HUB (Scotland) Community of Practice, with a developed plan for collaboration aligned with international offsite research objectives, is also explained. This is particularly relevant given the recent UK Farmer review "Modernise or Die -time to decide the industry future", the most recent in a series of calls from government and other respected sources for improved levels of productivity and cultural change in the construction sector.The case study presented in this paper is evidence of success in mobilising industry through creating communities of practice to advance the construction sector regionally.It also provides a generalisable method that is reproducible by other university-industry cohorts in order to realise shared industry wide goals.

Multifaceted Productivity Comparison of Off-Site Timber Manufacturing Strategies in Mainland Europe and the United Kingdom

“…This rigorous data collection, analysis and conclusions approach has been developed based on previous research studies in industrialised construction (Hairstans and Smith 2017;Nadim and Goulding 2011;Succar 2009). For example, Hairstans and Smith applied a method of semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis with a feedback loop to triangulate the data.…”

“…Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and offsite construction have been 'hot topics' in industry in recent years because of the need to optimise the resource efficiency of the construction industry (Chevin 2018;Hairstans and Smith 2017). This is due to the fact that the UK construction industry has unfortunately been slow to adopt new construction methods (Farmer 2016) despite the proposals put forward in the Egan report which stated that:…”

Offsite construction skills evolution: an Australian case study

“…OSC skills are different to onsite construction (Haristans and Smith, 2017). OSC will redefine the skill requirements even though the existing skills are rigid, based on the craftsmanship of workers (Dainty et al, 2004;Nadim and Goulding, 2010).…”

Rethinking the Building Envelope: Building Integrated Energy Positive Solutions

“…The need for the UK construction industry to improve performance has been widely reported and two of the main reports on the state of the industry, "Constructing the Team" [3] and "Rethinking Construction" [4], both commissioned by the UK Government, are cited in many of the papers reviewed in this study, even those where research is non-UK focused [5]- [16], emphasising their significance to the industry.…”