The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) has entered into a new partnership whose aim include helping members make greater use of approaches such as offsite construcion and BIM.
The partnership with the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre is intended to increase opportunities and provide support for SFHA members. A funding call for support for modern methods of construction (MMC) will be launched at the SFHA Development Forum next week.
One of the main aims of the partnership is to provide expertise and support to enable housing associations to engage with, and use, offsite construction and other aspects of MMC including digital tools, design for manufacture assembly, building information modelling (BIM), augmented reality and virtual reality.
The funding call is intended to provide an opportunity for housing associations to trial fresh ideas with new prototypes and processes for the future development programmes MMC.
The long-term goals are for mainstream use of offsite construction in order to increase the quality and numbers of new affordable housing delivered by housing associations and address the shortage of skilled construction workers in Scotland. SFHA’s Innovation and Futures Thinking Programme is bringing its members and other stakeholders together to develop new ideas and solutions. Members and partners are working on a range of projects; CSIC is leading the ‘Modern Methods of Construction’ project within the programme. CSIC will provide up to £50,000 of academic funding support for the implementation and take up of modern methods of construction.
CSIC said that it hopes the funding call will inspire housing providers to experiment with innovation and to look at how new Technology can be used to improve services.