Sitting down with peers from other companies to tackle shared challenges and opportunities has served major rail, road and energy projects well in recent years, through the Infrastructure Industry Innovation Partnership (i3P), hosted by Connected Places Catapult.

Now the Catapult is exploring how a collaborative delivery model used by i3P – whose members include National Highways, the Environment Agency, Arup and Costain – could engage with and support other sectors including housing, to support developers and public bodies delivering affordable homes.

The aim is to help stakeholders tackle shared constraints together, create more investible propositions, de-risk delivery, and identify better ways to build.

“The model could support parts of the housing sector where delivery has infrastructure-like characteristics, such as in major strategic sites and new settlements, regeneration areas and large affordable housing pipelines,” explains the Catapult’s Head of Built Environment and Urbanism, Josh Thomas.

“The aim is not to create a universal model for all housing delivery, but to understand where collaborative innovation could help address repeated barriers that sit across organisational boundaries. These might include utilities co-ordination, infrastructure phasing, planning and assurance processes, low-carbon infrastructure and the adoption of proven delivery methods.”

Proposal discussed at UKREiiF

“The principle of i3P is really simple,” said Zoe Jennings, the Director of Energy & Environment at the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, who chaired a session inside the Connected Places Catapult pavilion at UKREiiF.

“It helps infrastructure clients, contractors, suppliers and delivery partners work collectively to solve common problems, rather than seeing them repeated across separate projects.”

Zoe Jennings, Director of Energy & Environment at the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority

Article

Slump no more: infrastructure clients adopt high-tech approach to concrete testing

Digital processes are overhauling the traditional means of testing concrete performance on major infrastructure projects, thanks to new systems championed by i3P.

“i3P has seen some really good impact to date around innovation in concrete and digital monitoring. Given the scale and ambition of housing growth, we are exploring whether this collaborative approach can work for housing.”

The session came as Chancellor Rachel Reeves – who attended UKREiiF – spoke about giving local leaders more power to invest in housing and transport, and said the Government is placing regional growth at the top of its agenda.

Learning lessons from others

Zoe asked her guests on her panel, ‘Accelerating Housing Through Collaborative Innovation’ to reflect on what an i3P delivery model could mean for the housing sector, what problems it could address, and who needs to be involved.

Jen Hunt, the Director of Development at Ebbsfleet Development Corporation said such an initiative could help participants to agree what lessons have been learned from previous developments, “something we could do better at.

“Everyone's so focused on driving forward their own project, but when starting on big new sites, you need to learn lessons from before. We all spend a lot of time working things out, but it would be good if there was a network we could access with a plethora of resources.”

Jen Hunt, Director of Development at Ebbsfleet Development Corporation

“There’s a vast amount of learning to share; there’s no point reinventing the wheel. This is about asking how we can do what we do a little bit better in a way that others have already done.”

Riding the wave of others

Janine Nightingale, the Corporate Director for Communities at Bridgend County Borough Council said: “As we all work towards our ambitious housing targets, we're going to have to have more help centrally to address issues and speed things up.

“The mantra has to be around best practice and networking,” she added. “If someone has got the scars and done something well, don't try to reinvent something – let’s pick up the phone and speak to them.

“There's nothing that beats a site visit, or sitting down with someone and hearing their experiences.”

A crossover from Crossrail

John Reid of Homes England said it is important that those developing new towns in particular “check in with people like Jen Hunt who have been leading major housing projects for many years, and capture all that rich experience”. He also reflected on how major projects like Crossrail can be a guiding light for the housing sector when it comes to collaboration.

Despite the project suffering from “tough times” during construction, the outcome now “is amazing”, he said. “When all the heat died down and you look back at how people travel – taking 15 minutes to cross London – it’s really impressive, and shows we can do this. People like us in this room make these projects happen.”

Martyn Saunders, a Director of Metro Dynamics urged delegates to remember “the end point; the life you want a place to have, beyond the construction period.

“That gets you to think about the stewardship of a place and how it’s organised once you build your buildings, you’ve got the public realm in – and people live and work there.

“Who should be around the table? We design infrastructure from a technical perspective, but if we don’t think about the users, we are not going to get the buy in.”

To find out more about plans to create an i3P equivalent for the housing sector, reach out to joshua.thomas@cp.catapult.org.uk

Read more about the work of i3P in delivering collaborative infrastructure outcomes.