New offers from Shepherd Construction and public sector-owned Scape have joined the expanding market for standardised school building systems. But an £8m deal signed by Leeds City Council shows that conventional contractors are increasingly in competition with modular building suppliers.
Shepherd is targeting construction cost savings of 40% with its new “Options” initiative, by pooling the resources and expertise of its operating companies and supply chain partners. These include Shepherd include Shepherd Construction, SES, SES Prism, Shepherd FM, Portakabin and Yorkon.
The initiative will use standard components for projects and aims to drive out waste and duplication through the planning and project delivery phases. The system will cover modular construction, tradition new-build or refurbishment but will not deliver a standardised building.
Meanwhile, the Scape company has just launched a standardised fixed price system for schools extension. It has been being brought to the education market by Scape, Derbyshire County Council (DCC) and Atkins-owned construction consultant Faithful+Gould.
Scape, a local authority controlled company, is behind the award winning Sunesis initiative, which isdelivering standardised school building design and build programmes in partnership with contractor Willmott Dixon.
Shaun Lunn, director of Faithful + Gould, commented: “We use innovative construction techniques to provide a robust, high quality structure that extends space but that can also be adapted because there are no internal load-bearing walls. This is what all local authorities want – a strong and flexible solution. This is a great example of how the public and private sector can work together to address an issue, as the answer is always better than the one we would come up with on our own.”
Meanwhile, modular building supplier Premier Interlink, formerly Waco UK, has been awarded an £8m deal to provide extensions to three schools in Leeds, totalling 3 380 sqm of accommodation. Construction Enquirer reports that the new classrooms will be formed from 106 steel-framed modules.
