The Supply Chain Sustainability School has launched Offsite
for Everyone, a comprehensive new suite of learning materials to guide the
construction industry in its adoption of offsite construction. Offsite for Everyone
is targeted at both organisations and individuals.
“We hear so much about the need to change the way we build,
but very little about what have to do differently in our day-to-day jobs,” says
Ian Heptonstall, Director of the Supply Chain Sustainability School. “Our new
free to access, CPD-accredited, learning materials take six key job functions:
design, project management, procurement, logistics, quantity surveying and site
management, and for the first time outline what we must do differently if we
are to reap the many benefits of offsite.”
The learning materials in Offsite for Everyone range from
full-day courses, virtual courses and e-learning modules, to videos – all of
which are free for anyone to use. With funding from the Construction Industry Training
Board (CITB), the materials have been developed by the School in partnership
with the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) and National Open Colleges
Network (NOCN).
For architects and designers, it is critical to the successful
implementation of offsite that they follow a Design for Manufacture and
Assembly (DfMA) process and consider offsite at an early stage – so, embedding
knowledge of MMC within design professions is essential to increasing
premanufactured value in the UK construction industry.
“Each sector has its own specific requirements,” says Nigel
Ostime, Project Delivery Director at Hawkins\ Brown. “So it is important to
understand which MMC categories are best suited to each building type. The
free-to-use School learning resources provide clear advice on this and have
proved an invaluable resource for our designers, as well as forming networking
and knowledge-sharing opportunities with likeminded professionals, constructors
and manufacturers.”
Construction recruitment business Build Space supported the
School to develop the training modules introducing key contacts to the course
development team to bring relevant case studies and expert insight. The firm
now requires that all candidates placed into offsite construction complete the
relevant Offsite for Everyone training modules. Dominic Coyne, Director at Build
Space explains: “We have been helping offsite construction contractors build
their teams for over 10 years and during this time we have seen some massive
advances in the market. Quality, sustainability, design and cost have all
improved immeasurably and constant advances being made need strong training to support
them. The School training is a gamechanger, in a market with a major skills
shortage, it is a great way of bridging the knowledge gap.”
Source: www.supplychainschool.co.uk
