Member Article

Space Group rethinks traditional construction processes in favour of sustainable development

Newcastle-based building information specialist, Space Group is investing in a new incubator lab with the aim of rethinking traditional approaches to the design and construction process.

The venture dubbed Hot House will challenge the industry so it can be made more sustainable.

“Head gardener” and technical director Adam Ward has been instrumental in bringing Hot House to life. Adam worked closely on bimstore.co.uk, one of the its first projects to be commercialised.

Adam said: “Hot House is all about formally supporting and investing in new ideas. Not only does this help to move the construction industry forward, it helps sustain Space Group’s position as a leader in new thinking.

“Bimstore began as a rough working prototype four years ago and is the iTunes store equivalent for specifiers. It is already the UK no.1 site for Building Information Modelling (BIM) component downloads and is a sustainable and growing business in its own right.”

Through Hot House, Space Group is currently working in collaboration with a number of universities including Teesside University, Leeds Metropolitan University and Caledonian University, via the Technology Strategy Board and Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), a UK-wide programme, enabling businesses to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance.

Ideas come from across the group and everyone’s contribution counts with multiple projects running at any one time across Space Group’s offices, which span the UK from London to Edinburgh and employ over 100 people.

Space Group CEO Rob Charlton said: “Construction is not renowned for investing in research and development – it has not been a technology driven industry in the past. Now, however, we are going through a digital revolution, equivalent to the change from VHS to Netflix.

“Traditionally buildings have been built and managed in wasteful and costly ways and Hot House is our commitment to solving such problems – be it specifically relating to the design or construction process or the maintenance.

“At Space Group we want to find better ways to deliver buildings. This means we have to re-think what we know to create a built environment that makes the world better for everyone.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .