Stewart Milne has been contracted to deliver hundreds of homes to two different Wiltshire sites at fast-track rate.
The MoD’s Army Basing Programme (ABP) is paving the way for approximately 4,000 service personnel and their families to relocate from Germany to Salisbury Plain.
Morgan Sindall subsidiary Lovell has a £250m contract with the MoD to construct 917 homes at three sites Ludgershall, Larkhill and Bulford by May 2020. It is Lovell's largest ever contracting scheme. [See our previous report here.]
Each site will have six different house types, with three or four bedrooms. Stewart Milne will deliver 467 of the 917 homes for Lovell across two of the three sites; Ludgershall and Larkhill.
The accelerated construction programme for the Salisbury Plain project will see the scheme deliver 20 completed homes a week – compared with a typical industry delivery pace of one to two homes a week. Energy performance for all homes will be equivalent to Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
Stewart Milne has had to adapt its standard automated manufacturing process to align with the demands of the scheme.
Mike Perry, sales director at Stewart Milne Timber Systems, said: “This is an exciting house-building project for Salisbury Plain, and we’re very proud to be associated with it. We have a proven method for manufacturing high-quality, value-engineered products, consistently on time, and will apply this to meet Lovell’s target of 20 completed homes per week.
“Typical industry pace is delivery of one-to-two homes per week, so it’s a stretching target, but from the outset of this project, we have all committed to working openly and collaboratively to ensure the successful completion of this scheme. We believe that this project will be an exemplar for the industry. It will demonstrate what can be achieved with an offsite manufactured timber frame solution and a collaborative working relationship with all partners.”
Lovell major projects director John Leary said: “Intelligent selection in supply chain assembly is essential in a project of this magnitude. This stands across the trades but is clearly crucial on key packages such as timber frame. The speed of build means that timber frame and thus an element of off-site manufacture was a given but the choice of provider is the challenging piece.
“After an extensive selection process considering the country’s leading providers, we elected to partner with Stewart Milne Timber Systems. We have worked successfully with Stewart Milne in the past and have only a positive history. Importantly we have been entirely comfortable working together in a very open and transparent manner, developing design solutions and fashioning the technical and commercial package over a series of months.
With a company of this stature and credential exhibiting such a supportive and collaborative approach, we are extremely confident in our ability to deliver the timber frames to programme, across each site.”
Stewart Milne Timber Systems began construction of the first timber frames for the Ludgershall site in June 2018. Construction for the Larkhill site is planned from late summer 2018.
Got a story? Email news@theconstructionindex.co.uk
