PBC Today interviewed Gaynor Tennant, Founder & Chair of The Offsite Alliance, who sheds light on Offsite Alliance’s new partnership with HOMES UK, co-located with Unlock Net Zero live 2022 and Housing Manchester in 2023
This exciting new partnership with HOMES UK will create further opportunities to continue raising awareness and creating the demand for sustainable housing.
At Homes UK in London, Offsite Alliance will host several panel discussions. At Housing Manchester, the company will offer an exciting line up of panel sessions, offsite experts on hand running workshops and build a village of beautiful sustainable homes.
We spoke to Gaynor Tennant, who voiced how the new partnership is exciting news for the sector.
Tell us a little bit about the partnership. How will it help to address the issues that the industry is currently facing?
Offsite Alliance’s focus is to change the way we build. Over the past few years, the Offsite Alliance have been working closely with the supply chain to bring about true collaboration, share best practice and advocate for increased uptake of better quality, more sustainable homes. The Offsite Alliance now has over 180 members, all delivering offsite homes, schools, hospitals and hotels.
The Homes England announcement in 2021 that 25% of housing must be built offsite left many RP’s and LA’s with questions. The partnership with HOMES UK and Housing 23 will help develop further relationships with the public sector and allow the OA to offer advice in turn increasing the confidence and demand.
Our stage takeover at Homes UK is a range of panel discussions all focused on raising awareness, sharing knowledge, and educating others. In construction, we are guilty of working in silo’s, it’s time for change, and the OA are all about building relationships, partnerships and making continuous improvement.
The OA invite anyone to ask those difficult questions, challenge the norm and be braver than those around you. The panel discussions will focus on quality, safety and warranties, net zero, and procurement.
Will the partnership prioritise energy efficiency measures?
Yes, it will. Offsite is a means to an end. Reducing our carbon is the key to everything. The built environment accounts for around 40% of carbon production, and if we all don’t act now, 1/3 of the world’s population will be underwater within the next 100-200 years.
It is key to everything. When we talk about offsite, it’s my end result, not the why.
The why is to achieve net zero or tackle the skills shortage in the industry. Perhaps you need to deliver a site more efficiently by increasing productivity. Maybe it’s reduced fuel poverty for your tenants and reduced ongoing maintenance bills, but ultimately, it drives all those benefits we have all become so familiar with in the sector.
This year’s publication of the government-backed value toolkit is a must when starting a new project. It helps to redefine value and how to measure it.
The Value Toolkit enables value-based decision making focused on driving better social, environmental and economic outcomes, improving the industry’s impact on current and future generations. Coupled with the publication of the Construction playbook, the need and the drive to enable faster and greener delivery is there. For the Offsite alliance, it’s essential we are building those stronger relationships as the new guidelines become embedded, ensuring no LA’s or RP’s are left behind.
Many of the houses on offer from the sector offer a net zero solution and are looking into achieving high levels of embodied carbon. But the truth of the matter is nobody knows yet. But we know that compared to traditional, we’re miles better. We’re striving for that. We’re aiming for better, not a quick, cheap measure in the short term that will need retrofitting within the next 10-20 years.
Research has proven that sustainability is at the forefront of the majority of RP’s decision making. They want sustainable houses that reduce fuel poverty, improve the quality of life for tenants, and give them overall reduced maintenance cost, and that’s what our sector can provide. They are both asking the same questions of each other. For the OA, it’s about bridging the gap, facilitating, educating, and bringing change and doing so collaboratively.
Will the partnership try and build more links in the supply chain?
The Offsite Alliance is a group of innovative experts who are willing to share knowledge to drive the sector forward. By working collaboratively, transparently and publicly, we aim to transform the fundamentally broken construction sector and help clients evolve how they think, build and manage homes.
At Housing in Manchester on June 23, we will transform an area of the show where we will host 15-panel discussions across three days. Along with the show village, we are hosting a workshop area to showcase some of the courses we just started introducing. It’s about enabling the sector to build better homes for people who need them more sustainably.
You can see the event itinerary and sign up for HOMES UK here.
