Modular Building

The lottery of building for extra school places

Whilst the last few years have seen a significant change in the role of the local education authority (LEA), successive governments have still seen fit to ensure the responsibility for school place planning still rests with the local authority. Some may say, ‘who can blame them?’ as the likelihood of getting pupil projections correct is about as easy as choosing the exact six winning lottery numbers week after week!

If predicting pupil numbers wasn’t difficult enough, the local authority then has to ensure suitable and appropriate accommodation is provided early enough for schools to set up over a summer holiday and be ready and open for the start of term in summer. Where accuracy in numbers can be achieved and finance is plentiful, the local authority will often want to pursue a permanent solution and deliver a traditional building solution – but those days are fast disappearing.

West Sussex County Council is no different to most of the 150 local authorities that receive capital grant from the Department for Education (DfE) and tries to ensure it can finance the demand from capital grant and, wherever possible, from Section 106 Developer Contributions and with times changing, from Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). What joins them all together is that none of them are sufficient in their own right to meet the capital costs of new school provision. 

In 2012, the National Audit Office (NAO) was commissioned to investigate the impact that central government funding had on meeting increased demand as the rise in the number of children born in England between 2001 and 2011 was the largest ten-year increase since the 1950s and the legacy of previous Comprehensive Spending Reviews was impacting on available funding. 

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, commented: “The Department needs a better understanding of costs to improve value for money, as well as a better understanding of the impact its funding contribution is having on the ground.” 

Paragraph 14 of the NAO Report, titled ‘Capital Funding for New School Places’, published on 15 March 2013 stated: “The Department initially assumed that local authorities would contribute 20 per cent towards the cost of new places. This planning assumption was not evidence-based and was not communicated to authorities. In our survey, authorities reported making an average contribution in 2012‑13 of 34 per cent. Most authorities drew on other sources of funding to finance new places, including maintenance funding provided separately by the Department (64 per cent), potentially storing up future costs by deferring repair work.”

A temporary solution?
With so many local authorities needing to bridge the gap in funding, the options of more creative solutions began to be pursued. Many authorities turned to temporary solutions, otherwise fondly known as ‘huts’, and whilst the huts of 2015 provide good classrooms, there is still the tendency to send either the Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) or the long service teacher out to the hut but they do not solve the problem of needing to integrate them into the school as a whole and so they often stand detached and forlorn at extremes of the playground with teachers and pupils having to brave the elements to gain access to the main building.

Whilst West Sussex had a significant programme of hut removals in the early 2000s, and had once featured on a national league table of local authorities for having the second highest number of huts on school sites in England – not the measure of success it ought to be – and so the return of huts onto West Sussex school sites is often only done through absolute necessity or due to short notice demands.

However, huts or temporary buildings of 2015 are not the problem buildings they once were. Some schools have reacted with considerable surprise at the quality of today’s huts and one headteacher has even been heard to say the huts are better than the rest of the school buildings.

However, the last 12 months have seen West Sussex County Council investigating a range of new solutions under the banner of ‘modular’ buildings.  Sadly, the term ‘modular’ can strike fear into the heart of schools as they remember the wood clad huts from the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, the term ‘off site construction’ has been used as a positive alternative and whilst early research suggests cost benefits are not yet as great as expected, the contractors promote the shorter time period for contractors to be on site and the elected members relish the hope that shorter construction periods on site equates to fewer complaints from residents about construction traffic and mud on the roads.

These benefits of carrying out much of the construction work away from the school site are hugely beneficial to schools as it reduces the amount of disruption any building project can cause and importantly allows a faster completion time when on site.

Our research has led us to visit a modular contractor and view the factory process of undertaking most of the construction along a conveyor belt of sorts so that the end product is then delivered to site in watertight units that are then joined together with external appearances of brick, render or trespa panels to meet local planning requirements. Another contractor has presented their solution based on a ‘Just in Time’ methodology and all seem to have positive merits.

Modular Construction
Whilst the trial continues in West Sussex, we have seen that the Education Funding Agency (EFA) is also investigating modular/off-site construction to help meet its own programme of works and this can only be helpful to local authorities as scale and quality will surely increase. 

The need to understand the risks to the modular construction industry will also help improve the service that we can both offer each other and so future projections of need, based on a longer than usual pipeline of work may help to generate the cost efficiencies that all local authorities will be seeking from modular/off-site construction.

The Department for Education has been promoting standardised designs for traditional build schools and it is very likely that this will soon be a feature of future engagement with the modular/off-site construction industry as they react to the demands of the market. Securing confidence that modular/off-site construction has the same need to meet Building Regulations as traditional, together with the need to provide a 60 year + ‘life’ for their buildings and maintenance needs being no different to traditional will all help convince local authorities that there is a credible alternative that can meet future needs.

With continuous pressure on school and local authority budgets, there continues to be a push for highly sustainable buildings that deliver lower than usual energy costs as well as limiting the ongoing maintenance work that some building types require. Therefore we all need to play our part in working together to provide for the growth in population that continues unabated.

Adopting the right approach
Within West Sussex County Council, the approach was to use the assets that the County Council already had in a different way. Schools were beginning to consider the apparent greater freedoms of being an academy and so negotiation was needed between the local authority and schools to ensure that the local growth in birth rate could be accommodated.

At first, there was still a surplus of spare accommodation in the schools and careful remodelling of accommodation enabled extra classrooms to be created at relatively low cost. Most schools did not want to see temporary buildings as the solution but the ‘Huts’ of today are thankfully nothing like those of the 1960s – 1990s. The modern day ‘Huts’ have to meet current building regulations and have air conditioning, heating and toilets, something that most of their predecessors didn’t.

The careful use of DfE capital grant combined with Section 106 Developer Contributions, and as many other funding sources as can be found, mean the budgets are often greater but the costs never seem to decrease. Innovative ways of combining school facilities with community facilities (such as libraries, sports facilities, GP surgeries) and sharing the site has enabled buildings and land to be more effectively used than just during the school day. The opportunity to open new schools is always popular with parents as they see a brand new building but may not look beyond the building and give greater importance on how teaching and learning is to be delivered in the school.

Previous European visits to schools in the Netherlands has allowed the opportunity to bring designs and themes from Europe into West Sussex and the bright colours of Kandinsky and ‘floating’ classrooms from Nijmegen are now replicated in West Sussex. The planners of the Netherlands have created schools with key worker or social housing built on top of them and thereby plan ahead to the day when the young population of today may require the care facilities of tomorrow. The planners of West Sussex have yet to engage fully with that solution but perhaps the time is coming when it will be seen as part of the generic brief for a new school.

Free Schools
The development of Free Schools has introduced another aspect of school provision that was not thought possible 10 years ago – schools being set up in former public buildings such as churches, fire stations, shops etc. The challenge has raged for some years that the constraints of DfE Building Bulletins upon local authority schools have not needed to be followed by Free Schools. A definitive answer on what is a school building has yet to be provided but the ways in which that building might be built have also changed.

Gone are the times of brick or rendered externals being essential, gone also are the apparent luxuries of having architects design school buildings that might win awards but perhaps only serve to divert limited public funds into the profits of architects rather than school resources. Modular or pre-fabricated buildings may become the solution to the school accommodation needs of the future and linking them to existing buildings of various types, as well as creating stand alone buildings that can provide a quicker but not necessarily cheaper solution to basic need growth, is being investigated.  

To ensure the most effective use of the limited capital grants that are available, West Sussex County Council has been initiating conversations, through an initiative called ‘PLACE’, with all of its District and Borough Councils to explore how more joined up solutions to future building needs can be secured.

Securing greater investment in West Sussex and promoting a beautiful area of the country with the South Downs National Park being prominent in it will all mean that the challenge will continue. Increased development of new and existing businesses in West Sussex should generate significant benefit to the County Council but will undoubtedly lead to more families moving into West Sussex through new employment and thereby increasing the pupil numbers still further.

Manufacturing off-site
Off-site construction has become a buzz word in the building industry, but it is not new to modular building sector. The industry has been manufacturing for in excess of 75 years in an off-site capacity.

Modern factories now produce hi‑tech buildings with quality control in place. Delivery dates are met with no delays due to weather conditions.

When planning a building, talk to the industry direct, all too often companies are approached after a design has been agreed.
It is much easier for all parties to involve the sector at the beginning, you will be amazed at what expert advice can save you time and more importantly money.

Moving away from its stale image, the modular industry has embraced changes to meet the requirements of new regulations, and buildings that are supplied today need not look like boxes or the old image of site huts without any character.

Today we have reached a point where it is difficult to tell them apart from traditional developments.

These buildings can be designed to meet both needs and budgets restraints that are all too important today.

When looking at either replacing, extending, or adding to existing structures, modular buildings can meet any criteria set by the client, high quality modular accommodation is flexible enough to meet all applications.

Layout and design services are available from suppliers including expert advice on planning issues, building regulations and safety requirements.

Site preparation and fast installation with minimum disruption can be achieved using modular systems. All transport, site work, and commissioning can be part of a turnkey package by using just one company and one contact. And crucially, the industry offers guaranteed delivery dates with buildings that are quality controlled in a factory.

Meeting the needs of the sector
The education sector, when looking for new buildings or adding to existing buildings, needs suppliers that will complete each project precisely on programme and meet the deadline for completion on time.

A vast majority of work undertaken in many cases is undergoing during school closure. It is therefore critical that buildings have to be completed for the start of the new terms. Buildings can be designed and constructed to permanent building standards and comply with the latest Department for Education guidelines for teaching and learning.

The use of modular construction radically reduces both disruption to teaching and time on-site, both which are essential factors when schools have an urgent requirement for additional school places. It has been estimated that more than 250,000 new school places will have to be created nationally by 2014/15, which will have a huge impact on education facilities across the country.

Classroom buildings using the modular building method can be fitted out to suit the requirements of the school in question. Buildings can be designed to accommodate a wide range of applications, such as laboratories, art rooms, dance studios, technology rooms, IT suites, general classrooms, receptions, kitchen and dining facilities, and offices.

Graham Olway represented all local authorities in England as National Chairman of the Education Building Development Officers Group (EBDOG) from 2007-13 and was awarded a MBE for his services to Education in 2013.

Further Information
www.ebdog.org.uk