Homes for the future
We strive to create homes of the highest possible quality and believe that there is plenty of scope to achieve considerably better standards than are now common.
Our approach starts by optimising all the resources that go into new homes. We aim to ensure that the input of ideas, components, labour and energy all work together to give the best possible result. That has led us to undertake research and development into innovative construction and delivery techniques.
Offsite manufacture, we believe, can make a more significant contribution to improving quality, reducing cost and minimising time and risk on site. We have developed several off-site systems including the Optima Homes system, which we launched and sold to Kingspan and IKEA who are rolling out hundreds of homes across the UK. It provides a flexible kit of parts that can be customised in many ways to create an individual home, bringing the benefits of offsite construction right to the consumer. Our work in this field continues with our winning entry to the Living Steel competition in 2007.
Our understanding of construction also helps us to minimise the environmental impact of building new homes, and to reduce their energy consumption when completed. The homes at Primrose Hill, for example, incorporate photo-voltaic and solar hot water panels, while the Bourbon Lane housing scheme in West London runs off a combined heat and power scheme, in both cases bringing real cost savings to residents and reducing the carbon footprint of each home
Our knowledge of office building means we can bring the advantages of new technologies like Building Management Systems to homes. That allows residents to monitor and manage them from remote locations. Technology is not an end in itself, though it has the potential to transform how we live: imaginative design and sound construction will ensure that transformation brings the maximum benefit to our lives in the future.