Project Overview
The London Borough of Bromley (LBB) has an urgent need for good quality social housing. With a lack of accommodation available, the council is currently housing large numbers of people in expensive and unsuitable B&Bs. A solution had to be found, and quickly. Utilising council owned land, LBB specified offsite construction to deliver a new housing development on Bushell Way, which would meet all the criteria – creating quality homes quickly. With the budget tight, the project needed to balance speed and cost with quality and M-AR’s offsite construction programme was able to deliver on all counts.
The Bushell Way site posed an additional challenge due to its compact size: a 2,600m2 brownfield site tucked away in the middle of a residential area, bordered on all four sides with homes and small side streets providing the only access to site. Offsite proved the ideal solution as, by moving a large proportion of the works off site, it reduced the number of trades required on site every day and overall materials deliveries by 30% – minimising the disruption to neighbours around the site.
M-AR worked closely with all stakeholders, adapting the design to split the apartments into two or three core module groups to allow each apartment to be built within the factory environment in regular, repeatable standardised modules which then fit together on site for the most efficient build programme. The result is a stunning new housing development which comprises a mix of 25 one- and two-bed apartments, including three accessible apartments.
The homes, which are designed to meet the latest building regulations governing energy efficiency, are all finished to a high quality internally and externally. They perfectly complement the local area thanks to the light render, buff brickwork and anthracite windows specified and offsite was a key factor in delivering the apartments quickly and efficiently, and also within budget. Utilising offsite construction for this project also brought with it a high degree of cost predictability at an early stage, giving Bromley Council certainty that the project would come in on budget with no hidden extra costs or delays to the programme schedule.
This project was one of the first of its kind for LBB in terms of both social housing and utilising MMC. The council now has an effective offsite housing solution with two further projects with M-AR at York Rise and Anerley Way already underway using the same tried and tested methods. Bushell Way is an exemplar design which fulfils the local housing requirements for the borough in a timely and cost-effective way, but moreover, continues to have a positive impact on the local community.
