Partnership Update – SFHA and Construction Scotland Innovation Centre
How SFHA’s partnership with Construction Scotland Innovation Centre benefits our members.
This year, SFHA formed a partnership with Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) to deliver tangible benefits for our members.
Benefits of the partnership
The partnership, which creates a strategic relationship between the two organisations and delivers a supporting programme of activities, will provide tangible benefits for SFHA’s members, including:
- Support for Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to use Building Information Management (BIM) to streamline their maintenance and asset management of existing homes
- Joint work to investigate the potential benefits of offsite construction to the social and affordable housing sector and co-design solutions to increase supply
- The creation of a ‘Housing Innovation Community’ - a leadership and knowledge-sharing hub for the housing sector, focusing on emerging technologies, digital transformation and future housing types
- A half-day innovation event for the housing association sector hosted at CSIC’s Innovation Factory
Work to support RSLs
To date, we have delivered a well-attended and informative free event on ‘BIM 4 Housing’ (held at CSIC) in September. The event provided useful evidence on how BIM should be developed to best meet housing association’s needs.
More recently, SFHA and CSIC held a seminar to look at the potential for offsite construction in Scotland to deliver better quality homes and address the construction skills shortage that we face. The seminar looked at the drivers to use offsite construction; benefits, such as increased energy efficiency; and showcased examples of projects that have been supported by CSIC.
The seminar concluded with lively roundtable discussions on the support needed by housing associations to embrace offsite technology. The outcomes of these discussions will be used to inform a funding call for associations seeking support from CSIC – the call will be launched in the week beginning 10th December, with the winners announced at SFHA’s Housing Innovation Factory event in January next year.