The government has launched a new research and innovation challenge aimed at cutting public sector construction costs by 10 per cent by 2030. Construction is one of two sectors to benefit from a £4m fund, which will also support digital infrastructure projects in the creative industries.
The Industrialising and Digitising Construction Research and Innovation Challenge sits within the £500m Research and Development Missions Accelerator Programme. The wider programme is designed to back UK-based science and technology projects that can stimulate economic growth.
According to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the construction challenge will underpin development of a digital marketplace for standardised industrialised building components and processes. The platform is intended to enable construction, manufacturing and digital firms to configure and share digital designs for use across buildings and infrastructure.
DSIT said the marketplace is expected to help reduce errors, cut waste and speed up delivery by supporting repeatable, manufacturing-style approaches. By providing greater certainty of demand and specification, the government believes suppliers will be better placed to scale up production.
The platform is also expected to verify that building products comply with safety and quality standards, giving clients and contractors more confidence in adopting new materials and systems. Its primary focus will be public sector projects, including schools, social housing, hospitals and transport infrastructure.
Science minister Lord Vallance said the programme is intended to help transform delivery of the homes, hospitals and infrastructure the UK needs. He added that innovation in construction has a direct role to play in supporting economic growth.
The new initiative follows the conclusion in 2023 of the Transforming Construction Challenge (TCC), which emerged from the 2017 Construction Sector Deal. TCC ran from 2018 to 2023 with £170m of government funding, matched by £250m from industry.
TCC set stretching goals, including delivering projects 50 per cent faster, cutting whole-life costs by 33 per cent, halving lifetime emissions and boosting productivity by 15 per cent. An independent impact evaluation commissioned by Innovate UK found that demonstrator firms involved in the programme exceeded these targets.
However, the evaluation reported that wider industry change has been slower to materialise. It concluded that TCC had “begun to shape thinking” around public sector procurement, notably through contributions to the Construction Playbook, but that broader commercial-sector impacts would take time.
The report also found “relatively limited evidence on the wider impact of the challenge beyond the organisations directly engaged”. The new digital construction challenge is being launched against this backdrop, with a more targeted focus on scalable, standardised solutions for the public estate.
