A night of celebration for ISG at the Offsite Construction Awards

The team behind ISG’s Manchester City Council’s Beaver Road Primary School had much to celebrate in March, as the project was named Education Project of the Year 2019 at the Offsite Construction Awards in London. 

The event celebrates the best in precision building design and delivery, with more than 200 people and projects entering this year’s awards. 

Judges were impressed with ISG and Premier Modular’s integrated team approach to the project, which saw Beaver Road achieve RIBA Stage 5 in 19 weeks from a standing start and beat 32 other projects to win the highly-sought-after award. 

The project was one of six delivered on time and to budget by ISG, and its supply chain partner Premier Modular, ahead of the academic year in 2018 for Manchester City Council. 

All were procured through the North West Construction Hub (NWCH). 

The wider programme of schools was also recognised at the event, coming highly commended in the BIM/Digital Construction Award category. 

All six projects were to BIM Level 2, including a fully integrated asset information model. 

This isn’t the first time the projects have been recognised, having scooped ‘highly commended’ and ‘winner’ at the North West Regional Construction Awards last year, in the Integration and Collaboration and Digital Construction categories respectively. 

Beaver Road was the largest of the projects; the £7.2m, three-storey, 2,380sqm scheme utilised volumetric, offsite manufacturing to ensure the school could open ahead of the 2018/2019 academic year – saving at least 10 weeks against a traditional build programme. 

Neil Walker, framework director at ISG, said: “Early engagement of the right supply chain and standard repeatable designs - informed by lessons learned from two earlier modular school schemes – allowed us to ensure design for manufacture from the outset. 

“The speed of the wider schools programme, including the project at Beaver Road, was extraordinary. 

“Together the project team delivered six schools, with a construction value of circa £31 million in just 57 weeks from a standing start.” 

The Offsite Construction Awards reward and acknowledge outstanding examples of prefabrication and factory-based methods, products, systems and disciplines that increasingly strive to deliver a sustainable, streamlined and cost-effective way to achieving a better built environment. 

The awards were held on March 5 at ExCel in London.