The SmartLIFE Housing Demonstration Project was conducted to find the best ways the UK can deliver a greater volume of sustainable, affordable and high quality homes in less time, using both traditional and innovative methods of construction.

The project was delivered through SmartLIFE and a  partnership between BRE and Cambridgeshire County Council - along with English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, Fenland District Council, the Department for Communities, EEDA, Home Group and a host of their partners.

 SmartLIFE - Lessons Learned details the findings from the project which involved a massive 140,000 hours of monitoring across three development sites in the towns of Chatteris and March. Issues such as build speed, build quality, the sustainability of the construction process, and the related costs of the resulting houses were assessed and recorded for each of the construction methods: timber frame, light gauge steel frame, insulated concrete formwork and traditional brick and block construction. The key findings have been that:

• Regardless of construction methods an average of 13% of man hours are lost on non-value-added activities on site - significant cost savings could be made with more efficient site processes.
• IMC systems can compete on cost with traditional build - the light gauge steel frame system used on the project proved to be the most cost effective followed closely by brick and block
• All the systems used, including traditional brick and block construction, achieved a high level of sustainability, reaching Ecohomes ‘Very Good'.
• The highest achieving system used on the project in terms of speed and cost - the light gauge steel frame system - was delivered through an already established partnership between the site contractor Inspace and the manufacturer Fusion. This delivery partnership was seen as key to the success of the system.
• All systems have benefits, and selection of the right method depends on each project's characteristics and requirements

A copy of the executive summary is available in our downloads section, for the full report, including cd rom please visit the BRE website