October 2010

Attend any forum during a school design process; school consultation, residents open evening or client design briefing, and mention the word ‘standardisation’ and the reception ranges from icy to violent!

Standardisation appears to conjure images of rectilinear boxes or prefabricated mobiles with the inherent legacy problems that we have all dealt with. We have all seen the wonderful, recently created education built environments and have enjoyed the budgets and procurement processes that supported these. We have learnt valuable lessons in creating inspiring flexible spaces, easing circulation and management issues, fusing indoor and outdoor learning and reducing lifecycle running costs.

Whilst these lessons must be retained and the standards built upon, we must also look for efficiencies in process, programme and cost demanded by the economy and society. We must reintroduce the forbidden word and break down those psychological barriers by proving that standardisation is about efficiency the correct use of the most economic solution to a given problem and this can be delivered without detrimental effect.

The hotel and leisure sectors understand this principle and it is time education added this to their curriculum.

Segmental Standardisation

Within any education facility, there will be key formulaic spaces where standardisation should be mandatory. We cannot afford self indulgent time and costs of bespoke designs and specifications for these spaces and must look to the lessons learnt by other sectors:

• Toilet designs – work has been done by the department over the years in providing standard design templates for toilet spaces, recognising the necessity to reflect behavioural management issues with cleaning and maintenance regimes. By moving these design principles to a product specification level we can provide ergonomically balanced spaces with high quality products that reduce time, space and money. Recent schemes saw the introduction of rapid hand dryers such as the Dyson Airblade, which reduced the number of dryers and therefore the space needed, there is also a lifecycle saving for energy usage with this technology. The design of toilets on Virgin Pendolino trains shows the benefit of standardisation with all facilities provided within an extremely tight, yet serviceable space.
• Kitchen designs – combining the latest standards in food preparation, storage and serveries with auto-generated spatial requirements for pupil numbers, ensures kitchen standardisation is ripe for development. Equipment manufacturers must propose standard products for unique uses rather than the current vast array of varied products which create service and maintenance issues. Service runs, cooker hoods, extract systems and staff safety zones could all be pre-set for ideal operational use and cleaning purposes. Costa Coffee have mastered this approach in their designs by balancing hard working, utilitarian zones with attractive facades and carefully linked social spaces.
• Teaching walls – fundamentally the role of a teaching wall varies very little, with the need for particular IT, power and teaching aids the wall itself can host the majority of service controls for any teaching space. Service runs, maintenance and future strip-out or upgrades can be planned into the design to provide economic life cycle spaces.

Elemental Standardisation

Building elements also provide opportunities for efficiencies. Regularity, setting out, coursing and replication are terms more readily associated with good design principles, but they are also standardisation techniques applied to building elements to provide efficiency benefits. Couple these with supply chain involvement and advice and the ability to penetrate down through the supply chain tiers to base product manufacturers and we have a real opportunity to reduce manufacturing waste and base cost by improving productivity.

• Door and window systems – standardising door sets and window types provides supply chain efficiencies, product buying power, fixing economy and design savings whilst providing the building maintainer with a more limited palette of product maintenance issues
• Foundation solutions for schools will be limited to fairly regular loadings subject only to numbers of storeys – this provides a limited array of foundation solutions that can be offered subject to ground conditions to reflect the bearing strata
• Framing/wall systems – without overly compromising long term flexibility, the use of flat-pack walling and frame systems such as pre-cast concrete or solid timber technology can provide cost effective, speedy solutions to areas of the building with more regular and repetitive floor plate designs such as teaching blocks

‘At the RSA Academy in Sandwell, the introduction of a precast concrete framing solution provided a 10 week reduction in programme and a £250k capital cost saving’
James Dixon, Architect, John McAslan and Partners

Whole Building Solutions

At perhaps the most compromised design end of the spectrum is the issue of whole building solutions and yet these can and do offer personalisation of appearance whilst fitting within the parameters needed to obtain the benefit of regular repetitive design.

‘When analysing our Academy designs, the regularity of many of the repetitive spaces within these bespoke solutions was apparent. Despite formulating these design solutions through different design teams and with different clients, the natural solutions to spatial arrangements and layout led to our investigation and use of solutions such as panelised products to reduce design costs, accelerate our programmes to watertight and maximise our supply chain cost efficiencies’
Bob Athroll, Willmott Dixon Education Sector Manager

Public procurement organisations such as Scape have focussed on this building design refinement approach in recent years. Their focus on improving efficiency has led to the pre-design of structural and grid solutions to maximise efficiency without losing the ability for clients and design teams to offer a bespoke design solution to meet local needs and the individuality of the local community environment.

‘Our role as Framework Manager involves us in efficiency drives at every level; the development of structural design solutions to meet the current market parameters is a national evolution of our services and is synonymous with our Framework principles’
Mark Robinson, CEO, Scape

Process Efficiencies

Huge leaps forward have occurred in procurement processes in recent years; particularly in the role that frameworks play in providing continuity, reinvested learning and exceptional outcomes. At both regional and national levels, frameworks have become hard working, evidential led forums which have delivered quickly, cost effectively and in a highly innovative way. The PfS National framework is an excellent example, embodying the best principles of design solution led competition, client engagement and funding of the process by the bidding teams! This has delivered superbly designed Academies across the country, balancing capital and lifecycle costs whilst providing a standardisation of specification and design element solutions for designers and contractors – a true win/win for all involved.

Regional frameworks like IESE in the South East and empa in the East Midlands, allow public sector clients to combine their buying power and pursue a standard process removing waste, duplication and protracted procurement routes. These ‘localised’ approaches tackle many of the Big Society issues that we are facing – local procurement, reinvestment of the local pound, training and development within a sustainable community.

Redefining Standardisation

We can no longer ignore standardisation. To some extent, we are probably all involved in it on some level already. The key is to recognise the ways in which it can help, to remain open to new ideas and to pursue the roles we all have with the fundamental tenet of learning from others and reducing waste in all that we pursue.

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