Businesses are
invited to bid in two competitions worth up to £36 million, funding
collaborative R&D and demonstrator projects.
Both competitions
focus on modern methods of construction, digital and whole-asset performance.
UK Research and Innovation is providing the funding through the Industrial
Strategy Challenge Fund’s Transforming Construction Challenge.
Innovate UK, part of
UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £10 million in UK businesses
undertaking collaborative research and development projects. Projects should go
beyond the state-of-the-art in improving productivity, quality and performance
of the UK construction sector.
The project must
focus on one or more of the following themes:
- digital information
management, tools, systems and standards
- modern methods of
construction and platform-based approaches
- whole-life asset performance,
including active buildings
- business models, procurement,
analytics, benchmarking and metrics
- financial, assurance,
warranty and lending products
To lead a project an
organisation must:
- be a UK registered business
of any size or a research and technology organisation
- collaborate with other
businesses, research organisations, public sector organisations, academic
institutions or charities
- include at least one micro,
small or medium-sized enterprise
- carry out the project work in
the UK
- intend to exploit the results
from, or in, the UK
The proposed
project’s total eligible costs must be between £150,000 and £1.5 million.
UK businesses can
also apply for a share of up to £26 million for practical, demonstrator
projects in modern methods of construction, digital and whole-life asset
performance.
This competition
aims to invest in approximately 10 world-leading practical demonstrators. They
must establish improvements in productivity, quality and performance of the UK
construction sector.
Demonstrators are
the application of approaches, deployed at scale, that aim to improve all
aspects of a built assets lifecycle.
These will include:
- validations of new business
models
- digital approaches to design,
construction and management
- advancements in modern
methods of construction
- approaches to whole-life
performance of a building or assets
Both competitions
open on 28 August 2019 and close on 30 October 2019 at midday.
