1413: Mind the gap

HTA, THF, 12:00, Brighton 5th March 2014

Technology has the capacity to improve customer information beyond recognition. But armed with appropriate information, consumers can do much more

The Housing Forum recently published an interactive digital report entitled Housing for the Information Age, arguing the benefits of better information and information technologies and that, as a starting point, Government, home builders, and the RICS must work together to introduce “Home Performance Labels”, to appear on all sales material and detailing (to begin with, at least) property size (area, not just number of bedrooms) and energy efficiency.

Now the Housing Forum plans a follow-up demonstration project illustrating the virtues of some of the ideas we proposed.

They have come up with an action research proposal, ‘Mind the Gap’ with the following key objectives:

• The promotion of Building Information Modelling (BIM) – promoting take up, which is slow.
• Predicting performance – demonstrating effective techniques using BIM.
• Home Performance Labelling – following the DCLG Housing Standards Review, now is the time to illustrate how this might work.
• Improving Valuation techniques – investigating how measurable performance might be reflected in the valuation process.
• Post occupancy evaluation – identifying factors that deliver predicted performance

This year at our popular Brighton event, co-hosted by Kingspan, the Housing Forum and HTA Design LLP, speakers will bring us up to date on the development of New Housing Standards and the many implications of labelling the housing product.

© NGS BrianSpecMan aka Brian Murphy
17th March 2014