Why Handover Of New School Buildings Should Be Effortless

Handover of new school buildings ought to be an effortless formality in the age of BIM, common data environments and MMC. These levers should make the handover process for modern education building schemes much smoother.

Historically, a fairly typical handover process involved extensive defect correction and a wait while compliance documents, building user guides, test and commissioning certificates, and reliable as-built drawings were provided. These are all common issues that have prevented building handover proceeding quickly and painlessly.

When project documentation was paper-based, problems were inevitable and maybe understandable. When the final build was a mix of onsite interpretation of design drawings with late modifications to overcome technical problems, it’s easy to see why there would be information gaps.

To a large extent these problems were due to flaws in the underlying process. BIM offers a partial solution but without MMC and a common data environment there are still multiple opportunities for important details to fall through the cracks.

Rising Expectations

Expectations in terms of building performance, sustainability and whole life costs for new school buildings have increased significantly in recent years. As building for net zero becomes the norm the pressure on the handover process will only increase – unless the building methodology is fundamentally different.

With manufactured construction such as Osborne’s InForm product everything changes. The building has to be right when it leaves the factory – right down to the routing and location of every service. There is no gap between ‘as designed’ and ‘as built.’ And the common data environment means that customers and asset managers can easily access all the detailed information they need.

The guaranteed high quality levels that come when you assemble a building from standardised pre-manufactured components ensures that any defects are kept to an absolute minimum and don’t extend the handover period.

With the InForm product for education, modern products and processes come together to ensure a smooth handover from every scheme.

For more information about Osborne’s InForm product for education contact Richard King ([email protected]).