No abstract

Advances in digital technology have inaugurated a ‘fourth industrial revolution’, enabling, inter alia, the growth of ‘offsite’ housing construction in advanced economies. This productive transformation seems to be opening up new opportunities for styles of living, ownership, place-making and manufacturing that are more sustainable, democratic and bespoke. However, the full potential of this transformation is not yet clear nor how it will interact with—in the UK context—ongoing crises in housing provision rooted in an increasingly financialised and critically unbalanced national economy, timid state housing policies and a longstanding cultural preoccupation with mortgaged ‘bricks and mortar’ housing. In this paper, we report on an ongoing mixed method project interrogating the technological, environmental and social implications of the emergence of offsite housing construction in the UK. To a degree, we situate this interrogation in the Northern English region of Yorkshire, an emerging focal point of the growing offsite construction industry in the UK but an area afflicted by entrenched, post-industrial economic imbalances. The results show that offsite house engineers, designers and builders are innovatively embracing digital methods, a low carbon agenda and new approaches to place-making but that they have had little role, so far, in resolving the deeper structural problems affecting housing production in the UK, bringing the sustainability of their innovation into question.

SUMMARYEquations for the prediction of vertical peak and absolute acceleration spectral ordinates in terms of magnitude, source-distance and site geology are presented. Comparison to similarly derived horizontal equations shows vertical spectral values to be 1/2-1/4 of the horizontal. The influence of site geology on vertical ground motion is reduced with respect to the horizontal. Ratios of peak vertical to peak horizontal ground acceleration in the near-field of thrust faults are magnitude and distance dependent, reaching values in excess of one very near the fault of large magnitude events. For strike-slip faults the ratio exceeds one for moderate events, decreasing for larger events, and is distance independent. Spectral acceleration ratios exceed one at short periods but are less than one at intermediate and long periods, irrespective of the source mechanism.

The urgent transition to a zero-carbon economy requires building professionals to be supportive of, and prepared for, delivering zero-carbon buildings. Building professionals are important 'middle actors' who can either enable or inhibit such societal transitions. This paper explores building professionals' perspectives on delivering zero-carbon buildings, leading to a practical synthesis of knowledge and skill requirements and training pathways. It draws on the middle-out perspective (MOP) and secondary analysis of three UK case studies. The MOP suggests that middle actors in a system are not perfectly responsive to policy push or market pull. Instead, they exert their own agency and capacity downstream to customers and clients, sideways to other middle actors and, occasionally, upstream to policy-makers. The data comprise: interviews and a small survey with building professionals on energy efficiency and refurbishment; the observation of a specific commercial office building design and development and a workshop to identify zero-carbon knowledge and skill needs of middle actors. Building professionals addressed in this paper include vocational trades, engineers, designers, project managers and 'clerks of works' (site-based quality technicians). Although formal training pathways for these roles differ, each can develop expertise 'sideways' interacting between professions. Practice relevance • Collaboration between academia, vocational training and industry could support sideways initiatives to better enable delivery of zero-carbon buildings. • Policy-makers and regulators need to create routes to capture, listen to and use the perspectives of building professionals. At present, these actors have very little upstream influence. • Middle-actor groups in construction undertake different activities, but share training routes, knowledge support systems and professional networks. • These routes, systems and networks would allow actors to facilitate change from the 'middleout' in a way complementary to top-down change driven by policy and bottom-up changes led by citizens. • Training routes can include formal, on-the-job (informal) or e-learning. Prioritising on-the-job knowledge-sharing could promote upskilling. • Roles such as a clerk of works could assist in overseeing construction processes. • Vocational professionals are the priority group of middle actors to build capacity, knowledge and influence.