Tom Yates, Balfour Beatty’s Senior Commercial Manager, speaks to Building Magazine reflecting on the company’s involvement in two ‘sandpit' projects for the Manufacturing and Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry.

In the article, Tom details how the ‘sandpit’ projects allowed for previously untried building methods to be trialled safely on a health project and an education project.

With the project giving rise to numerous potential new ways of working, Tom praised the outcomes of the ‘sandpit’ projects as potentially seismic for the construction industry. Ideas included current standardization practices used for building materials such as bricks and plasterboard, could be extended to more complex elements of construction, such as the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) service modules; an idea which garnered a lot of interest from government departments.

Commenting on the outcomes of the ‘sandpit’ projects Tom said: "I come from this world where you cannot afford to take any risks, innovation has got to be tried and tested and so to be involved in two sandpits was something very different. This could be bigger than just the health sector, it could be a European directive, it could be a worldwide directive."

To read the article in full and learn more about the innovative ideas the projects are trialling, please click here.

ENDS

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