Kingspan: The net-zero carbon challenge

Source: Construction Digital

Date :13/11/2007 16:44:13

Project Director Tom Paul talks us through Kingspan Off-Site’s groundbreaking Lighthouse project at BRE.

Of all the UK industries, it’s arguably housebuilders and its associated supply chain that have most successfully embraced the challenge of moving towards zero carbon. The Government’s Code for Sustainable Homes defines six levels of environmental sustainability, with level one set just above current building regulations and level six at ‘net-zero carbon’, including appliance and occupant energy use.

While level six will be mandatory by 2016, and a handful of developers have anticipated the change by developing level four or five housing, only one UK company has been precocious enough to develop a net zero carbon house that already meets level six; Kingspan Off-Site.

Offsite solution

Kingspan Off-Site is part of Kingspan Group plc, a building products business focused on establishing leading market positions by providing innovative construction systems and solutions with a global reach.

The Off-Site division is one of the largest and most experienced providers of modern methods of construction (MMC), a factor that was integral to the company’s development of its zero emission home, Lighthouse at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in Birmingham.

Project Director Tom Paul explains the origins of the division. “The offsite industry has been centred around volumetric, 3D systems. We looked at this three years ago and thought about how we were going to move the agenda forward in the MMC sector. We established an offsite business development division which became Kingspan Off-Site.

One of Kingspan’s big strategic strengths as a group has been to take markets from niche to mainstream and our insulated panel business has done that; Kingspan is now the largest manufacturers of insulated roof and wall systems certainly in Europe and probably globally. We wanted the Off-Site business to continue in that vein.”

Kingspan’s formula has been to develop strategic approaches to markets to move them from niche to mainstream, and Off-Site is no different. Its Lighthouse project can be seen as a bold initial step to moving both MMC and the carbon-zero home agenda towards the mainstream.

Examination

“We have looked very closely at modern methods of construction agenda. We identified with all our research that 3D volumetric systems were mot cost neutral; it was 15 to 18 percent the wrong side of the cost neutral line.”

The company’s response was to build a strategy based around 2D panelised systems.

“Our whole strategy is the development and application of 2D panelised systems right across the construction sector which includes non-domestic, education, health, hotel and leisure, and student accommodation,” Paul explains. “We are talking about 2D outer wall systems, 2D inner walls, and 2D floor cassette systems…”

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