The UK spends over £30Bn per year on labour intensive construction processes, manually putting one brick on top of another, casting concrete in situ, plastering, rendering, carpentry, roofing or shaping and fixing pre made elements and façades to the building. Heavy dependence on labour and severe shortages of skilled workers not only increases the cost of construction but also impacts timescales, constrains productivity, and limits output. This creates a distinct business opportunity to improve productivity and reduce costs by adopting digital processes and large scale additive manufacturing. Therefore a unique digital additive manufacturing process, enabled by robotic tools, is proposed that will reduce the cost of construction and increase productivity, upskill the workforce, and break the direct link between labour and output. Q-Bot the lead partner is already disrupting one part of the construction sector -- retrofit insulation -- with its cutting edge remote insulation deposition under existing timber floors. Thanks to this innovation, as well as market leading capabilities in construction robotics, Q-Bot can offer a much better performing insulation service at a fraction of the cost. This proves that advanced deposition technology (combined with autonomous scanning and mapping) can already provide a viable alternative to labour intensive and disruptive construction processes. Q-Bot is joined by PRP, one of the UK's leading architecture practises with more than fifty years' experience in designing award winning buildings and developing new processes for use in the construction industry. The project consortium's unique blend of material science, construction and robotics knowledge combined with experience successfully applying this approach in an existing retrofit application, provides a unique opportunity to create a large scale digital additive manufacturing process for buildings. With help from InnovateUK the existing technology will be developed with further significant innovation for the construction market and create the next generation of 'Advanced & Connected Construction Tools'.

This project is an exciting technical feasibility set against the emerging development in Thamesmead, South East London, in the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley. We propose to integrate energy generation and distribution infrastructure, healthcare services, communications infrastructure, and existing and upcoming transport networks with a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. Thamesmead today is an area faced with significant challenges to the community in terms of health deprivation, access to high income jobs, a characterless town centre, disjointed open space network, poor transport links and diversity of neighbourhoods with a lack of community cohesion. With this project we aim to explore how the implementation of a PRT system to connect future Crossrail infrastructure to the community, and to connect the community with healthcare, open space and a revitalised town centre, whilst providing a platform for the physical integration of PRT with the built environment, including energy and communications infrastructure.

The 'Improving the process of delivering thermal retrofit to mass housing stock' project aims to develop and refine retrofit solutons for housing which address the primary concerns of many householders when considering retrofit; cost, benefit and disruption. The project will develop a commercial solution which considerably reduces the cost of retrofit, minimises the installation time, provides quality work through a dependable and trusted local team and delivers lower heating bills and an improved indoor living environment for the householder.