Off-site construction specialist, the Portakabin Group, has been appointed to the Southern Modular Building Framework – a new framework to facilitate the procurement of modular buildings for public-sector projects across London, the South East and South West.
Operated by Hampshire County Council, this new initiative aims to minimise procurement time and generate cost savings by reducing costly and resource-intensive competitive tendering.
It offers public-sector clients, including NHS organisations, a full turnkey service for modular projects, from design to handover, including building manufacture, installation, fitting out, testing and commissioning.
The appointment of Portakabin to the framework is for projects in excess of £100,000 through to multi-million pound schemes, requiring a design life of more than 60 years.
The accreditation follows a rigorous and independent assessment of Yorkon off-site solutions and services from The Portakabin Group, as well as performance for on-time and on-budget delivery, customer service, quality management procedures, and regulatory compliance.
Commenting on the new framework, Mark Thomas, framework manager at Hampshire County Council, said, “Our aim is to promote and encourage collaborative working to improve the design, procurement and construction of public sector projects across the South East.
“Our experience has shown that choosing a modular approach can offer significant benefits over site-based building methods – better quality, rapid delivery, and cost certainty – by moving the construction process into a carefully-controlled factory environment.”
Projects Portakabin has previously been involved in include a £2m four-storey scheme for office support staff at the University Hospital Southampton, which was delivered in less than five months on a highly-constrained site; and works at North Middlesex Hospital.