THE team behind a new innovation centre for the construction industry have said that embracing technological evolution makes “good business sense”.

Bruce Newlands, head of technical operations at the 30,000sq ft facility set to be opened by the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC), was speaking as plans were announced to double staff numbers.

The centre at Hamilton International Technology Park in Lanarkshire will enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to access equipment that allows them to develop new methods of construction.

Scheduled to open in early summer, the centre is currently being filled with cutting-edge construction manufacturing equipment, complete with a five tonne overhead gantry crane for heavy lifting.

Allowing firms to innovate, take risks and explore, Mr Newlands said the centre was the starting point for establishing a construction industry with innovation and sustainability at its heart.

“How do we become more productive, how do we survive in this new world where we need to be more sustainable, more ecological with better maintenance and less defects?” he said. “When you look at it, it makes good business sense.”

Backed by Scottish Enterprise, the centre has also received £1.5m from Scottish Funding Council to acquire equipment that will include masonry, off-site timber and steel frames (including one of the UK’s first manufacturing cells for cross-laminate timber), and robotics – with an overall theme of automation and ‘collaborative robotics’ where humans and robots work together.

“We’re focused on helping Scottish SMEs to develop or create completely new products or to help them train on more innovative products to close skills gaps and close performance gaps from the technology side of things,” said Mr Newlands.

The goal is to help companies create, prototype and ultimately commercialise such products.

“Our immediate goal is, where appropriate, to encourage the take up by Scottish industry for their benefit, [they] can try it out for real, see if they can make it better in a safe, offline environment, and if they can adopt it, they can go to the next step.

Companies can book space on a pay as you go basis, for around a couple of hundred pounds a day. One example cited by Mr Newlands is a company looking to make ‘concrete’ blocks using hemp and lime that by virtue of their production process are carbon negative.

The goal is to help companies create, prototype and ultimately commercialise such products.

“Everything we’ve purchased is a pilot line,” added Mr Newlands. “They are for prototyping and demonstration. If an SME sees it, wants to invest, they would adopt it on a much larger scale.”

A number of the machines are being bought through the OJEC (Official Journal of the European Communities) procurement process, with kit arriving from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and England.

Mr Newlands said that theoretically, an entire house could be built from materials made at the facility.

But he admitted it would be slow progress before mainstream adoption. “These things will only be adopted if they add to the bottom line, make things safer, or more productive. These technologies need to demonstrate that,” he said.

“We’re focused on helping Scottish SMEs to develop or create completely new products or to help them train on more innovative products to close skills gaps and close performance gaps from the technology side of things,” said Mr Newlands.

Housebuilders such as Barratt are engaging with CSIC on how they can align their supply chain. “It’s not going to be an easy progress, a lot of it is communication down the supply chain,” said Mr Newlands. It’s about work practice and how we do things. We talk about timeframe, we’ve been talking about it for 25 years in Government reports, but what we can do here is speed that up. If a sub-contractor can increase their bottom line through hard technology it should make the adoption of the supply chain a little looser when it comes to adoption.”

Mr Newlands acknowledged that it will be progressive firms that approach the centre, but one focus was on attracting the mainstream, through skills training programme. A three year monthly programme of events has been launched, backed by Scottish Enterprise.

CSIC was launched in October 2014 as an offshoot of Construction Scotland. It has since worked on 42 projects and it is hoped that the new centre will accelerate this.