UBLM51-15-M Modern Methods of Construction Coursework 2 Brief – Report (B)
1. Introduction to the assignment
Component B (Report) is an individual written submission (1,500 words) on Blackboard which is the result of your own work and the coordinated work between the members of your allocated group (5x 1,500 words). Each member of the group must submit the same consolidated document and follow the instructions given in this brief.
In principle, the 1,500 words ‘Report’ for this module has been designed to be closely related to the presentation part of the assessment and uses the same Case Study/scenario: UWE New Accommodation, Bristol. You are advising a client ‘now’, but based on the Case Study’s situation, information, and key drivers for 2021-22.
The assessment builds up on your group work for the presentation and assesses your own work and the coordination within your group of a series of individual tasks (five – 5) which are aligned to stages 3 to 6 of the RIBA Plan of Work (from spatial coordination to handover). Individually, you will be responsible for one ‘task’ from project planning through to logistics, procurement, construction, handover and operation (one per member – see Table 2-1). As a group you must demonstrate a coherent and coordinated strategy that brings all these tasks together.
Background & Aim
Today, the construction sector has greater access to more relevant knowledge and technology than ever before in the history of building. It has allowed us to cherry-pick the knowledge and systems from the worlds of advanced manufacturing and digital technology to adapt the potential of design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) and refine modern methods of construction (MMC)1.
The word ‘modern’ in this context is rather misleading. The methods and their underlying rationales and principles have been around for decades. However, they are described as ‘modern’ because they are ‘ongoing’ or have yet to be adopted into the mainstream. This is changing in the light of opportunities arising from a confluence of innovations in the fields of digital technology, automation, additive manufacturing, and robotics, which certainly are modern.
In this context, after presenting your approach for RIBA Plan of Work Stages 0 to 2, ‘UWE Consultancy’ (your team), has been selected to complete your proposal on MMC for the UWE New Accommodation, Bristol. As the way forward, the Client has proceeded to appoint your consultancy team to further develop the detailed report on the construction strategy for the proposed MMC aligned to Stages 3 to 7 of the RIBA Plan of Work.
In short, he main aim of the report is to showcase your own approach to stages 3 to 7 of the RIBA Plan of Work (from spatial coordination to use) for your individual tasks in the Case Study / scenario and your ability as a group to coordinate these tasks across the whole project.
Case study – scenario setting
UWE Bristol is providing a net increase of 629 bedrooms for student accommodation at the Carroll Court site at Frenchay Campus as part of a two-phase £200 million development scheme (Figure 1-1). The existing buildings on the site (Carroll Court student residences - Site1) have been demolished to allow for the creation of 881 new bed spaces (Phase 1). Alongside, a new health centre and accommodation staff offices within the east side of N Block will be created. The planning application was submitted at the end of August 2020 to South Gloucestershire Council and the project started in November 2021 (UWE, 2022).
Please check the previous brief for the Presentation to obtain further information. Some documents of the proposal for the development are available in UWE’s website on the link: www.uwe.ac.uk/newaccommodationbuild.
Figure 1-1. Architect’s impression of the proposed Accommodation Development in Carroll Court. Source - https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/contractors/vinci/vinci-bags-77m-bristol-student-accommodation-job-21-10-2021/
2. Details of the Task
Individually you are required to work in a specific task (ONE per member, chosen by you – see Table 2-1) AND as a group you are required to coordinate the different activities (tasks) and combine them into ONE consolidated consultancy report to be submitted to ‘your client’ as your assignment.
The groups are the same as per your presentation teams and you will need to keep working on your Group Space on Blackboard. You might have already defined your team’s organisational structure, so please continue it or redefine it for this assignment. You need to make it absolutely clear from the onset and at the beginning of your report who is in charge of what task (write all names, roles and tasks in the cover page). Your submission must be a consolidated consultancy report with the five (5) tasks specified. Please let us know if someone is getting left out/or is missing team members.
As well as producing an overall report, each member of your team must lead a section of this report from a choice of the topics presented below in Table 2-1: ONE from each member (make sure you choose a different subject from other members of your team).
Each of these reports will be combined into your team’s overall report (5x 1,500 words). A ‘Working File’ will need to be kept and maintained to provide evidence for your discussions and strategic approaches (workflow). Minutes, action plans and other relevant supporting information must be available within this working file to demonstrate effective team working towards the tasks. Consideration of collaborative work shall be considered for each group, and the ‘Working File’ needs to be attached as an Annex to the report.
Table 2-1. Topics: Implementation of RIBA Plan of Work 2020 in new build MMC projects (Each member of a Group to pick ONE)
Report Perspective (your approach)
You are writing a formal report from the perspective of the client’s project management team advising on the implementation of MMC in a given Case Study / Scenario. References to publications are expected and required. All referenced material should be acknowledged using UWE Harvard’s referencing style. You are encouraged to support your assumptions with references to other similar project case studies.
Additional Instructions
1. The project is in Frenchay campus. Details of the project can be found in this document and in the previous Coursework brief for the Presentation.
2. It is expected that students will carry out secondary research via online resources and
UWE Library.
3. References and bibliography are excluded from the word count and all sources of information – both technical, written, and illustrations – must be referenced using the UWE Harvard convention.
4. You are advised to use figures, diagrams and tables where required to substantiate your work, but they are not mandatory. Use Appendices for additional items which you feel are not required in main text but support your work.
5. Collaborative work is key for innovation, the report is reflective of your Group effort, and must flow seamlessly into an informative piece of work that will reflect your learning on MMC.
6. Report must be in Third Person (Avoid I, We, You etc) and you will lose marks for poor presentation, grammar and referencing (individually and as a group).
7. Plagiarism is still not permitted! Kindly read University Guidelines on Plagiarism.
Formal Academic Citation is required wherever sources are used (reference list is not included in 1,500 words per person). If your words come from your own knowledge and understanding of the topic, rather than being written immediately after reading from a source, then no citations would likely be needed.
8. Finally, you will be able to submit work that exceeds the word limit, however: markers are instructed to cease reading any material that goes beyond 1,650 words, thus any additional commentary may be excluded from the final assessment. Further information on UWE’s word limit policy can be found by clicking on this link (Ctrl+Click).
9. Please include a cover page for the report, and an additional page highlighting the subject choices the roles and chosen of tasks of each group member.
10. Tutor staff will be available to provide additional support during group working to be undertaken in class. As the project is designed to be interactive and based on the principles of good project management, it is anticipated that additional team discussions should take place between team members outside of the timetabled sessions.
11. Finally, you are encouraged to use appropriate collaborative virtual technologies or media to facilitate discussions with team members when F2F meetings are not possible.
3. Submission details
The Report is the second piece of your two Coursework elements for this module and is refereed as to Coursework B. The report must be submitted on-line via Blackboard (Bb) as follows:
On-line Bb Submission: Thursday, 28th April 2022 before 2 p.m.
This assessment has a three-day (calendar) grace period in which you can submit your work without penalty. This means that the last date for submission without penalty or applying for Reasonable Adjustments (RA) is on Sunday 1st April 2022 prior to 2:00pm.
While students are expected to plan their work so that they can submit on time, if you are experiencing difficulties which will affect your ability to submit your work by the published deadline the University allows a three-day grace period in which you can submit your work without penalty for this specific assessment.
Please note that the submission deadline at the conclusion of the three-day grace period is absolute and based on UWE server time. Please also note that this may fall at a time when there is no IT support, therefore you are strongly advised to submit work well ahead of the end of the three-day grace period because if it is uploaded beyond 2pm it cannot be marked. For full information please see: Assessment support options - Academic information | UWE Bristol.
✓ A student for whom 3 days is not enough can apply for a further 4 days (making a 7-day extension in all) but you have to do this 5 days before the published deadline and have to supply evidence.
✓ Students who come under the disability act can OPT for a 14-day Reasonable Adjustment.
For more information on how to apply, please refer to: Assessment support options - Academic information | UWE Bristol. The module leader will provide some guidance on presentation skills during tutorial sessions; however, you are strongly advised to use the UWE’s support on
‘Writing and delivering a presentation’, which can be found by clicking here.
You may be uncertain about what sort of help you may need, however, there are a variety of support tools available through Study Support. Please refer to the service that you think would be of most use to you.
4. Marking criteria
The Report will be assessed using the following marking criteria (Table 4-1) with a 10% Group
Mark weighting and the remaining 90% as your individual mark:
Table 4-1 Marking criteria
To get a pass (i.e. 50 – 59%) you will
• Demonstrate your technical understanding of your strategy, which should be explained in the form of a proposal related to the theory previously presented in your presentation
• Show how this is a development from existing practice within the given context
• Clearly indicate several steps, or pre-requisites, which would be needed to successfully implement the innovation in projects and/or organisations
• Identify the impact of the strategy on the organisation/project/industry
• Properly cite and reference all your sources using the UWE Harvard system
To get a merit (60 – 69%) you will additionally
• Show understanding of the process of strategy in introducing a new process or product into a project or organisation or the construction/property industry
• Have been more comprehensive in your coverage of all areas of the criteria especially in the impact of the strategy
• Show analytical and comparative ability of strengths and weaknesses and some prioritisation
of action
• Provide a range of relevant references/ evidence
To get a distinction (i.e. ≥ 70%) you will need to comprehensively cover the points above as well as
• Provide a critical evaluation of your proposed strategy indicating its strengths and weaknesses in relation to current evidence and research
• Prioritise the steps, or pre-requisites, for its implementation convincingly
• Showing you understand the strategies’ vulnerabilities and how it might be challenged
• Providing comprehensive and appropriate references to theory and evidence
To fail (i.e. < 50%) you will have
• Provided information about the strategy which only relates to your own organisation, and which ignores other organisations and sectors
• Provided a descriptive report of a strategy which has already been adopted, and prevalent in major scale
• Proposed an idea which is not deemed to be innovative or a development of existing practice
• Not provided adequate theoretical base
• Not considered the implications of its implementation as a substantial part of your report
• Not critically reflected on its impacts on the organisation/project/industry.
5. Further guidance
You may be uncertain about what sort of help you may need, however, there are a variety of support tools available through Study Support. Please refer to the service that you think would be of most use to you.