Inland Homes is a brownfield regeneration specialist that focuses on developing sites into high-quality, affordable homes.
They’ve been in business for the better part of 20 years, delivering stylish, comfortable, and sustainable homes to a wide variety of social demographics.
Our work with Inland Homes is a perfect example of the early engagement we mentioned earlier. This involves LABC Warranty being involved in projects as early as RIBA Stage 2.
While that might seem very early for a latent defects warranty provider to be chipping in, getting in early offers huge benefits when customers are working across the scale of units that Inland Homes offer.
Seeing designs early means our technical experts can spot issues that might be identified by inspectors as defects down the line, or might prevent our risk surveyors from being able to issue an insurance certificate.
LABC (Local Authority Building Control) are also involved at this stage to make sure that any building control related issues are dealt with at this early stage.
Between the three parties, any highlighted problems are ironed out in a manner that satisfies everyone’s needs from the site.
The commercial needs of Inland Homes, the building safety needs of LABC, and our need to minimise the chance of defects.
“Working with LABC Warranty has allowed us to obtain early engagement in the design process, provided us with consistent design approach across projects, and allowed us to build valuable relationships with inspectors that achieve higher standards across projects.”
Pedro Longras – Development Director, Inland Homes
LABC Warranty’s collaborative approach lets us work with developers to keep the attractive features and details that they want to offer their residents. All while upholding all the quality and safety that developers, building control, and LABC Warranty want to offer residents.
Having these conversations early also means that an agreed feature, or design, can be replicated across hundreds or even thousands of units. This takes away a potential barrier to unit completions, helping major home developers meet tight programme delivery schedules.
When developers work at the kind of scale that Inland Homes do, any issues that pop up late in the building process come with the costs associated with that scale.
Having certainty over design long before work starts minimises the chance for a costly complication to emerge late in the development.
Early agreement over the building approach also lets developers start their procurement early, and with confidence.
“Early engagement has allowed to make amendments on a variety of projects. This input has been invaluable, which has helped us deliver our projects on-programme and on-budget.”
Pedro Longras – Development Director, Inland Homes
An excellent recent example for the benefits of early engagement is Inland Homes’ experience with designing zero-falls roofs.
Inland Homes presented LABC Warranty with a design incorporating a detail with a zero-falls roof, which could have been seen as non-compliant with the demands set out in the LABC Warranty Technical Manual.
Without early engagement, this detail could have meant risk surveyors being unable to issue insurance certificates to sites. As we discussed earlier, that would be disastrous and costly for hundreds of units late in the construction process.
Instead, Inland Homes, Hertfordshire Building Control, and LABC Warranty worked together long before the work started.
A minor change to the design satisfied Hertfordshire Building Control’s needs, LABC Warranty’s technical concerns, while allowing Inland Homes to keep an attractive detail on their design.
These advantages are available to any major developer using LABC Warranty for their latent defects insurance.
As you might imagine, the best way to enjoy the benefits of early engagement is to get in touch early.
If you’re an existing LABC Warranty customer, contact your account manager and let them know you’re planning a development.
Or, if you haven’t worked with LABC Warranty before, get in touch with us through the enquiry form here, and we’ll get the conversation started.
“Our standard zero-falls roof detail has been an excellent example of Inland Homes and LABC Warranty working together to ensure the quality of design and the delivery of workmanship on site to achieve what is quite a tricky detail.”
Mike Butler – Regional Construction Director, Inland Homes