Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
Builders merchant Travis Perkins has launched its WholeHouse® platform, that means SME housebuilders can plan and design a bespoke digital model of a house before they build it. From start to finish, the process can be completed in under an hour, saving weeks of work.
Based on the BIM process, WholeHouse® has been developed by Travis Perkins in partnership with architects, engineers and planners, customers and suppliers. The portal is specifically designed for housebuilders building up to 250 units a year. It means they can bring plots and developments to life through 3D visualisation in designs that can be easily adapted, personalised and tailored depending on customer requirements.
The platform also offers scalability, so it’s just as easy for them to design one plot as it is a multi-unit development site without needing any additional resource.
Because it ensures detailed and accurate material pricing from the beginning, the platform promotes improved sustainability by reducing material waste and providing informed choices around low carbon solutions.
WholeHouse® reduces development risk by allowing housebuilders to create a house type from over half a billion fully coordinated, tried and tested designs, so they can create costed, construction drawings with accurate elevations, floor plans, specifications, cross sections and more at the click of a button. Traditionally many of these items would need to be manually costed from drawings and separate subcontractor quotes.
n under an hour, WholeHouseⓇ can supply housebuilders with an entire set of drawing sheets, up to 200 pages of construction details and a full bill of all the items needed to build a property.
Lee Jackson, Director of WholeHouseⓇ said: “Being at the heart of construction, we take great pride in supporting our customers with new value added services that help them to navigate an increasingly complex construction landscape with new legislation and decarbonisation targets.
“WholeHouse will do just that, and help SME housebuilders, who are the lifeblood of regional property markets, to build better, more sustainable homes quickly and safely, whilst retaining control over the creative design elements and saving time and money.
“This portal has been a year in the making and is the culmination of 500 years of collaboration and industry experience. It puts the housebuilder in the driving seat and enables them to simplify the traditionally complex process of planning, costing and building new homes at the click of a button.”
The first two homes built using the platform will be ready by September and are based in the Midlands. Extensive work has been carried out on pilot schemes across the country.
