Strand 3 - Innovative Collaboration

Drawing on the full range of built environment disciplines, the Innovative Collaboration strand offers participants a unique opportunity to work alongside other industry professionals to undertake project-based work, involving local authorities and not-for-profit organisations. These projects offer participants the opportunity to:

• Develop inter-professional working techniques
• Identify new ways of looking at urban issues
• Develop real solutions to real built environment issues across London
• Focus on the development of green skills and outline different approaches to low carbon and sustainable community issues

The project strand has been designed with the intention of addressing the shortage of a new kind of urban professional who has the skills and vision to cross normal disciplinary boundaries.

The participants

Project participants will be drawn from a range of professionals, with at least one years post- qualification experience. Much of the learning will come from the experience of working on the same project with a range of other professionals, allowing skills and method approaches to be interchanged.

Participants are exposed to a wide range of issues and working methods which may not have been encountered previously, allowing the identification and development of new approaches to working with urban issues.

The projects

A typical project will run for eight to ten weeks, with a team of fifteen working a maximum of sixteen hours a week each.

A particular aim of the projects is to promote and develop inter-professional working- identifying new ways of looking at urban issues and providing professional input that would otherwise not be available to a client. They will be ‘live’ projects, with a final output presented to the client, and in many cases the projects will fall outside normal expectations of what an architect/surveyor/planner/engineer might work on.

Whilst some of the projects will be more urban design focused, others have less defined requirements and may require more survey/interview work with local residents. Build Up are currently finalising commencement dates and confirming the structure for future projects. We will be adding these new projects over the duration of the programme.