Knowledge Transfer Project graded ‘Outstanding’

A Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the School of the Built and Natural Environment, with support from Research and Business Services (RBS), and North Tyneside Council has been graded ‘Outstanding’ by the Technology Strategy Board: the highest possible rating.  The ‘Outstanding’ accolade is only given to around 14% of projects across the country.  

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) support UK businesses wishing to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance by accessing the knowledge and expertise available within UK Universities and Colleges. The School of the Built and Natural Environment works with partners to enable its academic knowledge to be used for the benefit of the business community and local public sector organisations.  

The KTP between Northumbria University and North Tyneside Council was established to develop high quality designs for 26 new-build and refurbished sheltered housing projects within North Tyneside. The new designs were created to ensure that the accommodation can be used flexibly and that it will meet future demographic requirements in the long term.  

The project has resulted in an Architectural Design Evaluation Tool being produced that not only can be used by North Tyneside Council staff but any organisation commissioning or designing sheltered housing. The tool is an original innovative concept as it fills a gap in the marketplace where there are no suitable design quality assessment tools available that can both improve design quality during the competitive dialogue process and help in the selection of bidders at each stage.

The tool, which will soon be generally available, will be used by Architecture postgraduate students to self-assess their own design projects. Six postgraduate Architecture students were also able to work on the KTP to contribute to the development of the tool and assess design proposals.

Professor Bob Giddings, who managed the project in the School of the Built and Natural Environment, said “This has been a very unusual opportunity to be involved in producing such a comprehensive Architectural Design Evaluation Tool for a total of £390 million local authority private finance initiative sheltered housing projects.  The tool is also conceived as an accessible way of disseminating this type of research and is aligned to the University’s corporate strategy for community engagement.  The interaction with the University’s architecture programme has been fantastic, and to enable so many postgraduate students to use a version of the tool will be a great boost to their education.”

Larry Martindale from the Technology Strategy Board said, “I would like to congratulate all those involved in the Partnership in achieving this excellent outcome.”