MTC welcomes Transforming Construction programme

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy plans to invest £170 million in the Transforming Construction programme, matched by a £250 million investment by the industry.

The transformative programme will help modernise the industry, introduce new technologies and recruit and train the next generation of high-skilled construction workers.

MTC strategic development director Neil Rawlinson said the programme, backed by significant funding, had the potential to transform the construction sector by encouraging innovation and technological advances.

"We are inevitably going to see major changes in the way buildings are designed, manufactured and integrated into the built environment as safety, performance, productivity and energy efficiency become more important. This announcement will encourage much-needed innovation to keep the UK at the forefront of this important sector," he said.

Several of the UK's biggest construction and infrastructure companies are members of the MTC, and the centre is in the vanguard of technological advances in the sector.

Rawlinson added, "The core purpose of the MTC is to support advances in UK manufacturing, but the expertise of the centre and its staff is fundamentally about process control and realisation, which does not necessarily have to be directly associated with the manufacturing sector. Remote technology, robotics, cybernetics, visualisation and simulation are core competences of the MTC, all of which can be appropriate to the needs of the construction sector.”