Innovation Exchange Challenge: DfE + Innovate UK Pre-demolition Data Capture and Analysis
Department for Education
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Key details
Procurement
- 45111100 Demolition work
- 71000000 Architectural, construction, engineering and inspection services
- 45220000 Engineering works and construction works
What happened
The contract runs until 31 Mar 2028.
Description
The education estate comprises approximately 69,000 buildings across more than 22,000 schools and colleges in England. It includes a range of construction types and structural components, many of which are concealed while buildings are in use.
DfE continuously seeks to improve its understanding of construction materials and structural arrangements used in school and college buildings. This is essential as these buildings age, have increasing maintenance requirements and will be impacted by climate change. DfE uses this knowledge to prioritise investment in the estate, inform policy and project-specific decisions,and ensure interventions such as retrofit, renewal or rebuilding are appropriately targeted. It also supports the review and development of reliable and proportionate guidance for those responsible for operating educational buildings.
Buildings due for demolition through the Schools Rebuilding Programme (SRP) offer a rich source of informationas they are typically included in the programme because of safety issues or severe condition need, including structural defects. Immediately prior to demolition, finishes and fixtures are often removed as part of the ‘softstrip’, exposing large areas of the load bearing structure that would normally remain concealed in an operational school because of the disruption of intrusive investigations. At present there is no systematic programme to capture and analyse information on the final structural condition of these buildings.
This challenge seeks to establish a way to do this with minimal impact to the cost and programme of project delivery.
Further information on the School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme
The Challenge
Through Innovate UK, DfE are seeking scalable and cost-effective digital tools and methodologies to capture structural condition data immediately before demolition and analyse it to identify trends in defects across different construction types and structural arrangements in the education estate. This may be answered as discrete or a complete solution: 1: Data capturing and interpretation and 2: Analysis to identify trends across different construction types and structural arrangements.
Applicants shall demonstrate how their proposals can capture structural condition data during a short pre-demolition window and analyse it to give reliable, engineering-based insights into structural defects, deterioration patterns and structural risks.
Challenge responses should explain how data will be captured efficiently and safely and how technologies or automated methodologies, will be used to interpret it and then analyse it to inform the overall structural condition. Successful data capture and interpretation will be able to identify the different deterioration that can occur for the various structural elements and materials used for historic school construction. Successful analysis approaches should be capable of identifying common patterns or trends in visible defects and signs of deterioration across different buildings and correlate these to the construction materials and structural systems present. Responses should also explain the interoperability between data capture and analysis tools and how data and analysis outputs can be ingested into DfE’s Common Data Environment (CDE).
The typical range of material systems used for structural elements is:
- Structural steel (welded, bolted, rivetted)
- Structural timber, including trusses
- Reinforced concrete (Excluding RAAC, reinforced aerated autoclaved concrete, which will have been captured by separate pre-assessment)
- Masonry (brickwork and blockwork), solid or cavity with wall ties.
The range of structural elements is expected to include but may not be limited to:
- Ground slabs: Reinforced concrete
- Columns and beams and stabilising elements (braces): Steel, Reinforced concrete, masonry, timber
- Roof Framing (trusses and lattices): Steel, timber
- Suspended floors and flat roofs: Reinforced concrete, beams and decking (such as floor boards), reinforced concrete beam, concrete block infill, precast concrete and proprietary panels
- Loadbearing walls: Masonry
- Chimneys: masonry, reinforced concrete
It is expected that some degradation types will be common to all materials:
- Water ingress effects, settling/movement of foundations or supports, movement from the as-built condition, workmanship issues from the time of construction.
- Unplanned structural alterations or mechanical damage through the building’s life such as cutting of members, removal of braces, removal of bolts, accidental impact etc
The typical deterioration of the differing materials can include:
- Timber: Wood boring insects, dry rot, wet rot, crushing, splitting, warping
- Steelwork: Corrosion, compression buckling, buckling over supports
- Reinforced concrete: Corrosion of rebar, spalling of surfaces, cracking, crumbling, contamination
- Masonry: Crumbling and spalling of faces, corrosion of cavity wall ties, cracking in bedding joints, cracking in bricks/blocks, erosion of mortar bedding joints
Timescales
Launch of the Challenge Statement: Friday 23rd October 2026
Deadline for respondents: Friday 4th December 2026
Shortlisted applicants will be notified: Tuesday 5th January 2027
Challenge pitch day for shortlisted applicants: 11th to 15th January 2027
Shortlisted applicants notified of the pitch result: Tuesday 2nd February 2027
Subject to DfE commercial procurement processes and budget availability, successful applicant(s) may be invited to pilot their solution(s) in live SRP settings. Adoption of successfully pilot solutions on future projects, where appropriate,will be subject to funding availability, relevant DfE approvals and compliant process.
Following successful outcomes of the challenge, the pilot study is planned for summer 2027, aligning with typical construction programmes and intensive pre-demolition activities during this period while SRP school sites are largely unoccupied.
The longer-term commercial opportunity is that, in the future, this may be adopted on the several hundred education buildings that are demolished every year, where is it appropriate based on a building's characteristics and project specific constraints.
How to engage
Parties interested in applying to the challenge should do so via Innovate UK's challenge site here: https://www.ktninnovationexchange.co.uk/challenges/447 The application form for this challenge will require applicants to provide company information and answer 3 questions - Idea Summary, Technology Readiness and Intellectual Property – each with a limit of 300 words. Technical Requirements Responses must: Clearly identify in your submission if you are offering solutions for 1: Data capture and interpretation and/or 2: data analysis across building types Demonstrate how data will be captured from construction sites, noting that the period between ‘soft strip’ being completed and demolition may be as little as 5 days. The pre-demolition window may also be subject to change and there cannot be any impact on overall project programme. Use of a data capture method that is widely available in the market and therefore accessible to DfE framework contractors. Provide opportunity for automated processes and demonstrate how these will be able to process captured data to accurately identify and distinguish between key construction materials and arrangements. DfE would like to understand how structural components can be differentiated e.g. precast vs in-situ concrete elements, different system build construction types, structural components in floor and roof systems etc. Identify key construction types and structural arrangements, and demonstrate how technology solutions can identify,classify and assess any visible defects (e.g. cracking, staining, corrosion, moisture damage, section loss etc.), including for severity, to identify patterns and potential vulnerabilities associated with specific materials and structural arrangements. Demonstrate how analysis outputs will communicate and summarise common defects, deterioration patterns and trends, enabling DfE officials to gain insights into structural condition across the estate. Produce consistent records that support comparison across construction types, sites and estate level Have the ability to “learn” and become an increasingly autonomous system There must be a method for ingesting captured data and analysis outputs into DfE’s CDE, compliant with the data requirements outlined. Demonstrate value-for-money over routine survey and manual reporting methods DfE would also like to understand more about the system architecture, data processing rules, and data storage, management and retention rules that a live, routine service would require. Following this challenge, successful applicant(s) may be invited to take part ina pilot study in up to 3 schools. Participation in the pilot is subject to DfE commercial procurement processes and budget availability. Successful methodologies being tested in live SRP settings, must consider the following operating conditions: - Sites will have been handed over to an SRP contractor who will be responsible for all site operations. Attendees would need to follow all required site processes including health and safety procedures. - Access will be limited to a short pre-demolition window, typically between asbestos removal and demolition commencement. - Data capture and any on-site calibration or development activities shall take place following asbestos removal and soft-strip activities, when structural elements are more readily visible. - Structural elements are unlikely to be fully exposed or cleaned prior to survey activities and may be dirty, dusty and remain partially obscured by residual materials. The following approaches are considered not suitable: - Solutions that assess building fabric condition only. Proposals must identify defects and vulnerabilities in primary load bearing structural elements (roofs, suspended floors, stability elements, columns, load bearing walls etc.). - Solutions requiring monitoring, repeat inspections or multiple site visits. - Approaches that require significant changes to SRP contractor activities, demolition sequencing or site operations. - Any approach that results in significant additional project costs or material impacts on project programme. - Solutions that entail the removal of more materials to expose the structural elements. Applicants should outline the expected costs for developing and piloting their proposed solution(s). Outline costs should cover: - Development of a suitable automation tool - Data capture requirements - Data processing and analysis - Associated licensing costs DfE would like to understand costs associated with scalability of suitable solutions and would like indicative costs for applying the methodology in 1, 3, 5 and 10 school blocks. Consider that each block has a Gross Internal Floor Area (GIFA) of 2000m2 which may be spread over multiple levels. The successful applicant(s) must be: - Established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs. Academic Institutions and RTOs must have a partner offering a clear route to market. -
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