The phones have been ringing incessantly at Algeco’s Peterborough call centre in recent days.
Since the Department for Education prompted chaos last Thursday by warning of the risks around aerated concrete in 156 schools, school nurseries and further education colleges, the modular buildings hire company has been inundated with inquiries from schools desperate to secure temporary classrooms as the academic year gets under way.
The crisis has shone a light on a little-known corner of the construction world. Modular buildings, which can range from converted shipping containers to bespoke portable cabins, are popular on big infrastructure projects, such as the new HS2 rail project, where they can be bolted together and dismantled rapidly. They are also increasingly popular as a solution for buildings ranging from budget hotels to Starbucks coffee shops.
“We have definitely seen an increase in inquiries over the last few days,” said a spokesperson for Algeco, formerly known as Elliott, which since 2021 has been part of the Canadian investment giant Brookfield.
Algeco said it had received “numerous inquiries” from academies, schools and main contractors, particularly in south-east England. The company declined to disclose its prices, but said that it was holding them steady despite booming demand.
“We expect to receive more inquiries over the coming days and weeks via the CCS [Crown Commercial Service] modular buildings framework,” it said.
At least 156 schools have been found to have potentially dangerous “bubbly” concrete, known as Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete), and “hundreds more” schools could be affected by the safety issues, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has admitted.
A full list of affected schools in England will be published “before Friday,” according to Nick Gibb, the schools minister, who said action had been taken at 52 schools where alternative accommodation has been found or “propping” has been done to support ceilings.
Raac was a cheap lightweight alternative to traditional concrete mixes that was used in UK public buildings from the 1950s to 1990s. By the 1980s it had started to fail and last month, the Health and Safety Executive announced: “Raac is now life-expired. It is liable to collapse with little or no notice.”
Algeco and Portakabin, which is owned by Shepherd Group, are leading modular builders in the UK.
Algeco says temporary modular classrooms for hire create “light and airy teaching spaces,” with modules stackable up to four storeys high. They are prepared offsite and can come equipped with furniture. Customers typically have to wait for about three weeks for a single temporary classroom, it said, while double classrooms and whole teaching blocks take even longer.
Construction analyst Stephen Rawlinson, at Applied Value, said the concrete safety issues will boost “the likes of Elliott and Shepherd … at a time when there is already strong demand from infrastructure projects, such as HS2”.
“But they [portable buildings] cannot be suddenly made to appear and are not on a yard waiting to be delivered,” he said. “Repurposing shipping containers may also be needed, they are easier to transport and alter. Containers will be easy to transport because they are only 3 metres wide. People will put insulation and windows into them, and they’ll go on the back of a lorry.”
The concrete crisis comes amid already growing demand for portable cabins from the HS2 railway and the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset.
The Construction Leadership Council was due to meet on Tuesday to discuss how the industry should respond to the Raac crisis in school buildings.
Hire companies Speedy and Ashtead should also benefit from higher demand for equipment such as heaters for temporary classrooms. Some schools are using steel poles known as acrow props, to stabilise buildings.
Aside from temporary classrooms, a number of schools are being constructed as modules at offsite factories and transported on the back of lorries under the Department for Education’s (DfE) £3bn modular framework, established in 2020 to speed up construction.
However, Rawlinson said that while modular construction is part of the answer in the long run, it is not the whole answer, noting that there have been safety issues.
Several schools have had to close because a DfE review uncovered issues with the structural integrity of the buildings, weakening their ability to withstand high winds or heavy snowfall. Buckton Fields primary school in Northampton, built by Caledonian Modular, recently became the third school to close.
