Education Estates Older Buildings Research

The Department for Education (DfE) is looking to commission research to improve the department's understanding of future building safety risks and condition issues in the education estate, in particular in post-war buildings (constructed between 1945 and 1990).

The multi-disciplinary research is expected to include: • Desk-based analysis. • Intrusive structural surveys and qualitative research in a representative sample of post-war buildings to reflect different construction type, material, age, and degrees of maintenance. • Modelling to map the prevalence of future structural risks and condition issues across the post-war estate. • Machine learning artificial intelligence modelling to process high volumes of data to identify and learn specific types of defects experienced in older buildings; associated by age and typology with cross reference to condition data to predict the likely nature(s) of building deterioration. • Key observable characteristics of structural risks. • Policy recommendations on mitigating future risks.

The DfE Older Buildings team will be hosting an online workshop on 3 June 2024 at 13:00 GMT to share current thinking on the context, scope and content of the contract.

This will be followed by opportunities to ask questions.

For more information on the research and how to attend the workshop please see the attachment.