Improving safety, quality and accountability in housing projects

UK housing associates and Coadjute team up to improve safety, quality and accountability in housing projects

Proof of Concept Project with housing associations L&Q, Notting Hill Genesis, Bromford and Origin aims to build platform which will increase safety, efficiency and accountability in the construction of housing

Coadjute, a platform for decentralised workflow and data sharing within the property industry, and several UK housing associations have completed a prototype of Quality Chain, a workflow application aimed at making the construction of housing simpler and safer.

The Coadjute platform uses R3’s Corda distributed ledger technology and designed to unify organisations involved in the development of housing projects from inception through to construction and occupation, Quality Chain captures and tracks a single version of key decisions, documentation and information.  It creates the ‘golden thread’ of accountability and transparency identified as necessary by the Hackitt Report.

Currently, each of the parties involved (e.g. architects, developers, clients, subcontractors, housing associations) in the construction and occupation of houses operate their own discrete systems.  Gaps in information, inefficiencies and fragmented communication are the inevitable result.  Quality Chain, a decentralised system based on blockchain, removes this issue by enabling each party to share a single source of the truth as a foundation for trust, while also retaining their own technology and data – a key regulatory requirement.

Quality Chain will provide an immutable history of decisions made throughout a project and the provenance of all documents and specifications iterated and agreed in the process. Through smart contracts, much of the current administrative burden can be automated.  Not only will this reduce costs for the organisations involved, it will mitigate the chance of potentially dangerous decisions being made or inappropriate components used.

John Reynolds, CEO and Founder of Coadjute, said:

“The UK needs to double the number of new homes built each year.  The reality is that this cannot be achieved without a thorough overhaul of the technology underpinning construction.  We believe blockchain provides the opportunity to unify, simplify and validate every stage in an otherwise complex process and create a trusted, immutable record, which all parties contribute to and agree”.

Matthew Gardiner Head of Ideation at L&Q said

“Quality Chain provides a method for all organisations involved in development to come to an agreement on any obligation, statement of work, deliverable or document providing a ‘single source of the truth’ as a basis for improving workflow management and efficiency. Its potential to improve quality and cut costs is significant.”

The aim is to create a market ready product by March 2020.

Coadjute’s proposition is further strengthened by the team’s work with HM Land Registry’s Digital Street project, where they beat a number of large corporations to win a major R&D project to use distributed ledger technology to explore connecting a central land registry with businesses.

Dame Judith Hackitt's report