An influential
roundtable discussing how off-site manufacturing can improve build standards
has called for industry and government collaboration to agree tougher building
regulations for off-site construction to differentiate it from traditional
build methods.
The idea was one of
five recommendations to come from the event, held at the House of Commons and
organised by the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum with support from the
British Board of Agrément (BBA).
Speaking at the
roundtable, BBA Technical Excellence Director Paul Valentine said off-site
construction represented an ‘important opportunity’ to drive up standards,
improve the sustainability of buildings and make it easier to meet quality
assurance standards. The BBA now intends to consider how its certification
process can work with the seven-category Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)
framework to better designate systems.
Nigel Ostime, Product
Delivery Director at award-winning Hawkins\Brown architects, believed that
off-site construction could improve the quality of housing and increase
productivity but identified barriers to this, including architects’ and
designers’ lack of manufacturing and assembly experience; lack of a supply
chain/central database for producers of off-site construction products;
procurement practices discouraging MMC and issues with insurance/assurance of
off-site construction.
The meeting debated
how off-site construction requires early engagement across the build board, but
current procurement practices inhibit engagement with the supply chain and
fabricators at critical early stages. Procuring for value rather than lowest cost,
particularly on public projects, would allow for the whole life cost and
durability of an asset to be considered, rather than just the initial capital
cost, leading to higher quality and lower running costs.
Another idea discussed
revolved around considering housing new-builds as ‘products’, moving towards
their mass customisation with ‘designed intent’ not left to multiple levels of
interpretation by differing contractors. It was considered this approach would
also de-risk the industry, allowing in-use testing of the building ‘product’
and continuous evaluation and improvement of homes.
Roundtable
recommendations also included:
- Government should support
providers of Modern Methods of Construction through investment in early
product innovation and development.
- Government and industry should
collaborate on harmonising current digital models and formats of
buildings, so they are fundamentally interchangeable, or by creating
non-proprietary central digital building model.
- Government and industry should
collaborate on driving better performance labelling of housing, including
components like light, space, ventilation, and energy performance,
empowering consumers to ask more of house-builders and drive building
performance.
