INDUSTRY NEWS 11
White paper suggests modular could save housing market
If the housing market is to come anywhere near providing the target of 300,000 homes per year there must be a significant shift in the way we produce buildings, according to architectural practice Ackroyd Lowrie. In its new white paper, the company sets out how this challenge can be met through offsite volumetric construction. The report says that high quality, bespoke housing projects are able to be delivered an estimated 30-60 per cent faster by building them in factories. Liz Peace CBE, chair of the Old Oak and Park Development Corporation, commented on the research: “The house- building industry is not renowned for being particularly innovative but in offsite, volumetric housing we are confronted with something that could revolutionise the way we build homes and make a significant dent in the housing numbers that we so desperately need. “As an industry, we cannot let this oppor- tunity pass us by. This is why we need the call to arms the Ackroyd Lowrie White Paper offers – to inspire, to inform and most all to make things happen.”
ACKROYD LOWRIE’S REPORT EXPLORES THE KEY BENEFITS OF MODERN OFFSITE CONSTRUCTION; THESE INCLUDE:
• Complete construction in days, not months – Offsite construction can save a great deal of time on site, which leads to financial savings for the client. The method can offer 30-60 per cent time saving over traditional methods
• Bespoke, high quality homes – Prefabricated homes gained a reputation for being repetitive and low quality due to those produced in the post-war period. However, modern factories can achieve bespoke designs using high quality materials
• Fewer Defects – Because these homes are built in factory conditions, the quality and consistency of work can be higher
• Collaborations with award winning archi- tects – Advances in 3D computer modelling allow award winning archi- tects to collaborate directly with the factories producing the homes to achieve contemporary, beautifully designed homes
surveyors in their forecasts a year ago. In the early part of 2018 workloads increased across all subsectors, with both new work and repair and maintenance activity rising steadily. Private housing reported the strongest rise in workloads with 36 per cent more respondents citing an increase rather than a decrease - the most positive since the beginning of 2016. This contrasts with the public sector where the pace of workloads slowed to a net balance of +10 per cent in housing (+19 in Q4 2017).
To ensure that these factory-made build- ings arrive on site exactly as intended, Ackroyd Lowrie have introduced a virtual reality (VR) sign off process. This allows the client to walk around different versions of their future home in the latest VR headset. Developers and designers can then make changes to the design long before the 3D model is sent to the factory for production, and even longer before a single brick is laid.
Construction holds steady in Q1 despite bad weather
Construction workloads remained resilient despite bad weather and a weaker near- term economic outlook in the first quarter of 2018, according to the results of the Q1 2018 RICS Construction and Infrastructure Market Survey. In Q1 2018, 23 per cent more chartered surveyors reported that their workloads had risen as opposed to fallen. While 63 per cent of respondents noted bad weather conditions as a limiting factor, the “Beast from the East” was not enough to slow the pace of growth.
The RICS quarterly series has now indicated “moderate but steady” growth for the past four quarters, something supported by the positive expectations expressed by
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Higher input costs and a shortage of labour continue to restrict growth in profit margins, and while cost pressures may ease later this year, expectations around profit margins are still well below the three-year average of 40 per cent recorded between 2014 and 2016. Tender prices are expected to rise over the next 12 months, with respondents in both the building and civil engineering sectors envisaging greater price pressures. Besides the one-off factors related to inclement weather, financial constraints, planning delays and labour shortages remain the key impediments to growth with 76 per cent, 66 per cent and 60 per cent of surveyors reporting difficulties with each, respectively.
The lack of sufficiently skilled workers
remains an obstacle for many businesses, particularly with regard to professional services such as quantity surveying. Labour shortages remain at elevated levels after having eased throughout 2016 with 60 per cent of contributors in Q1 citing this as an impediment to growth. Indeed, the share of respondents reporting insufficient availabil- ity of quantity surveyors was the highest in 10 years.
Despite the constraints that firms have
been facing recently, surveyors remain relatively upbeat. Net balances of 46 per cent and 35 per cent of respondents expect workloads and employment levels, respec- tively, to continue to rise over the coming 12 months.
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