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David de Sousa of AHR Architects looks at how modular construction is at the centre of delivering on the housing challenge, hailing its flexibility, practicality and quality
B
ritain is in the midst of a housing crisis; it’s an obvious fact, without an obvious solution. In the 2017 budget, the Government set a target of delivering 300,000 new homes per year by 2020. While there has been an increase in new homes since then, early reports suggest that the Government is around 82,000 homes short of this target at present. Clearly, more needs to be done. Modern methods of construction (MMC) have been held up as one potential solution. While their adoption alone won’t fix the housing crisis, they can play an important role in helping to increase supply-side capacity.
The importance of MMC was highlighted in the Government’s strategy for the industry – Construction 2025. The strategy laid out several key challenges to the industry, highlighting the need to innovate within the construction sector. Lowering costs by 33 per cent, lowering emissions by 50 per cent and increasing project delivery speed by 50 per cent were all key ambitions detailed in the report – and they are ambitions that the adoption of MMC can help to achieve.
The latest Homes England five-year strategic plan further bolstered this by suggesting incentives would be provided to developers adopting MMC. Clearly, there is momentum building behind this approach.
The benefits of MMC
The Construction 2025 strategy set a target to increase the speed of delivery by 50 per cent, and this is one reason people are turning to MMC as a solution. With an off-site approach to construction, elements can be designed and constructed in a manner similar to a manufacturing assembly line – and this improves efficiency, scalability and speed of delivery.
ADF JANUARY 2019
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
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