16 INSIGHTS SITE LINES DfMA: the great offsite hope
With productivity in construction a more acute problem than other sectors, Nigel Ostime of Hawkins\Brown says that architects need to embrace offsite Design for Manufacture and Assembly as the panacea which also delivers the quality they want
roductivity in the manufacturing sector has grown year on year, whereas in the construction industry it has been flatlining for decades. This poor productivity has reduced the margins needed to finance inward investment and improvement, compounding the poor value delivered compared to other sectors. The consequential lack of financial reward is also a disincentive for new entrants to the market.
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Quality has been hobbled by lowest price rather than best value procurement, and through a lack of appetite for learning and improving through structured, post project completion review. These issues pose an existential threat and should be addressed if we are to create a built environment that provides wellbeing, sustainability and growth.
Modern methods of construction
The building industry has been advocating modern methods of construction (MMC) for some time. Its benefits are known: it is faster, safer and often allows for better quality than traditional on-site construction due to its factory-led production. But take-up of MMC has been slow, particularly in the housing sector. The difficulty is usually associated with a lack of capacity and the cost of entry into the market, as well as the stigma against modular building – whether for practical or aesthetic reasons. Recently though, some big players have taken the plunge and invested heavily in modular housing, including L&G and Goldman Sachs as well as Japanese giant Sekisui. On the whole though, offsite construction is still seen as an ‘alternative’ to traditional methods, rather than a ‘business as usual’ approach. Architects and other designers need to have a comprehensive knowledge of the offsite systems available and then select the right one for the specific site and building type.
The term pre-manufactured value (PMV) has started to be used to describe the percentage of a building that is pre-manufactured in a factory and brought to site for assembly, as opposed to traditional forms of construction.
A high level of PMV would be about 75-80 per cent for a fully volumetric (Cat 1) building. But good levels of PMV can be achieved with the other categories. Hawkins\Brown’s 524-unit build to rent scheme at Plot N06, East Village in Stratford (split across two towers of 26 and 31 stories), uses a variety of systems (not including Cat 1) and is achieving around 70 per cent PMV. Plot N06 uses an innovative system brought over from Australia that combines prefabricated floor slabs with curtain walling and this, along with a precast structure, bathroom pods, pre-fabricated
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK EAST VILLAGE
A modular offsite Build to Rent project at East Village, Stratford designed by Hawkins\Brown for Qatari Diar/Delancey and Get Living London
service risers, pre-fabricated internal wall systems as well as other offsite methods has taken months off the programme. Contractor Mace’s High Rise Solutions system used on the project employs parametric modelling tools and artificial intelligence to construct buildings, safer, faster and to a consistent high level of quality. It draws from a catalogue of components to design and manufacture the structure and facade sub-assemblies
ADF FEBRUARY 2021
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