CONSTRUCTION
schemes, standardisation also reduces variability, and addresses the risk profile on each project, leading to continuous improvement and learning. This is a move away from each project tackling the same problems over and over again, and potentially making the same mistakes.”
Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) techniques were used throughout the new 147-bed Royal Victoria Building at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, which resulted in a reduction in the construction programme from 110 weeks to 90.
Understanding the product
platform construction concept for the project-specific needs of clients and building users. Essentially, they balance the need for commonality to deliver cost, programme, safety, and skills advantages, with the need for variability to match the final outcome with the local needs and environment where the project is being built.
A product platform comprises core repeatable assets, which include people and relationships, methods, and technical systems. These are configured, adapted, and combined, with less standard assets to create mass customised buildings. They can be designed, but far more commonly evolve from a collaborative process. Mott MacDonald Industrialised Design and Construction director, Trudi Sully, explains: “Product platforms often begin as a ‘kit of people’, where individuals perform recurring tasks in recurring teams. These activities lead to a ‘kit of methods’, which are then applied across various projects. Over time, these progressively formalise into a ‘kit of parts’ consisting of standardised components with defined interfaces.” These components can be flexibly assembled to create diverse products – optimising construction, reducing waste, and enhancing quality. In essence, product platforms are adaptable systems born from collective expertise and iterative refinement. Trudi Sully adds: “Product platforms deliver the productivity and repeatability benefits of manufacturing, while catering
Choices in the ‘final product’ “They do this by offering clients choices in the final product, such as different geometries, layouts, or features, which they find valuable. Internally, they streamline processes by eliminating unwanted variability and managing the impacts of choices, which helps to lower costs and risks – by minimising the need for multiple designs and procurements, and solving interface issues beforehand. In practice this means minimising the adaptation needed from one project to another across parts, processes, and supply chains, encouraging continuous learning and improvement. Product platforms may be comparatively new to construction, but they are well used in other industries around the world as a means of delivering mass customisation.”
Trudi Sully
Trudi Sully is Industrialised Design and Construction director at Mott MacDonald, where she leads a rapidly growing team is delivering integrated utilisation of industrialisation, design for manufacture and assembly, Modern Methods of Construction, and platform
approaches, to unlock greater social, economic, and environmental outcomes. She has had an eclectic
career working across a broad range of industries, but with a common theme of engaging with leaders – from SMEs to multinationals and government departments – to
Trudi Sully says a good example of how
product platforms have delivered benefits that construction is seeking is domestic kitchens. She explains: “The standard physical parts like cupboards, appliances, and connections, have evolved from repeated application and feedback from repeatable supply chains – designers, manufacturers, fitters – of repeatable processes and, ultimately, components,” she explains. “These processes, used over and over again, ensure that every kitchen system from high street providers, while customised to the space and end-user’s needs, benefits from proven methods and efficiencies, allowing personalised solutions to be delivered efficiently. This is the essence of a product platform.” If put into practice by the construction
sector, product platforms can deliver productivity improvements, customer choice, and high quality, at near mass-produced prices. Readers can learn more about the economic case for using product platforms in ‘an essential guide’ to the topic that was developed by Ben and Trudi with Claire, at:
https://tinyurl.com/5funpn34
tackle challenges and support transformation. Before joining Mott MacDonald, she spent four years as a director of the Construction Innovation Hub, working with government and industry to develop tools and approaches that enable improved productivity,
performance, and resilience – including overseeing the production of the Product Platform Rulebook and the Value of Platforms report. She now champions the adoption and deployment of these approaches to support the efficient delivery of a more sustainable built environment.
Reducing the capital costs of construction As well as improving outcomes for staff and patients, standardisation can reduce the capital cost of construction, while also having a beneficial effect on operational costs. “Through standardising you are simultaneously designing and integrating operational solutions,” Andrew Parks explains. “So, you’re not creating a building with a separate digital plan and a separate workforce plan, but rather designing everything to work together, so operationally they perform and function better. This integrated approach improves certainty that the outcomes delivered by the work will be realised at every lifecycle of the new healthcare facility.” While many countries have yet to adopt a standardised
approach to healthcare facility design and delivery, there are examples around the world that can be looked at to draw lessons from.
38 Health Estate Journal May 2025
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