51 BUILDING


INSIGHTS LIVE


Round table chair, editor James Parker


Unlocking MMC & Off site in Residential Developments


M


MC (Modern Methods of Construction), and more specifi cally f esigning for anufacture and ssemly, hae long een hailed as the answer to the houseuilding sectors triple whammy of meeting spiralling housing targets, while achieing uilding performance and tacling the sills crisis. We rought together leading modular construction specialists, olume houseuilders, consultants, architects and academics, to discuss solutions to one of the industrys iggest conundrums why cant mainstream houseuilding seem to emrace 


s well as unforeseen locers lie post-reit infl ation, oid, confl icts, and a housing maret slowdown, the industry culture is wedded to ultimate supply chain fl eiility in proect decision- maing, despite the current model haing seen many traditional usinesses go under in recent years. here hae een some ey eamples of  success, particularly large scale, ut taeup has een noticealy slow  when engagement with the methods will e essential to delier the oernments houseuilding goals including new  ndy urnhams promise of the iggest council house uilding programme since the post-war period.


ts impossile to shy away from the reality that a series of high-profi le fi rms hae pulled  inestment following a lac of a pipeline of wor to support their factories. ut while maor players from , ereley and op at to le omes, aledonian odular and Swan ousing ssociation hae retreated from the fray, a few lie istry present at the


round tale are douling down on their commitments to . t a time when olume houseuilders are reticent to een uy land and uild traditionally as sales plummet, is an increasingly de-rised offsite sector looing more iale n order to achiee the oernments . million new homes target, a large proportion will need to e offsite manufactured, whether ategory  olumetric, ategory  panelised, or other arieties. ut a maor shift is still reuired in the industry to emrace production of precision-made homes at scale offsite although a long-term iew would see this as a means to recruit a new generation of professionals.


n order to try and identify solutions, the round tale deled into why  still only fi gured in around  of  homes, and timer remained underused in ngland. raditional approaches to uilding houses hae een seen as potentially inadeuate in the era of more rigorous performance standards and policing, and with sponsor partners stoc ric and edite Smartply, we eplored how to rea down the stuorn arriers to adoption.


Sponsors too a ey role in the discussion, giing it a practical focus, with edite Smartply for one haing recently tacled the prolem in a surey of timer frame fi rms on their iews around MMC, and accepted the need for more standardisation. We also discoered how architects hae emraced   igel stime of awinsrown eplained how he was woring with , on its third iteration of the erlay to the  lan of Wor helping to inect  design into proects in a systematic way.


oweer, fellow architect ory ergin of  esign noted that ery few architecture schools teach . We also heard how a few olume houseuilders lie arratt ondon are fully tethering their usiness model to the approach. nd the imer oadmap was eing really positiely supported y the industry, in the words of edite Smartplys oly Ward, who added that seen out of the  top houseuilders were inesting in offsite timer frame. With istry continuing to inest in  restarting the eicester timer offsite


ROUND TABLE ATTENDEES • Sam Stacey, Director, A7C •


• Rory Bergin, Partner, HTA Design architects


• Andrew Orriss, Interim Chief Executive, Structural Timber Association


•


Stephen Wightman, Director, UK MMC Lead, AtkinsRéalis


• Nigel Ostime , Consultant, Hawkins\Brown architects


• Richard Quarry, Equity Partner, Baker Ruff Hannon LLP


• Jack Brayshaw, Director of Research and Innovation, Vistry


ROUND TABLE SPONSORS • Andrew Shepherd, Managing Director, Ibstock Brick


• Roly Ward, Head of Business Development, Medite Smartply


Tony Woods, Technical Manager - Construction and Sustainability, Procurement for Housing


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