The path to industrialisation

Paul Inch | Strata

Industrialised construction, along with the components that underpin it, continues to evolve, both in terminology and technology.

As the sector advances towards Industry 4.0 and beyond, questions remain as to whether MMC can still be considered truly ‘modern’.

What has been consistent, however, is the ongoing progression of the technologies shaping the industry.

With a growing range of industrialised construction techniques available, distinguishing between a proven formula for success and the pursuit of the latest trend can be challenging.

At the Industrialised Construction Conference, Paul Inch, Director of Strata, explored the path towards industrialisation and reflected on some of the common mistakes and pitfalls encountered along the way.

THE PATH TO INDUSTRIALISATION

One of the things, when you look back at parts of our history where we’ve failed to deliver, is that closed vertical systems have prevented adoption.

Open, non-proprietary systems, by their nature, allow us to possibly progress forward in a way where we’ve previously hit a roadblock. To pick on the elephant in the room, when housing products were brought to the market with various investors and didn’t work, the House of Lords produced a report.

In that report, there were lots of questions asked, and one of them regularly was, ‘Is it cheaper?’ No one answered it.

Unfortunately, we start with this assumption that offsite construction is going to be cheaper. If you add a process, then it increases the cost. If you add multiple processes, it increases the cost further.

When we look at the things that came out of what went wrong with these past exercises, the reality is that in order not to recreate them, we need to work out what went wrong and how we deal with it.

Pitfalls and roadblocks

While industrialised construction is successful in the sense it has brought construction forward into the 21st century, as Paul points out, its challenges – primarily cost – are sometimes overlooked.

It is only when examined under a microscope that these issues are brought to the fore.

Some think industrialised construction is just a rebadged MMC or modular.

To me, it’s different. Open, interoperable component systems, that’s what industrialised construction is. If traditional construction is the starting point, we’ve since moved into closed-source offsite.

The next step must be open-source, you only have to look at 'The OSKOP kit of parts manufacturers guide'

Traditional construction means materials and components go through subcontractors via the main contractor. Offsite and closed systems mean the main contractor uses an offsite company, plus a chain of factories.

Everything on site comes from a factory anyway, so offsite is about scale and scope. Sometimes there are three or four factories in the chain.

Industrialised construction keeps the main contractor central, controlling design for manufacture and assembly, crane operations, and plant. Factories supply them, and the supply chain is built around that.

But communication chains get longer with multiple factories, and every hand adds margin. That’s a challenge. Still, it shows how industrialised construction can evolve through reassembling constituent parts.

Interoperability is essential

In a world of closed-off systems and proprietary technologies, having an open-source system would support the development of the industry.

Interoperability is essential and is something already explored in other manufacturing industries, such as automotive. Many car manufacturers share engines, whether to reduce costs or to meet stricter emissions regulations.

Paul argues that this interoperability of components, maybe within a common platform is one of the key tenets of industrialised construction.

OSKOP is a framework originally designed to deliver school projects, but it also ties together lots of different drivers such as building safety and embodied carbon.

It is non-proprietary using standard components and it’s true open source, so pretty much anyone can use it.

It is also designed to deliver predominantly public buildings, so it's done several schools, some crematoriums, a velodrome and now public housing.

Effectively, it's a document that anyone can pick up and use, and it's really designed to open up the UK supply chain to create local supply.

OSKOP

In recent years, the Open Source kit of Parts (OSKOP) project has begun to gather traction with those involved in the offsite sector, including OSG Architects, Haverstock’s, Bond Bryan Architects, Perpendicular Architecture and Poynton Bradbury Architects, to name a few.

The Alliance is growing and includes dozens of different companies, and Paul says he is proud to work with some many committed to real change.

Many in the industrialised construction sector have highlighted the need for an open-source, standardised system, in order to accelerate construction, and Paul highlights the good things it has helped develop so far, and how he sees it benefiting the supply chain.