Can offsite manufacturing stand the test of time?

The offsite manufacturing industry needs to prove that the quality of products made using the methods will stand the test of time if it is to truly convince the public of its value, Bristol Council’s housing lead has said at our Offsite Manufacture Conference.

Cllr Paul Smith, Cabinet Member for Housing at Bristol City Council said: “Those of you like me, you are old enough to remember the Housing Defects act 1984. The problem we had with the properties bill from pre-reinforced concrete in the 1950s as a Local Authority, along with many other Local Authorities and some Housing Associations, were still living with basically to quote Jared Ratner the crap that was built using more than modern methods of construction that’s still seared into the memory of many people.

“Don’t underestimate what a bad reputation this [modular] industry has got from the 1950s. We partly need the pilot [offsite projects] to convince the public that it is a reasonable model. But we are making available sites that it can be done at volume as well. So, the objective of the pilots isn’t just to do some pilots and say here’s something a bit quirky” and then move on to the next one, the thing is actually to build confidence.” [emaillocker id=”71749″]

Mr Smith noted that the issues of fire safety needed to be dealt with if offsite is to be successful, with the memories of Grenfell and the recent fire at a housing block in Barking fresh in people’s minds. He added: “I’ve seen you know, in Australia and Canada, their buildings or 17 or 18 storey timber frame buildings using off site manufacture. But in this country, just building two storey buildings just strike some people with fear. And we have to get that fire safety issue really dealt with.”

United Communities are one Housing Association which is looking at utilising unused space in new ways to allow for more homes. By utilising offsite Ms Goldsworthy noted that the schemes could be moved if the land was needed later.

Oona Goldsworthy, Chief Executive of United Communities said: “Looking around most of our cities, and particularly in Bristol is an awful lot of land that public sector organizations and others are holding onto because one day they might develop it, whether it’s highways or the hospital or the car parks or whatever. But how can we get hold of that land and use it at least now use it.”

Tony Woods, Head of Construction at LHC said that clients whether public or private needed to work with the construction firms they hire to de-risk the contracts for both parties. He said: “I used to work for a contractor, our contracts advisor said “work out how much it costs to build a scheme social housing scheme, if it’s design and build you at 25 to 30% on top” for the risk associated with that.

“Also, particularly with SMEs, they don’t read the contract until something goes wrong, and then become very disappointed when they go back to the client. It doesn’t help the client or the contractor from that point of view. “

Lanre Gbolade, Senior Product Innovation Manager at housing association L&Q Group said that housing association aims to include some form of offsite manufacture or modern method of construction (MMC) in all of its new homes by 2025.

He said: “By 2025 we hope that 100% of our developments will be utilising some form of an MMC hopefully a large portion of MMC. Alongside that we’re looking to obviously deliver more efficiently in terms of our homes, how we design, procure and build them off site. And to do that, obviously developing a range of products components alongside standard houses and what type policies. “ [/emaillocker]