Offsite 6

The transport and logistics of delivering offsite manufactured builds to site has been raised as a key issue by one of the UK’s leading housing associations – who was speaking at our Offsite Manufacture Conference.

Chair of Swan Housing Association Valerie Owen said that their offsite facility had been chosen to be able to deliver locally to minimise logistical difficulties: “One of the challenges is delivering the volumetric units, you have to make sure you have dual carriageway all the way between the factory and the site.

“The real issue for us is that because of the success we’ve enjoyed there are any more partners coming to us and wanting to do business. We obviously want to roll out modular housing as quickly as we can, we are looking at a hub-and-spoke model whereby we can deliver modular housing on those sites which are further afield from the city ones.” [emaillocker id=”71749″]

McAvoy Group’s Senior Business Development Manager Graham O’Doherty said that logistics could be an issue which becomes more prevalent if the industry scales up its home delivery in the coming years. He said: “Yes I think there will be an Issue with delivering 5 or 6m wide houses down the motorway or the A-roads. The way Swan are doing it is fantastic because you are local, delivering in the local area only.

“I got stuck on the A43 behind a 5m-wide load and I was really frustrated. I think if that’s going to happen then that will be an issue and we should look to restrict the widths to much more sensible transportable loads than going up to 5 or 6m.”

The challenges for delivering modular homes in rural locations should also not be under-estimated. Councillor Jonathan Brook, Deputy Leader of South Lakeland Council and Chair of Cumbria Housing Group said: “In rural areas such as Cumbria we have low volumes, we won’t ever have high demand we are not looking at lower cost at any cost but we are looking at a low cost solution and sustainability.

“Again maybe difficulty getting to site on rural roads may be some of the issues we face, we have three planning authorities a nationally important environment. They [modular homes] have to be high quality finish and able to withstand a lot of rain in the Lake District for example.

“We face a sceptical audience, we had difficulties getting our local plan through the planning process and people have an idea of what modular housing is. Is it pre-fab? Is it low standard? People have an image of 1960’s housing developments as an industry we somehow have to encourage people and understand the quality that is there.” [/emaillocker]