Offsite Manufacture

The construction industry has to standardise its approach to new projects if it is to hit Government innovation and productivity targets, a Department for Education (DfE) procurement chief head has warned.

Adam Jones, the Department for Education’s Strategic Framework Manager, who is in charge of the department’s £3bn offsite framework, said that construction needed to tackle “wasteful” practices whilst speaking at the Offsite Manufacture Development Conference.

He said: “The UK construction sector is challenged by changing working demographics, and the need to invest in supply chain people and training, a lack of standardization and in some cases wasteful practices in procurement and in construction.” [emaillocker id=”71749″]

Mr Jones noted that the government’s Construction 2025 plan had set some very ambitious targets including 33% lower costs 50% faster delivery 50% lower emissions and 50% improvement in exports: “During the past 20 years, the construction sector has lagged so far behind other sectors, such as services, production and manufacturing. We believe that we can improve productivity and construction by adopting a more manufactured approach to building and there are various reasons why the government has committed to offsite construction.

“Within the education sector, we have an increased demand for people places, we have an ageing school, estate and a backlog of maintenance. Within the construction sector, we have the productivity gap that we’ve mentioned before potential skills shortages and changing demographics in our construction workers. And within the wider economy as a whole. There’s great potential to stimulate economic growth and increase export potential. One of the biggest turning points for us on our journey to DFMA [Design for Manufacture and Assembly] was the government’s presumption in favor of offsite construction by 2019. I think the signal to the market the government’s strong commitment to offsite delivery.”

According to Mr Jones the £3bn framework will be partitioned into £2bn for larger projects which form schemes over 6,000sq m – which equates to around 15 new secondary schools per year. A further £1bn will be allocated to smaller projects of less than 6,000 sq m and would be approximately the same value as 15 primary schools per year.

He added: “If you could express it mathematically, the sum of work will be directly proportional to the performance of each contractor. Projects will be delivered within a standard DfE rate with savings achieved over the framework.

“The idea of this is to level the playing field on costs, and instead to measure quality that can be delivered within that fixed affordability envelope. And we’re targeting savings over the lifetime of the framework of between three to 10%. And those would be achieved really through efficiency and continuous improvement.

“So factors such as design, standardization, volume, repetition, economies of scale, the learning curve effect, supply agreements, performance based allocation, or direct toward pipeline predictability, and Investment and Development.”

John Welch, Deputy Director for Construction at Crown Commercial Service said that the CCS plans to create alliances between Government departments and firms which will help open out innovation and push forward change.

He said: “Were able to share best practice in an open environment, wherever we’re able to record and deliver against commitments that we set at the outset. And were able to share innovation, which is particularly key and particularly unusual in an environment like this.

“But we’re trying to increase that visibility. And that transparency between all of the supply chain and all of the government departments. Not only that, it gives the customers the opportunity to bring in design teams into their alliance, they can create alliances, again, with the design teams with the supply chain and with themselves. So the Framework Alliance doesn’t just stop it at the tier ones within the framework. The encouragement is to create that create those alliances throughout the supply chain.”

Mr Welch added: “We’re there to support those departments on that it will absolutely focus on whole life cost. We created that ability within our frameworks for departments to award on that basis, which is huge, huge driver. For us, this isn’t about reducing capital costs. And I’ve talked about creating alliances with parties all involved a huge, huge factor in everything that we do.

Gaynor Tennant, Chief Business Development Officer at Modularize says the firm’s aim is to “bridge the gap” between architects and manufacturers. She noted that design needs to be collaborative from the outset to achieve the best results.

“If you’re coming from a traditional background, you need to understand the design has got to come first to get that product rights in the factory. It needs a very collaborative approach from every member of the design team, structural engineers, the supply chain and the M&E, consultants, and even the QS so we understand the cost and efficiencies throughout that design.”

Modular construction manufacturers need to work harder to design homes people would choose to live in if the sector is to truly prove itself to the public Ms Tennant added. “Aesthetics are hugely important. I think some manufacturers are architecturally lead, and we’re seeing more and more beautiful houses come out. I do think it [design] is critically important, we’ve got a market to convince with offsite, and we can’t keep producing square boxes that just look the same as everything else. I think we need to start jumping out of the box and, and making it look different and eye-catching.” [/emaillocker]