Having recently forged a new partnership with the Energy Systems Catapult, Paul Taylor and I attended ‘Day One: Future of Housing’ at the Connected Places Catapult in London - to eyeball what the other InnovateUK funded accelerator networks are working on.
There were some clapped-out, wonderful products on show (Loft insulation made of Fungi anyone? More of that in a later post….) but for me, a standout presentation came from Ed McCann, VP of the Institution of Civil Engineers and director of Expedition Engineering Consultancy, who gave an enlightening talk about modern methods of construction, also known as MMOC.
The term ‘modern methods’ is applied to any non-traditional build types - typically where part/all of the construction is manufactured off-site and delivered on trucks - but also is a wrap around term for more futuristic construction methods such as 3D printing properties on-site, an emerging MMOC particularly suited to fast-turn around, emergency housing such as for disaster relief or military applications.
Entertainingly Ed avoided the usual trap of hyping up the latest batch of MMOC innovations - in fact, he didn’t really draw attention to any. Instead Ed went straight to the brass tacks of economics. To me - having worked with colleagues reviewing different off-site construction companies a couple of years back - this is far more valuable. Here’s the take-aways:
MMOC will deliver operational efficiencies, but these typically pale in comparison to the savings achievable through process refinements/re-engineering. Far more day-1 value can be realised through challenging the traditional construction programme with something like the p13 enterprise model.
The success of all public sector housing will depend on developers appetite/ability to go big - above and beyond 1000+ unit developments. This drastically reduces the planning overheads in comparison to, say, ten 100 unit developments; there is only one planning process to navigate, one phase of procurement, one set of groundworks issues to mitigate.
Even better (and this struck a particular chord with me, as I’ve been advocating this for years….#VestedInterest?), a move towards more vertical build types such as four-to-six story apartment building not only converts one footprint into more revenue, it also reduces groundworks - potentially the most expensive construction phase - delivers energy efficiencies for the consumer and allows the developer to try out more localised energy solutions such as district heating (buying bulk energy and centralizing heating systems to minimize costs)
In realising the above challenges - scale and the vertical dimension - MMOC can play a pivotal role. Sizeable demand justifies what most developers are too afraid to embark on yet yields the real savings of MMOC - their own factories. Constant, controlled demand is what’s necessary for an offsite construction facility to operate at peak efficiency - but this constant, controlled demand will only be materialised by better, bigger developments and processes slick enough to support them.
The future, if developers are able to stabilise their demand enough to support their own off-site capabilities, is the cost of build dropping low enough to price out occasional builders - with high volume developers taking the prize.
It was genuinely refreshing to hear an informed spokesperson do away with innovation theatre and focus on the back-bone of a business case and process requirements - because ultimately, that’s why there’s still thousands of new construction tech companies out there who can’t shift their MMOC at anything above pilot scale. Maybe we need to take a long look in the mirror to see whether the technology is more ready than we are?