Article > Building momentum Bruce Meechan reflects on some of the news and views from the recent Explore Offsite conference staged at the NEC Birmingham. There was a slightly embarrassed pause when the Minister for Housing, Brandon Lewis, completed his short speech welcoming the throng of delegates who had assembled in one of the gallery suites at the Atrium end of the NEC: not because of anything he had said, but because he had chosen to send a video message rather than attend in person as he did for a similar event in the capital a year back. The moment of uncertainty, I am certain, was delegates wondering whether they should applaud a pre-recorded image, though just as assuredly his words will have given everyone confidence that the Government still very much backs modern methods of construction – and better building in general, despite the retreat from Zero Carbon homes. > The government continues to promote house building and off-site agenda Unavoidably absent due to Government business, the MP for Great Yarmouth, who was handed the portfolio for housing and planning during the later stages of the Coalition, spoke of the challenges facing the housing industry due to the very high demand for residential a<strong>cc</strong>ommodation. And while remarking that he backed all methodologies for the delivery of housing, he significantly referred to the need for speeding up the length of time it takes to build them. “The initial build cycle of 20-24 weeks,” he said, “has to be trimmed to just a few months, maintaining high quality and led by customer choice.” He went on to refer to the skills gap and how the UK can bring more people into the industry, and establish factories able to produce the systems needed to meet demand. “I believe that your conference offers a huge opportunity for the people here today to play their part in the solution to how we deliver more homes, of high 10 quality – to design and build more quickly than we have in the past.” The keynote speech was in effect actually delivered by the legendary guru of redevelopment, the founder of Urban Splash, Tom Bloxham. Obviously his early projects focused on the conversion of some landmark, often industrial buildings, where Modern Methods of Construction were not appropriate; and he confessed himself to not being either an advocate or decrier of such solutions. They tended, he said, to still prove costlier than traditional trade routes, but confirmed: “What we have found is that the advantages – particularly in terms of quality, in terms of capability, in terms of design - is why the majority of our projects, going forward, will be using offsite, and indeed fully modular construction.” Tom Bloxham went on to talk his audience through a mix of his well-known and some slightly less high profile projects; explaining their negatives as well as positives, and how his company had su<strong>cc</strong>eeded in riding out the recession by delivering schemes which people wanted to live or work within. The baton was passed next to Rory Bergin of HTA Design who offered the opinion that manufacturing promotes cooperation rather than confrontation; and praised the professionalism of the manufacturers and developers with whom he had worked over the > The founder of Urban Splash, Tom Bloxham past five years “pushing the boundaries of volumetric construction.” He also added that “our relationship with the teams gets stronger with every project,” and spoke about the potential of modular for creating some of the very tall buildings which are planned for London and other major cities where his practice has offices. The tempo of the debate was raised just prior to lunch by what the event’s chairman described as a “double header”, but which turned out to be something more like a doubleact with spokesmen from Barratt Homes and Stewart Milne discussing the way in which the two business had worked together on facilitating projects, particularly north of the Border. Stewart Milne of course products both the ‘traditional’ timber frame in the form of open panel, and the more offsite intense closed panel systems. The two spoke of both the learning processes and all important information sharing, as well as the fact that an attempt to ‘superimpose’ a set of standard house types onto timber frame methodology had to be abandoned in favour of producing a series of special details; right down to the inclusion of gas services. The overall message from the morning’s speakers seemed to sum up the need for the various parties in the supply chain to work more closely and collaboratively, from the very earliest possible stages of a project. The delegates, including myself, then had the chance to visit the stands set up by a couple of dozen exhibitors in the space outside the conference hall as they took some refreshments. Having also been involved with our sister publication, HA or Housing Association Magazine since its launch, I was also very interested to hear the comments of a senior representative from one of the big housebuilders during a panel discussion later on in the day. Ever since the Waverley publications began covering the offsite industry in the late nineties, we have been hearing from manufacturers about the sense in taking advantages of the economies of scale, or in other words, avoiding late alterations or overcomplexity in terms of layout. By contrast the speaker referred to social housing specifiers being guilty of continual and unnecessary customization of designs which – worryingly – resulted in their schemes costing double or more the price per square metres which our volume housebuilders are willing to pay. The event at the NEC showed just how much the offsite market is maturing in terms of capacity and capability, but also reminded us how much we have to learn in respect of the way we make use of the manufacturer’s various solutions.
Current large scale developments such as at NW Bicester are making full use of modern methods of working <strong>MMC</strong> <strong>May</strong> 2016 11
Change language