2019 – The year offsite becomes mainstream

Any doubts that the UK construction industry is currently functioning well, let alone in a sustainable way, are heightened by the gross uncertainty over the availability of the future workforce due to the UK’s impending exit from the European Union. 

Broken housing market

Migrant labour currently accounts for half of the London workforce in the construction industry  and predictions of a 20-25% decline in the UK’s labour force over the next decade  makes for uneasy reading as Brexit swiftly approaches.  The UK’s ageing workforce will be under increasing pressure to produce the number of houses the UK needs.  The housing crisis will inevitably deepen as government targets have increased to 300,000 new homes a year just to meet current housing demands.

It has been two years since the stark prognosis of the Farmer Review, Modernise or Die, which warned the industry of the need to embrace Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to meet demand.

Since then we’ve seen two government inquiries: The Independent Review of Build Out by the Rt Hon Sir Oliver Letwin MP, and the House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee report, Offsite Manufacture for Construction: Building for Change.

Letwin focused on planning, highlighting that on large-scale developments the median build-out period, from planning consent to last completed home, was a whopping 15.5 years! At this rate, how can the scale of delivery across all tenures be enough to get close to 300,000 homes a year?

Despite this, we haven’t witnessed a significant increase in the uptake in offsite construction. No other industry has been so resistant to technological change with companies such as Boeing, Hewlett-Packard and Ford utilising offsite construction processes with undeniable success. What is stopping the construction industry moving forward? Whether it’s down to an aversion to the cheap & cheerful pre-fabs of post war Britain, the innate conservatism of the construction industry, or the availability of cheap overseas labour, the industry will now have to change.

Harnessing digital to get further, faster

The technological revolution has seen every industry and sector find new opportunities and develop more efficient ways of doing things. With productivity a key industry issue, rapid advances in digital design and the ability to fully utilise data to revolutionise the process of design, engineering and construction. 

The replicable nature of modular structures lends itself to digital design techniques and Ramboll is continually developing design tools that leverage this. Indeed, the digital culture is rapidly spreading across the company. Combined with our offsite construction expertise it’s transforming productivity and delivering high quality solutions in record time.

We are now able to model and analyse multiple design options faster and earlier in the process, collecting the data and presenting the optimum solution based on any combination of key criteria. Clients join us on the design journey and explore multiple options in real time. They make informed value decisions and evaluate the robustness of the proposal in concept, price and programme. taking their projects further, faster. 

Read more on Ramboll’s suite of digital design tools here.

Offsite: Quantifying the Benefits

There is a range of offsite and onsite techniques available to suit every project and it’s vital that all options are considered early in the design process. To allow developers and investors to make informed decisions on the most suitable construction technique, Ramboll's ‘Offsite Review’ tool demonstrates the savings brought by various modern offsite construction techniques, with insight gained by going through planning cycles multiple times with different systems. And if traditional onsite construction is the right solution, that’s what we’ll recommend.

Suitable for company and/or project reviews you can gain useful insights into harnessing more value from offsite construction.

Find out how Offsite Ready you are here.

Future is offsite

Using our digital tools we’re now able to consider multiple offsite and traditional construction techniques, such as precast concrete, modular steel, cross-laminated timber (CLT) on a site by site basis, weighing up costs, timescales and environmental impacts at project outset.

Depending on the developer needs and the site topography, each offsite technique brings something different to the table. But they all share common characteristics. By shifting construction away from the site to purpose-built factories they speed up the construction process, reduce the numbers of skilled staff required on site, reduce the environmental footprint of the construction site, increase site safety and boost the productivity of the project. With skilled construction workers in short supply, offsite provides a means by which large scale housing projects can be delivered affordably.