Move into the mainstream

Why is it that with so much press, continuous government pressure and so many products available, modern methods of construction are still not in the mainstream?

Of course, the use of off-site and innovative methods of construction have increased over the last few years. Studies by Buildoffsite indicate that the sector is now worth over £1.5bn a year.

The real issue is that MMC is not the normal build method chosen by project delivery teams up and down the country. Getting it into the mainstream continues to be our challenge.

Part of the project management process

If modern methods are going to be successfully adopted by project teams, they must approach MMC as a process of design, rather than a technical substitution of some traditional site built elements. The conventional use of MMC seems to be based on a single decision – for example whether to switch from structural (internal) block leaf to timber frame – rather than a view of the whole construction project which optimises build methods to the best advantage of the overall development.

It would be interesting to know how much time and effort project teams invest in optimising the best build method, whether it involves MMC or not. Too little time is the most likely answer.

So how can MMC best be introduced into the project process? It is essential to consider the build process at the project’s inception, well before too many lines are laid down by the architect’s pen.

This means re-aligning the conventional process to ensure that it asks fundamental questions about the preferred building methodology and the impact it could have on design activity.

If MMC continues to be brought in at the material or system substitution level, it is unlikely that the strategic thinking needed to successfully incorporate it on a project-wide basis will emerge. As a result MMC will not be considered for the totality of the project and is unlikely to bring the project wide benefits that it should.

MMC strategy

Mtech’s experience of helping project teams implement MMC successfully leads it to believe that the first step is to get a clear project build strategy in place that gives definition to the following critical project issues:

• Key project drivers for the stakeholders
• Benchmark delivery performance measurements (the KPI’s for the project)
• Evaluation criteria for assessing alternative building methodologies
• Preferred approach to procurement
• Previous project team expertise in the use of construction innovation
• Potential for standardisation
• Impact of innovation risk to the project.

The development of an MMC strategy document should enable the project delivery team to establish at a very early stage the potential for MMC to provide solutions that will meet the build strategy and the client’s brief. Ideally this should be in place before the architectural team starts preparing concept sketches and certainly well before the planning application drawings start to appear.

Assembling this build strategy requires careful planning and for many clients this will need to involve expertise that may not be available so early in the process, certainly within traditional non-framework procurement. In these cases, the specialist MMC knowledge of organisations such as Mtech Consult can be useful.

Pushed to the limits, the mmc-enabled project delivery team becomes a systems integration team rather than a builder; a systems integration manager rather than a construction manager

The difficulty that many project delivery teams have at this stage is in appreciating the potential changes, and hopefully improvements, that adopting an MMC-based construction attitude can bring to the traditional approach.

Those project teams that have fully embraced MMC have identified the benefits that this change in emphasis can have on the overall construction efficiency during the delivery. Properly executed, the strategic adoption of MMC throughout the project creates a process that involves integrating elements of factory built MMC, rather than concentrating on traditional site-based building activities.

Systems integration

This means that MMC is effectively a systems integration activity, with the more sophisticated elements of the building designed, manufactured and installed by the rapidly expanding MMC supply chain. The traditional project team must focus on managing the interfaces between the MMC technologies and traditional on-site activities.

Pushed to the limits, this means that the MMC-enabled project delivery team becomes a systems integration team rather than a builder, and a systems integration manager rather than a construction manager. Or perhaps this is just what construction management should be – managing the interfaces between the relevant expertise of the supply chain.

Setting the MMC goal post

What has become very clear over the last few years is that growing interest in the use of MMC has focused mainly in some key construction sectors, notably affordable housing and student/keyworker accommodation. However this interest does not always materialise as physical reality in the finished building. Good intentions at the client briefing stage often fall by the wayside as other, more immediate project delivery priorities take hold.

This is where the informed client can make the difference by encouraging its advisory team or construction professionals to exploit MMC technologies to improve the overall delivery effectiveness. But even an experienced client may find it difficult to know whether the construction team heeded its request, or how comprehensively that request has been adopted.

To help clients in this situation, Mtech has developed a range of MMC key performance indicators (KPIs) so the construction team can monitor the overall performance. These can be used at the design stage and monitored throughout the build phase, to measure MMC uptake performance from one project to the next.

KPIs help project teams to align themselves to clear targets and see how increasing the uptake of MMC has significant knock-on benefits on their other measures of delivery performance.

The process as a whole

The way forward is to focus on the total process – how to build – rather than on any debate over whether the project team should use timber frame over a masonry internal leaf, important though this is.

In future, the industry needs client advisors and their construction professionals to focus at an early stage on the project process on how they can best optimise the build methodology and devise construction strategies that move more traditional site-based activities into the controlled and sustainable factory manufacturing environment. This is the way MMC will become an integral part of the construction process, and not an afterthought or exception, as is often still the case today. At this point, MMC will become mainstream.