The piece corps

Andrew Simpkin is in an awkward position.

I've tried to bait him by suggesting that volumetric modular construction is really just craning and bolting components together, and while he won't admit it's as simple as that, he can't very well say that the process is fraught with difficulties, either.

Whatever tag is applied to his company's particular style of building, the fact is that Yorkon is profiting from a brisk and growing demand for its services. Orders to the end of last year were up by 30% over the previous year. It's expanding into a new growth market of private hospital construction and, at a time when doubts over the structural soundness of the offsite pilot CASPAR scheme in Leeds may be causing jitters in the market, it is issuing 20-year structural warranties to customers. It has also invested in new capability to manufacture faceted panels for curved designs.

Yorkon's success flies in the face of current trends. Figures from the Department of Trade and Industry reveal that only around 2% of UK construction uses modern methods of construction (MMC). Yorkon still has to go head-to-head with these "normal" companies to bid for jobs and Simpkin admits that its unusual approach can sometimes confuse clients.

"On occasion there is an amount of education we have to do," he says. "But offsite is gaining credibility. Lots of people appreciate what it has to offer."

Climbing the ladder

Simpkin has seen both sides of the MMC divide, having joined the industry as an apprentice joiner and worked on sites for York City Council. He joined Portakabin, Yorkon's parent company, in 1988 as a production planner, and progressed through to project controller, project manager and commercial team manager. He started his degree in building and production management in 1996, and gained full membership of the CIOB in 2000.

"At the time I saw that the people at the top of the tree were both chartered and graduates, so I decided to go after both," he says.

Last month he was promoted to operations manager and heads up one of two teams responsible for projects in both public and private sectors. He will oversee retail, health, education and office schemes, from sales and estimating through to construction and handover of the finished buildings.

He knows which side of the MMC divide he is on. Asked if he would go back to more traditional methods, he says probably not.

"I like the speed and quality and overall control you get with offsite," he says.

The modular method is so different from conventional building that it's not hard to picture it as a separate industry altogether.

When Yorkon wins a bid, a team of designers and engineers design the building, and then work out how to break it down into repeatable components that can be built offsite.

Education is needed on occasion. but offsite is gaining credibility

Andrew Simpkin, Yorkon

At the 60 acre Yorkon factory in Huntingdon, near York, 1,000 workers put together the components that are transported by lorry to projects around the country, from a £1m, two-storey office building in Birmingham to an £11m independent hospital in Portsmouth. Each module is constructed with the necessary fittings and is kept, where possible, to less than 3.3m wide to avoid the necessity of a police escort.

Yorkon's customers include private healthcare providers such as Mercury Health and UK Specialty Hospitals - it undertook £20m of work in the healthcare sector alone last year.

But it will work in any sector: Tesco, Pizza Hut, and education authorities, including Leeds City Council and South Lanarkshire Council, are also customers.

Marketing, delivery and handover functions are undertaken by an integrated team, overseen by commercial team managers like Rebecca Thompson. She has been in the industry for 16 years and was headhunted by Shepherd, Yorkon's parent company, after she finished her A levels. She had completed a work experience programme with a small building company in York, when Shepherd's human resource department called and offered her a job, with a structured training programme leading to an HNC. She moved over to Yorkon in 2004 as a project controller.

In her new role, Thompson will manage a team of project controllers and engineers, seeing schemes through the planning, design and manufacturing stages, to fit out and completion on site, and ensuring delivery on time and on budget.

You're covered

The idea of the system failing or going wrong is completely alien. Is there not any part of the process where things are more prone than others to going wrong? She seems genuinely flummoxed by the question.

"We've got a strong quality control process and a factory environment. It's very efficient," she says.

This confidence extends throughout the company and is no more apparent than in its new warranty scheme, which the company believes is an industry first. It comes in two parts. The first, a five-year product warranty, covers the external fabric of the building, the floor, walls and roof panels, as well as the external windows and doors. If a fault occurs here during the warranty period, Yorkon will repair or replace at no extra cost. The second is a 20-year structural warranty, covering all load-bearing elements.

Yorkon will not even be drawn on the potentially difficult area of speed, claiming it has delivered 96% of building projects on time and 94% on budget over the past five years, compared with a construction industry average of only 63% of schemes completed on time and 49% on budget.

It all looks so easy. But is it? "Sure," Simpkin says wryly. "It's a doddle."