Out-dated and unsustainable business models are hampering the take-up of off-site manufacturing in the construction industry, thwarting the government’s ambition to build 300,000 homes a year by 2020, according to a new report from the House of Lords Science & Technology committee.

Peers highlighted in the report – ‘Offsite Manufacture For Construction: Building For Change’ – what they called “the benefits it offered in creating better-quality buildings and infrastructure, produced to more consistent and testable standards”. The committee said off-site manufacturing would be the only way for the government to fulfil its promise of meeting the 300,000 homes a year target by 2020, since traditional construction methods did not have the capacity to meet the demand. Peers said they had heard evidence that OSM could increase productivity in the sector by up to 70%, boosting not only housebuilding but also infrastructure activity.

But they found that the industry’s take-up of OSM varied across the sector.  “The current business models and the traditional model of financing and cash flow in the construction sector make it difficult to deliver the benefits of off-site manufacture for construction.”

Committee chairman Lord Patel said: “The construction sector’s business models are no longer appropriate and are not supporting the UK’s urgent need for new homes and infrastructure. “The sector needs to build more trust and create partnerships so that companies can work together to improve the uptake ofoff-site manufacture, and the Construction Leadership Council should provide the necessary leadership.”

Welcoming the report at its launch, industry expert Mark Farmer said there were signs of long-term positive change. “The stars are aligning in ways they haven’t before.We’re some way from the tipping point, but we are getting there.” Farmer, whose own 2016 report ‘Modernise Or Die’ highlighted areas where the industry needed to improve, said there had to be “a ruthless focus on future skills” if the sector was going to embrace off-site production effectively. He also said the government needed to be held to account over its ‘presumption to favour’ off-site manufacturing on public sector projects.

Article Source: Building

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