AECOM

Buildings are unique. Unlike most objects, they are constructed. Even the largest objects, aeroplanes or ships, are manufactured in large hangers then flown or sailed to their owners. There are many reasons for this. Each building has its own unique site with difference challenges including topography, access, shape and size. Each site comes with different contextual challenges. Designing next to a castle needs a different response to an industrial estate. Each client brief has its own nuances and many clients want their building to be different, reflecting their vision and values.

As a result, every building is in essence a prototype. These reasons feed of each other perpetuating the challenges of changes. The construction process is another part of this intertwined process. Traditional materials such as timber, gypsum or clay prevail along with the nail and screw. Many of these have been optimised over centuries into the construction paradigm compounding the problem.

Clients, designers, and contractors are trying to change this. Productivity on site has been stagnant for a long time and current initiatives are tweaking the edges. The supply chain is increasingly conglomerated and commercialised. A paradigm shift is required. Not just to improve performance. The shift to net zero demands it. Construction needs to create less waste and less carbon. To achieve this, construction needs to move to the factory. Various clients have already achieved this goal moving to cradle to grave solutions, away from the inefficiencies of silos.

The hotel industry has been leveraging volumetric solutions for decades. This solution is now scaling in residential with initial challenges around the perceptions of prefabricated buildings being pegged off along with insurance and accreditation. Scaling manufacturers and production capabilities is next.

As this industry matures, the supply chain is innovating. More components are being made flat-pack and assembly times are tumbling, shifting the discussion to the location of the assembly sheds. Planners and politicians love the idea of local locations, powering up not just new housing but jobs. Maybe an old shed or the loan of a five-a-side football pitch? On larger developments where thousands of homes will be built the assembly shed might replace or sit alongside the concrete batching plant (foundations are still required) as net zero drives new solutions. Perhaps it becomes the community hall on completion. On-sitefactories remove transportation conundrums including transporting air and limitations to module sizes. Local aligned to a ship lifts solves that yet local comes with inefficiencies. For example, set up costs and training. As embodies carbon calculators mature and become more granular, it will be interesting to see the solutions that prevail. The industry is at its VHS v Betmax moment. Industry 4.0 will deliver a great deal of innovation before the Netflix v Video moment occurs.

Circular economy principles are going to drive the next wave of innovation. This dictates that building should be dissembled rather than demolished to avoid their contents being consigned to waste except for a few recycled scraps. Frames and foundations will be designed to last longer. Cores will need to be adaptive to adjust from one use to another: offices to homes or hotels. This means that the rest of the building also needs be adaptive and replaceable. In response, a new generation of products. Is required. Not taps and sinks or grilles and lights. Larger ones. Sub-assemblies that can be made in the factory. Areas of construction congestion where offsite manufacturing can add value. Some of these products already exist such as unitised facades or plant mounted on skids to allow welding to be done in the fab shop. However, this work is usually done as part of the bespoke process i.e. one-off shop drawings are created.

What industry needs are modern equivalents of the Victorian pattern books that allowed everything including plaster coves, timber dado rails, stair balustrades orcast-iron balustrading to be selected and specified lowering costs and speeding up construction.

By taking current factory content and turning it into products the efficiencies of manufacturing can be brought to bear. In the process, a great deal of the one-off design aspects eliminated. And when products scale, they can be made more efficiently. Costs will come down. Of course, its not as simple as that. Its not feasible to go from a bespoke process to a standardised one. Our cities would quickly become dystopian if every building was the same. Products need to be geared for mass customisation. In the same way that the car industry is leveraging platform approaches to standardise more whilst simultaneously allowing greater user configurator to improve the customer experience, those conceiving new products, need to make sure that sufficient customisation options are available.

Upstream, the design process is changing. Generative design is on the increase allowing thousands of design options to be quickly considered. Other aspects are being automated. Plugging these new mass customised products into the process will be easy. Downstream, cloud, IoT and new robotic and machining technologies allow efficiencies that will finally break the cost differential of construction. The rest of this decade will be incredibly exciting. The manufacturing industry has much to look forward to.

Dale Sinclair chairs AECOM’s Global Architecture and Interiors Committee driving strategy for 1,600+ architects. As part of this role collaborating and connecting across the Buildings and Places business, he is Director of Innovation, delivering game-changing, interdisciplinary workflow, leveraging modern methods of construction and digital technologies, into current large-scale projects at AECOM: practicing what he preaches. A qualified architect for 35 years, he was lead author of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 publications as well as the recent RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview. He has published several books on DfMA, design management and the pivotal role of lead designer role in the digital age. He is an RIBA Ambassador for Collaboration, sits on the board of the UK Construction Industry Council, chairs an industry group at the BSI and was recently described as a pragmatic futurist.