Making MMC Housing a mainstream affordable delivery process

The UK has consistently suffered an undersupply of new housing, with a backlog of almost 4 million homes, and a consistent shortfall of the 300,000 houses per annum national target, set several years back. We continually see overcrowding, and more young people living with their parents for longer. Increased levels of homelessness, a diminished labour mobility, significant skills shortages, and an ageing housing stock (in many cases well overdue a replacement strategy, rather than refurbishment), also add to our affordable housing crisis. 

 

Housebuilding statistics in 1968 reached a high of almost 426,000 new homes yet in 2023, we will deliver significantly less than half of that number in the UK, with quality and energy performance under considerable criticism on that drastically reduced number of new homes. The number of affordable new homes now necessary from 2023 onwards, also outnumbers the total amount of new homes currently being built in the UK.

 

Intensifying this situation lies a regulatory framework, design and test standards, compliance procedures, engagement contracts, and a transactional environment, principally based on inadequate traditional construction methods. There also exists confusion from multiple certification and warranty structures influencing the rollout of MMC homes, for which the evidence for greater quality, efficiencies, and performance, are now well documented and supported in the housing sector. The absence of one ‘level playing field’ and a lack of uniformity in compliance establishment, presents challenges for contractors, manufacturers, clients, and investors all looking to solve the UK housing crisis, by using smarter housebuilding techniques, with more control over quality, real performance, cost and securitisation assurances.  

 

Successful expansion of the off-site sector to solve the housing shortfall and the drive towards net zero carbon and energy consumption, (which are both intrinsically linked to MMC efficiency) is largely dependent on exploiting the considerable economies of scale inherent in off-site design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) processes. Orders for high volumes of repeatable units has the significant potential to drive down unit costs as this enables fixed costs of plant and management time to be spread over more units, production to be planned more effectively, and materials to be procured more efficiently. This requires a new business model of aggregated and collaborative procurement, which in turn requires clients to be better informed. It is a proven model developed over many years very successfully by the automotive industry, and its significantly expert and influential supply chain partners.

 

Back in 1994, Sir Michael Latham delivered the report ‘constructing the team’. With the same drive and ambition, Sir John Egan produced the report Rethinking Construction (1998) and subsequently ‘Accelerating Change’ (2002). The new business model for MMC, requires all 3 principles of engagement set out in these exceptionally authoritative reports, in order to deliver a responsive and effective DfMA delivery mechanism, for MMC solutions to become mainstream and significantly more effective and affordable, than traditional construction practice.

 

The Off Site Homes Alliance (OSHA), has been hard at work for over 3 years working collaboratively with a substantial number of RP’s and LA’s to prepare for this new way of working, adding aggregated demand to get rid of inefficient pilot schemes from factories, along with a dedicated MMC framework, design pattern book, zero carbon playbook, a specialist project management office (PMO), staffed by MMC and DfMA experts, design engineers and project managers, supported by 13 of the industry’s major MMC manufacturers in both volumetric and panelised technologies, now commissioned via the OSHA MMC framework, to ensure an effective national rollout of MMC home delivery. 

 

We are delighted at OSHA to be sharing our experience of exploration and development, now we are in deployment mode, and welcome the opportunity to demonstrate our achievements to the wider public sector audience, who we encourage to join us at OSHA and at the CIH Housing 2023 Conference, where we will be speaking and networking to grow our collaborative team of public sector clients. 

 

At OSHA we have a very simple philosophy and that is, “better together than we can be alone”.

 

Find out more at www.offsiteha.org