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Primitive Materials Future Building Offsite Manufacture OSM
Primitive Materials Future Building Offsite Manufacture OSM
Modern Methods of Construction Market demand
Autumn Budget 2017
- £15.3bn of new funding to boost housing delivery
- £44bn total investment over five years
- But developer 30% profit demand regulates supply
- Government financial injections boosts the profits and salaries of directors
- Does little to help housing crisis
- Attempts to regulate ‘foreign investment ownership’ and ‘buy to keep empty’
- Offshore tax havens may get better regulated
- Dirty money will continue to buy London property
- UK government will prioritise use of offsite manufacturing (OSM) and other modern methods of construction (MMC) to improve:
- Cost effectiveness – Productivity – Speed of construction delivery
- No mention of (and therefore a presumption of expectation):
- Climate Change (nothing new then)
- Energy Performance (comply with Building Regulations)
- Competency of methods and materials (ditto)
- Skills gap (MMC is not on CITB skills priorities)
- Brexit exodus
- 214,000 EU construction workers UK wide
- 95,000 (1/4 of total) in London alone
- Mark Farmer, CEO of Cast
- government-commissioned construction review ‘Modernise or Die’
- Strong advocate of offsite manufacturing
- Building on progress made to date, Government Departments will adopt a presumption in favour of offsite construction by 2019 across suitable capital programmes, where it represents best value for money
- Government Departments:
- Department for Transport
- Infrastructure
- Department of Health
- Hospitals & Healthcare
- Department for Education
- Schools and Universities (Investment on building not education again?)
- Ministry of Justice
- Prisons (reduce overcrowding) and Police Stations (empty?)
- Ministry of Defense
- Not sure what they are building (probably secret, more nuclear subs)
- How do MMC and PFI/PPE fit together?
- Results in the tax payer paying more
- MMC manufacturers making more
- PFI contractors making more profit
- Department for Transport
- MMC is commonly depicted by:
- Prefabrication of panels, modules, pods
- Craning whole parts into place
- Thin lightweight construction
- Industry will ‘Modernise or Die’
- Occupants will ‘Modernize and Die’ from overheating
- UK House builders Gearing up for MMC
- Citu in Leeds > 750 Low carbon LTF homes/year, > £50m/year
- Barkeley targets 10-15% of its output short to medium term
- Taylor Winpey Future proofing its business
- Persimmon: Space4: 40% of its houses timber frame
- Finance Sector to manufacturer and become landlords
- L&G: ambition to become world greatest creator of modular homes
- PGGM: 3000 apartments across UK £600m build to rent
- Chinese National Building Materials Company
- £2.75 bn UK Joint adventure: 6 factories > 25,000 homes by 2020 with renewable energy
- An opportunity to exploit
- Petrochemicals in thin construction is seen as the only way to meet U value requirements
- Aerogels are currently too expensive to replace plastics but would be thinner
- VIP would be thinner still but have no decrement delay properties (will overheat)
- Plastic insulations have no decrement delay properties and will help to overheat the property
- 20% of housing already overheats. Zero Carbon Hub (ZCH)
- MMC insulated with VIP or Plastic will overheat
- MMC will overheat
- The rush for MMC will lead to more and higher % of housing overheating
- IMC may offer solutions:
- Bio-based insulations have decrement delay properties and can protect from overheating
- Bio-based insulation can be combined with aerogel insulation to reduce thicknesses
- London mayor announced use of small sites around London to be encouraged
- The smallest sites will need bespoke designs
- MMC Modular may not have a role to play
- MMC Panelized can fit into this scenario
Primitive Materials Barrier Opportunities
- Evidence Based Design is expected more and more
- Understanding their properties
- Some properties not understood and never exploited
- (1979 AJ Energy Series: articles tried, but long forgotten)
- Sometimes missing in conventional materials
- (E.g. Decrement Factor)
- Sometimes unique to bio-based materials
- (E.g. Hygroscopicity)
- Sometimes unique combinations of properties
- (Radiation and Conductivity Thermal Resistance & Acoustic)
- Some properties not understood and never exploited
- Exploiting properties that do not exist in conventional materials or conventional know-how
- Learning the physics of building
- Exploiting the science of materials
- Testing materials and/or collecting datasets
- Developing the calculators to crunch the numbers
- Making literature intelligent and useful to designers/specifiers
- Educate them so they can adopt and educate others
- Knowledge sharing
- Dissemination
- TGR, AECB, UKGBC, ASBP, PHT are all helping with seminars
- But not enough authoritative documents
- Image driven dissemination is essential
- Architects won’t read without a cartoon, picture, diagram or table to help
- Paragraph per picture,
- Picture per paragraph
- Convincing Development Control
- Building Regulations
- Approved Documents
- Tertiary Documents
- Authoritative Organisations and their Publications
- More need to be written and published
- Engage with those unique properties
- ZCH failed
- Others need to step up
- Tertiary Documents
- Approved Documents
- Building Regulations
- Dissemination
© GBE NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan
1st December 2017 – 27th December 2017
Primitive Materials Future Building Offsite Manufacture OSM
Images:
Farmer Review 2016 Modernise Or Die Cover
Farmer Review Modernise or Die 2016 PDF
©GBE NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan
1st December 2017 – 27th December 2017
Primitive Materials Future Building Offsite Manufacture OSM
See Also:
GBE Information
- Modernise or Die (UK Gov website)
- Modernise or Die PDF (Author’s website)
GBE Webinar
- Primitive Materials Future Building (Webinar) G#16202
GBE Issue Papers
- Overheating (Issue Paper) G#145
GBE CPD
©GBE NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan
26th December 2017
