Ali Nicholl, Head of Constructing Excellence:

But how does the technology, and the people and companies that use it, maximise its potential for use in building projects across the UK and further afield.

One organisation devoted to seeing companies reach this potential is Constructing Excellence, a membership organisation focused on driving a better construction sector.

We spoke to Ali Nicholl, Head of Constructing Excellence, to catch her thoughts on the current offsite sector success stories, and what can be done to improve things further.

Ali is a member of the Offsite Construction Week Advisory Group, an unbiased ambassador for offsite construction, ensuring that the key trends and challenges of the industry are addressed during the series of events this September and beyond. Learn more about Offsite Construction Week here.

What are the most promising offsite technologies in the industry today?

I think the most promising thing in the industry today is the move towards a more holistic industrialised approach, where we’re looking at it in the context of the right solutions to productively deliver what we need in the most sustainable, cost effective way, that delivers long term value and outcomes that industry, society and the economy needs.

I think the industry is starting to get more comfortable with this, but I think it may not manifest itself in the way that we envisage with modular buildings being put up in six days, etc.

That’s probably the right solution in some areas, but there’s so much more to offsite technology that is being implemented.

Manufacturers are starting to play a much greater role, and there are big savings and quality improvements that we can deliver by just getting those manufacturers to deliver optimised approaches and do as much as possible in the factory by people who actually really understand the QA processes.

It’s just using our resources in the most optimum ways and that’s unfortunately not something that we’ve been very good at to date.

What are the primary barriers to the adoption of offsite construction methods throughout the industry and how can the industry overcome those challenges?

One of the barriers is the lack of programmatic approach across the economy from clients, developers, etc, so there isn’t that joined up thinking.

We need to make sure that we collectively provide enough throughput, and that’s not just about pipelines, that’s about actually changing how we interact with the manufacturing base because it takes a lot of investment to scale up a factory.

Developers love construction as it ‘flexes’, but behind each of those flexes is somebody losing their job, somebody losing their livelihood or businesses going under.

When we move to a much more factory-based approach, where there’s a lot more capital investment going in, it’s not just jobs. That makes it much more difficult for investors if it’s this piecemeal, up and down environment.

From my perspective, that approach of turning it off and on like a tap doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work for the people in it. We’ve got the highest mental health problems of any sector in the economy and quite a lot of that is due to this fluctuation.

This also prohibits our ability to invest in technologies and skills. We know that manufacturers invest significantly more in R&D than the rest of the construction supply chain, and the closer we get the manufacturers to the end users, the more effective that R&D is going to be in meeting client requirements, things like sustainability, future climate, etc.

There’s so much that’s needed, it’s almost like a jigsaw puzzle that all needs to come together, so there’s no quick fix in this, but I do think people are starting to see it come through.

I think things like the changes to the planning system for example might make it easier for developers to have a bit more certainty about when projects are going to come online, because that waiting around doesn’t necessarily work from a manufacturing perspective.

What areas of construction, for example, residential, commercial or infrastructure, do you see the greatest potential for offsite technology?

Residential has got a lot of potential because it’s very standardised. You’re looking at standard house types, you’re looking at standard modules and it doesn’t necessarily matter where you are up and down the country, they’re not significantly different.

There’s a lot of standardisation that already happens, but that hasn’t necessarily married up with offsite. I think some of that has to do with business models, but I do think that social housing is going to be part of the future plan in a much more significant way.

I think infrastructure has been really good at using off site technologies, mainly because it’s quite difficult challenging environments that they’re working in, with huge health and safety risks and they want to make sure that they take as much of that away from the site as possible.

Quite often they’re working in confined locations and they want to be able to get in and out quickly. If you look at things like the M25 closure, that’s not something that you want to be doing for three months.

Those drivers are making them think really clearly about productivity and efficiency. How do we get things done as effectively as possible.

I think that also spills into the social infrastructure space, so schools and hospitals, they’re usually extensions to existing facilities. They’re working in tight environments and to tight timeframes.

You’ve got some really clever clients in there. If you look at some of the work that NHS Estates and ProCure23 has done around guidance for MMC, to get the clients thinking early about how they can maximise the impact of MMC.

You’ve also got the schools programme that the Department for Education is doing and the new prisons programme from the Ministry of Justice. Those are all really good examples of where clients have built offsite technologies to work effectively.

How do you see regulatory frameworks and building codes evolving to accommodate offsite technology?

I think one of the things that has traditionally been an issue for offsite is the inability to make changes. Once you’ve made those decisions, they’re baked in once something goes to the factory.

I think that things like the golden thread are really going to help enable offsite technology. If you can’t make those changes without going to the building regulator, it really opens up a more level playing field for offsite technologies because clients, designers and the supply chain have got to make decisions and stick with them in a much more robust manner.

That makes it a lot easier for offsite technologies to come through, that to me is one of the enablers that may come through in the future.

What are your thoughts on Offsite Expo and how do you think events like this can support the industry as a whole?

I think Offsite Expo is a really good opportunity for the offsite industry to come together and really explore what’s around the corner, where the best practises are and sharing and acknowledging that everyone needs to grow collaboratively and collectively. That really is the value of events like this.

Understanding what everyone’s doing, what the state-of-the-art is, how everyone’s approaching the same challenges, what might be around the corner, etc, it just helps your business to be ahead of the curve.