The pressure to find new ways to deliver affordable housing across the UK is enormous. To focus on the role offsite manufacture can play to help ease this pressure, the Hadley Group - providers of steel products to the construction industry for more than 50 years - hosted a Roundtable Event to discuss future developments and transformational change.
A decades-long decrease of housebuilding, demographic change, inflated house prices and recent economic gloom, alongside a healthy dose of Brexit, have all combined to create a 'housing crisis' - a phrase now deeply ingrained in the collective public consciousness. This combination of factors has pushed the notion of home ownership out of the reach of many parts of society and depending on which part of the UK you want to live and work, 'affordable housing' is open to much debate.
So the necessity to provide more homes of all tenures and types across the UK is widely recognised as is the magnitude of raising building quality and streamlining delivery standards. The role of housing associations and local authorities play is of huge significance and the quality of what they provide is under more scrutiny than ever before.
Offsite construction is being championed as a way to fundamentally improve the process of housing delivery with some housing associations at the vanguard of change - Swan Housing Group and Accord Housing Association in particular - but many registered providers and local authorities are slow and cautious on a wider uptake of offsite methods.
With lengthy housing waiting lists across the UK, homes have to be delivered faster and prove a 'cost neutrality' compared to traditional masonry construction. It is only when this can guaranteed that offsite will become adopted more widely. With investment decisions for housing associations and registered providers a long term prospect, with space standards, build quality, reduced defect rates and lower maintenance costs, the 'sustainability of tenancy' is paramount. "I have seen offsite products as good if not better than traditional build," says Richard Whittaker, Director of Development, WM Housing. "But that bottom line is so important."
Collaborate Not Compete
Modern offsite technology can deliver higher levels of quality and potentially any 'cost barriers' could be overcome with the pooling of demand by registered providers and larger numbers of housing units. "It is good to see that developers are getting more and more into offsite - timber frame has always been used - but more are looking at volumetric modular as viable," says Brendan Hele, Construction & Technical Manager, Midland Heart. "Once the number goes up we will see a decrease in costs. Bigger development sites help the situation and make it more economical."
Collaboration of expertise and knowledge underpins any successful construction project. Specifiers are 'open minded' about the various technologies but 'low volume schemes don't deliver the best value'. Pooling and collaborating between housing providers to offset some of the initial prime costs could be an answer but the risk of change and doing something different - potentially breaking a deeply developed and well-understood supply chain - is tough. Many organisations operate within a safety zone where traditional costs are very clearly quantified and understood. Simply put: costs escalate when you are asking people to do things that they have never done before.
Homes England recently unveiled a new five-year Strategic Plan that sets out how it will improve housing affordability across England. The plan - which runs up to 2022-23 - is an ambitious new mission in partnership with all parts of the housing industry sector, to respond to long-term housing challenges. This will involve unlocking public and private land to get more homes built where they are needed, improving construction productivity and creating a more 'resilient and competitive market by supporting smaller builders and new entrants.'
"Since our relaunch as Homes England, our objectives have changed and we have recognised that a 'conventional' approach isn't really working," says Philip Collings, National Senior Land Manager, Homes England. "We are looking at different things that we can do to better advocate offsite. We have eight national pilot sites of different sizes that are 'development ready' ranging from 30 to 600 units and we are trying to understand what kind of offsite approach is best. There is a genuine ambition to do more and be more interventionist, to disrupt and deliver more homes. We have become more ambitious about engaging with modular providers. It's only when we understand your issues that we can really start to respond." This encouraging front-leading role will also be key to gathering and sharing essential data within the industry and demonstrating a 'proof of concept' in overcoming lingering negative connotations the offsite sector has.
Innovative thinking and a risk-raking spirit are defining elements of the offsite approach. The oft-repeated need to change mind-sets and reprogram construction thinking is vitally important. "Where does that process start?" says Mike De'Ath, Partner, HTA Design. "An innovator, an entrepreneur, someone with a vison and an idea about a great way of building. But it requires a supporting structure for it to flourish and grow with surety of pipeline - it's not just about subsidies from Government. It is also important not to conflate volumetric modular with the only way of doing offsite." Precast concrete, light gauge steel frame, timber-based systems have been hugely successful elements of the offsite palette.
High volume repetition of volumetric units within project scope is key in higher density developments but a solid pipeline of long term work will increase efficiency benefits. "Our experience being London-based with high density apartments is that costs are neutral," says David Foster, Project Director - Joint Ventures, Network Homes. "Our experience is also that the quality of what is being produced traditionally is so bad considering the money that's spent on it - that why not try something different?"
Confusion and Catalysts
What does the offsite industry need to do better to gain greater engagement with affordable housing clients around offsite techniques? What prevents them from using or considering using offsite technology more? The basic message is that a more proactive approach from the offsite sector itself to engage with clients and offer a clearly understood, fully integrated building solution for the project would pay huge dividends - akin to a 'package deal'. The construction industry is awash with businesses marketing a 'bewildering' range of different components and products ranging from simple utility cupboards to full structural systems. This is causing confusion and introducing higher levels of risk than it should.
A fully integrated approach spelling out the quality, cost and timescale parameters and benefits behind offsite construction would be the ideal solution. In many ways this 'demystification' will mean more housing providers gravitate to offsite manufacture. Volumetric modular design is now a pretty mature technology and there is lots of innovation in timber frame and panelised systems, but the biggest area for growth is within the hybrid approach. Combinations of materials, or the integration of bathroom pods for example, can deliver potentially huge advantages for the affordable housing sector.
In a changing construction landscape, it is estimated that private sector volume housebuilders have set aside 20% delivery capacity for offsite delivery. This shift of momentum and level of commitment to offsite is being felt in the private sector but not in the public sector at the moment. Local authorities are under immense financial pressures to 'sweat assets' and get the best value from any land sales to fund local services and amenities. Some local authorities are more open to change than others and have different leaderships and local agendas. However it has to be remembered that smaller development sites don't always lend themselves to high-end volumetric solutions. A lot of sites are remote or-semi-rural and these need a variety of solutions. "If you have a particular type of home in a particular area planning guidelines will dictate to a certain degree what needs to be built," says Ben Towe, Group Managing Director, Hadley Group. "From a manufacturing viewpoint it just needs to be clear what people want and sustain demand - this will create a better more collaborative offsite approach."
As the construction industry changes shape so has the shape of housing associations that were once characterised as small organisations providing homes for local people. These are slowly transforming into complex commercial enterprises with huge scope and capacity, large acquisition programmes and often in competition for land with other providers - here collaboration isn't always an easy option, as they transition to becoming a developer and delivering houses over the long term.
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