How To Get the Most from Offsite

What are Critical Success Factors?

The key things that you have to do to make sure benefits are realised & challenges are addressed effectively.

Benefits of Offsite Construction over Traditional Construction

Advantages of Offsite Construction

Speed - most significant offsite benefit, quicker the building is up, the quicker the turnover for the client which clients will want.
Quality and predictability - must understand the client/project drivers.
Health and safety - manage the changed risks (e.g. transport, craneage) & sort out what needs to be done before it starts.
Sustainability
Less disruption - important for sensitive sites.
Less labour on site - important for tight sites & when labour is expensive or skilled labour is unavailable.

Speed

Quality - Better in Factories Because:

Better control
No bad weather
Stable workforce
Easier to train
Easier to retain
Note: Poor design cannot be expected to produce good quality by making it in a factory.

Health & Safety

Factories used to be much safer than sites but the manufacturing industry now has more fatalities than the construction industry.
Factory environments do reduce the hazards but it is the installation of offsite units which have much higher consequence incidents than the more frequent but low consequence incidents of traditional construction.

Sustainability

Factories provide greater control of energy & emission performance.
Factors provide greater control of waste & recycling management.
Offsite products are of better quality & more likely to perform as designed.
Social Sustainability - factories require multi-skilled people so can employ differently-able people & factories can be placed near local labour pool & attract people that sites can't.
To reduce the emissions associated with transportation, local assembly & flat pack methods are often considered.

Solving Skills

Factories require a new multi-skilled workforce.
Sites will require new installation, setting out and project management skills.
Designers for manufacture and designers for installation will be required.
'Construction Managers simply do not have the skills required to get the best out of offsite' (Kristina Smith - CM)

Case Study - Tesco & Yorkon

Yorkon delivered & installed a 1,430m2 Tesco supermarket in 18 hours to help the community o Workington following the Cumbria floods.
Manufactured in less than a week following instruction from Tesco.
Open & trading 13 days after starting on site.

Offsite Manufacture of M&E Modules

15% faster than traditional.
Cost neutral outcome at worst.
60-75% first fix M&E now offsite.
70-100% of plant rooms now offsite.
Load size restrictions.
No limits to what can be done offsite - only constraints are site logistics and access.
3D CAD & BIM enable projects to be designed with offsite in mind from the outset.
Early engagement is required during design & planning.

4 Types of Offsite M&E:

Challenges of Offsite Construction

Cost
Design restrictions - standardisation, lack of flexibility & adaptability, restricted use of space.
Maintenance access
Risk (technical & business)

Cost

Project teams often don't understand where the real cost & value of offsite is hidden.
IMPREST is a tool that can reveal the hidden costs & value benefits.
Works best where it is used as part of a facilitated workshop.

IMPREST can be used in the following ways:

As a decision support tool early in a project.
As a cost & value awareness tool for project teams.
As an evaluation tool towards the end of a project to record where costs have been expended.
As a training tool for new teams.
As a demonstration of value benefits by suppliers.
As a rigorous method of producing business case studies
To compare two alternative methods (usually onsite and offsite)

Costs considered by the IMPREST measurement tool:

Construction/Manufacture Costs:

Project Costs:

Case Study - East Midlands Modular Housing

	Created by d.moran-10 over 12 years ago

Undergraduate Advanced Construction Note on How To Get the Most from Offsite, created by d.moran-10 on 22/05/2014.