Watch: Industrialisation’s role in a sustainable future

The second personification is that of the researchers; business, political and organisational workers; and investors who are already working hard to guide the world.

Once the optimal design for a site is decided upon, the digital model, already aware of the required mechanical electrical components, wall types, doors, structural components and so on, is able to generate a LOD 400 bill of materials quality BIM model very quickly.. It’s worth stressing that using modern methods of construction in this way doesn’t mean taking jobs away from people.There’s so much to be designed!

MMC will simply enable us to keep up with the needs of society.The more buildings that can be described by technical standards, state-based standards and rule sets ripe for some form of algorithmic design, the more we will be able to design more efficiently, more quickly and to a higher quality.This digital process will then feed all the way down through manufacturing, assembly automation and construction, with the ultimate benefits finding their way onto site..

Lean construction in practice: a virtuous circle of benefits.All of these factors combine to deliver cost and material savings, while using fewer people and increasing productivity.

We’re already seeing evidence that it’s possible to build a superstructure with half the number of people in half the time, representing a four-fold increase in productivity, as well as a 25% reduction in overall material and a 20% reduction in embodied carbon.

And there are other benefits, such as the ability to minimise tolerances.In Asia, we’ve seen the Singapore government encouraging ‘Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction’ (PPVC), and we’ve also seen a focus on Modular Integrated Construction (MIC) in Hong Kong.

Both markets have geographical constraints.Singapore is very land-constrained and has limited ‘internal’ modular manufacturing capacity, but imports have good access to the Malaysian and Indonesian markets.

On the other hand, Hong Kong has potential access to Chinese manufacturers.As such, forms of modular will no doubt be part of the future solution..