The UK’s Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) recently established a Joint Industry Working Group on MMC which proposed the following categorisation: 3D primary structural systems, 2D primary structural systems, Non-system components, Additive Manufacturing, Assemblies and sub-assemblies, Material and Product Innovations and Site Process Innovations.
The rise of the Construction Innovation Hub.My journey in government began in 2010.
I was involved in the nuclear sector when I was first approached to be an advisor in the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change.I quickly transitioned to a forerunner of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority where I spent nine years in central government before taking on my current role as Programme Director for the Construction Innovation Hub, with the aim of delivering the Construction Sector Deal.I’ve worked through three different governments - Labour, Coalition and Conservative - but through them all there has been an increasing focus on the importance of infrastructure and transforming construction.. One thing I’ve noticed through this period is that we tend to think of ourselves in the engineering community as being innovators.
We think we're quite good at working out what needs doing, but actually, the real skill, and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned during my time in government, is that working out what to do can be quite easy.It's working out how to get it done that becomes hard.. At present, our focus is on transforming construction into a more future-facing sector.
We need to ask important questions about how to make it more inclusive and representative of the society it serves.. To begin, it’s essential to recognise that we can’t achieve our goals working in isolation.
Problems like carbon emissions, poor build quality, labour shortages and the housing crisis - they can all be improved if we collectively refocus our energies and unify our processes.Having easy access to long term pipeline (as advocated in the Construction Playbook) will of course help ensure there is less downtime.
But being able to use down time to manufacture ‘short’ orders or contribute to a larger order (the consistent specifications making products from different suppliers fungible) will also help increase utilisation and productivity, reducing prices;.It creates a more direct link between global organisations such as those listed above, and manufacturers.
This is a link which rarely exists in construction, where there are typically numerous tiers between the client and manufacturers, introducing enormous economic ‘friction’ and transactional cost.Manufacturers are pre-qualified to relevant standards (such as ISO 9001, but also to specialist medical, aerospace and defence standards including ISO 13485, AS 9100, NADCAP and ITAR).