Why choose offsite?
Offsite offers a route to the delivery of homes that can be built to higher sustainability standards with advantages in terms of build quality, speed of delivery, construction health & safety, energy in use, whole life carbon footprint and in tackling fuel poverty.
Lean manufacturing principles and Design For Manufacture & Assembly are inherent to the offsite process delivering: cross collaboration and integration within the supply chain generating efficiencies and waste minimisation quality assured environment reducing error, defect & rework a right first time culture improving productivity, saving time & money.
With a fabric first approach it can also ensure energy efficiency, environmental performance and affordability in use. Offsite manufactured timber structures typically have low operational and maintenance costs as well as achieving high performance standards to strict budgetary parameters. By extension housing is made more affordable to deliver and maintain, achieving up to 33% energy savings for houses and up to 20% for apartments.
Offsite moreover addresses the acute skills shortfall, by reducing the labour-days by approximately 20% on average per project. Through industrialisation and digitisation offsite can also inspire and capture the talents of our younger generation.
Value
• Quality – in the factory there is greater opportunity to implement product quality control
• Customer satisfaction – prototypes can be built to finalize designs with the client
• Technical – in the controlled factory environment air tightness values are more easily achieved than with traditional construction
• Skills – addressing the skills shortfall which is symptomatic in the construction industry
• Collaborative approach – through cross collaboration and integration within the supply chain offsite systems generate efficiencies
Efficiency
• Time – offsite provides the opportunity to reduce the build programme by completing the offsite manufacturing simultaneously with the groundworks
• Waste – in the factory environment materials flow can be optimized and controlled, and a waste management plan can be implemented
• Quality assurance – a right first time culture improves productivity, minimizes rework and by extension saves time & money
• Flexibility – standardized components can be assembled in different configurations to provide the client with an efficient yet custom design, this mass-customization principal is borrowed from the automotive industry
• Maintenance – low operational and maintenance whole life cycle costs
Sustainability
• Social – having a static place of work instead of several building sites reduces travel time for the workers. In the factory, working at heights is eliminated and equipment is used to remove the need for heavy lifting
• Environment – through waste minimization and opportunities to deliver products with high levels of insulation and high air tightness
• Economic – in offsite there is potential to improve cash flow through early completion of projects and early revenue collection start
• Fabric first approach – ensures energy efficiency, environmental performance & affordability in use
•Whole life-cycle thinking – reduces operational energy, minimises the carbon footprint & tackles fuel poverty
