Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) has long been part of our philosophy and it is exciting to see an increasing focus on DfMA in the construction industry around the world.
Removing the planning bottleneck: there has been significant progress in digitisation for design and construction, but planning, which sits in the middle, is lagging behind and causing delays.The UK has huge construction requirements in multiple sectors – the planning process should be an enabler, not a barrier..
Considering how much impact planning has on our lives, it is not as present or discoverable as many other aspects of contemporary living.The laminated notices on lamp posts which inform the public of local planning applications can easily be missed or ignored, and are often hard to understand.We do not have the levels of informed, accessible, public engagement with planning that would benefit the process and the built environment.
Digitisation would open up new ways to engage the wider public at all stages of the planning process..The increasing digitisation of relevant information and data, and our ability to import that data into the planning process in meaningful ways will further help engagement.
Well constructed visual representations make raw data accessible to a wide audience.
This will allow people to consider individual planning applications in broader contexts – of sustainability or social mobility, say – or understand the trade-offs and implications inherent in making changes to part of a development.This framework is how manufacturing ensures the consistency of products, and it’s also how they track their progress.
So, where will this end up?Ultimately, we believe you will be able to get a price instantly from a vast, distributed network of small suppliers, as you develop your construction Platform model.
These suppliers will also be publishing details of their pipelines and capabilities, enabling you to plan your project precisely.Moreover, as all of these standardised components will be inexpensive, we don’t believe we’ll be costing solely on pure, capital costs.