I'm Dale Sinclair, host of WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where my cohost, Johnathan Munkley, and I dive into how digital is changing AEC with some of the biggest names and trusted voices in the industry.Dale Sinclair Global Digital Offering Lead, Modern Methods of ConstructionDale Sinclair Global Digital Offering Lead, Modern Methods of Construction
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Conception pour la fabrication et l'assemblage
Dale Sinclair (00:00)
Hi everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. If you're wondering what that sound is in the background, it's Digital Construction Week 25 and we're delighted to be here in London. Today I have my good friend Dan Pollard with me so good afternoon, Dan and delighted that you're here. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and I'm sure we will pick up on some of the conversations we've had over the years as we drive into the conversation.
Dan Pollard (00:32)
Good afternoon, thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure. Obviously, my name is Dan Pollard. I've been within the offsite industry now for two decades, so I've seen it all come and go, at least in the UK. On a global scale, I've successfully set up manufacturing facilities and businesses, Europe, in the US, France, Ireland, UAE and obviously the United Kingdom. So, I'm very well versed in everything we're trying to achieve as a team.
Obviously from our conversations over the years, Dale, I believe we're on the same page.
Dale Sinclair (01:05)
Exactly, exactly. So just as a starter, what's brought you to Digital Construction Week this year? And what's your experience been so far? Are you here to see anything specific?
Dan Pollard (01:16)
Currently I’m the manufacturing director at Thurston's Group, so I thought it was good to enhance the business's exposure and also look at new innovations that are coming in the industry.
Dan Sinclair (01:27)
Of course, we're here mainly to really unpack our kit-of-parts approach, that as you know we've been working on over last couple of years, and we've got our model on the stand here which is fantastic. I just want to have a conversation around some of the things we've doing because what I see is a big shift in how we design buildings and shifting away from designing for construction to designing for manufacturing and assembly.
And for me, designing for manufacturing and assembly is a completely different process, as you know, to designing for construction. But I guess one of the things that frustrates me is through our conversations over the years, I know you have some amazing insights that we could really do with having in the early stages of design.
But today's procurement processes make that quite challenging for us to have those conversations. So, I guess just to start with, what trends are you seeing that might begin to make those connections better between the world of the manufacturer and the world of the designer and the front-end process?
Dan Pollard (02:37)
Well, I could probably talk for hours on this. From my experience, DFMA, I think in many parts, has been treated as a buzzword and not a discipline.
Despite being widely referenced as DFMA, it’s very rarely executed properly. Projects reach the factory floor with complex detailing, bespoke solutions and minimal consideration for sequencing or production logic. It's being spoken about more than it's being applied. It's quite frustrating.
Dale Sinclair (03:03)
So, what sort of initiatives do you think might begin to break down those barriers and I guess remove some of the challenges between you automating more and us actually delivering proper designs for manufacturing?
Dan Pollard (03:18)
That's a good question. So, for me it's embedding manufacturing from day one. I'm talking RIBA stage one here. True DFMA starts at that stage. Manufacturers must be treated as key design contributors, not late-stage deliverers, because that never works. Our insights should shape layout logistics, logic, module width, service zones, fixing structural decisions from the outset.
Dale Sinclair (03:41)
I completely agree and I suppose that one of the challenges we find is that it's quite hard to bring an industry where everyone's seeped in construction to change their behaviours. Is there anything that you think we could do to get some of the points that you've made across to not just the designers, because I should say it's really important that clients understand how to brief properly for designing and for manufacturing.
Dan Pollard (04:08)
Good question. I think this needs to be taken to the highest level, the government level, for the country because, again, the government's still burned about DFMA, the housing crisis, the prison shortage, and again, nobody's actually executed it very well. So, for me, it's to design a platform, not a project. That is key, and that's the transition from bespoke project by project design to modular platforms, and that is absolutely key. Standardise a kit-of-parts that will work across sectors and building typologies. A project should adapt to a platform, not force a platform to bend around the project, and that's what 99% of the, I'd say, the issues have been so far from what I've seen.
Dale Sinclair (04:45)
Yeah, yeah. Can we maybe just unpack this whole notion of a platform? Because certainly what we are saying to clients is: look, the scale of what we have to do as an industry just simply cannot be done by trying to innovate one project at a time. And as you know, it's incredibly hard to try and innovate in a live project environment. And the more we move forward with our kit of parts case studies, I'm finding we really want to start driving program approaches and aggregating the content.
Does that kind of approach then plug into your platform as we look to standardize more and even have fabrication information pre-packed within that program content so that we can drive the design process much faster and more efficiently?
Dan Pollard (05:34)
Another good question. Absolutely agree with every point you've made. For me as well, we need to educate all project stakeholders from the very beginning on what DFMA actually means. Now this again, could include workshops, project exceptions, what it looks like using factory layouts, etc. factory visuals. I also believe families are key to this. You're right, it's not project by project, we’re looking big picture here. That is our North Star, that is what good looks like, looking at the entire picture of families of parts where we can pick, we'll have one of those, we'll have one of these, one of these. That's large-scale scalability.
And it's sustainable and that ticks all the boxes for sustainability, a carbon footprint, Kits of Parts and also to bring this cost down that we keep standards too high.
Dale Sinclair (06:18)
Yeah, completely agree. I think where we are coming from just now is we see the quality benefits of making things in the factory are second to none. I mean it's indisputable that it's better doing that in the factory.
Dan Pollard (06:31)
You've been to a few of mine, haven’t you?
Dale Sinclair (6:33)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Very efficient factories. Actually, I must say though that the best factory I've ever been to has been in Turkey and I would have eaten my lunch off the floor of that factory.
Dan Pollard (6:43)
It pains me, Dale, that pains me! [laughter]
Dale Sinclair (06:45
So yeah, fantastic. So, I guess going back to this idea that today we push small batches of let's say design information and then you produce fabrication information back and we've got all this iterative process.
And of course we're saying, “Well, let's escalate that to a program.” So, once we've created that content on the first project, we don't need to recreate that on the second project. But can you see a situation in the future where that would even go to the next level, where you could be doing products that you say, “we know how to optimize this. We want to go to 24-7 manufacturing. We want more robotics. And now we want to standardize more of what we do and then allow the customer to configure elements.” Is that something that you see your own company being more of a, instead of a reactive company and you're proactively pushing content to the market?
Dan Pollard (07:43)
Well yeah, this is obviously one of the reasons I'm here today. As a business Thurston Group at the moment, we have four facilities in the UK, we have one now in the UAE. As a business in the UK across all four facilities we're currently producing between 4,500 and 5,000 completed assets per year, fully completed. So, take the next step, and that's only 65 to 70% capacity for utilization. So, this whole design element is absolutely key. It's prehistoric, it's stagnated, and what we need to do is push back against overdesign. It's at the early stages, which is minimal visible design approach, define the baseline, need to improve functionality, then integrate with factory and site team before moving to full detailing. It's too late once it goes to the factory for stage four and five.
So, with that, I'd to change the whole RIBA on its head. Which is no small feat. So, I'd integrate DFMA checkpoints into RIBA stages, establish DFMA gates within RIBA, including manufacturing compliance confirmed, module logic validated, Repeatable assembly confirmed, must be passed from each gateway in RIBA, before we go to each stage and that is key. We're designing for construction, and we are manufacturers.
Dale Sinclair (08:56)
Yeah, so how do you think we can more effectively bring the voice of the manufacturer into the room in the early stages when, as we've already spoken about, procurement makes that challenging? And I would 100% agree if you don't address manufacturing right at the start, you're essentially hard-baking construction into the design and making it really hard to then drive a manufacturing approach.
Dan Pollard (09:22)
Absolutely, absolutely key and what I keep hearing over last five years is off-site is too expensive. But if these gateways were completed at the beginning of the design phase for a project scale, at a large scalability project, this would eradicate the cost because most of the cost I've seen over 20 years is the design element where you're tweaking and changing. It's a construction design in a factory and if we wanted a site with a roof on, we wouldn't have MMC.
We need at the very beginning to have the key manufacturers get consulting with the very best manufacturers put them in a room and rewrite and re-sculpt or re-mold how it has to be delivered.
Dale Sinclair (10:00)
Yeah, yeah. So, you've spoken about costs there, so obviously when we look at the three mantras of time, cost and quality we know we've spoken about the quality we know offsite can be faster - so in your opinion should offsite manufacturing be delivering projects cheaper than current market norms?
Dan Pollard (10:19)
100%
Dale Sinclair (10:20)
Exactly. So, I think for me once we get some of that benchmark information through, I think that's when we really start to see a change because then we've actually delivered what most people say you can't have is the three mantras of procurement time, cost and quality and I think we're throwing in lower carbon solutions for free. And I think that to me is when the industry really starts to change.
Dan Pollard (10:45)
Yes, I totally agree. And again, with the cost element of this industry, do I think it's cheaper? Yes. Do I think that it has to have the right gateways before the project starts on a scalable project? Now, as it stands now, it's more expensive because the procurement process is upside down. We need to be smarter with how we design from the very beginning.
Again, I'm very opinionated about this, quite passionate about this. I feel that people look at manufacturing or a manufacturer of products and they see the factory and they think that's the epicentre.
The factory should be the easy part. It's all departmental workstreams that feed into the factory, design, procurement, even from the client. By the time it gets to the factory it's too late and that's where the costs line up. And then I feel that case studies are the very best to break these doors and barriers down because once we start showing, look guys, this is cheaper if we follow and we discipline it, a DFMA approach.
It can't be a sales pitch to sell a product or a business, it has to be embedded.
Dale Sinclair (11:47)
Agreed and we're seeing this slowly anyway, this shift from projects to program. Are you seeing any trends with your clients on program level procurement or do you think most clients are still wedded to a single project design and build procurement?
Dan Pollard (12:03)
I’d say it's single project at the moment but now we're sort of as a business looking to change the mold and work with tier ones predominantly moving forward. Morgan Sindall's, the Kiers of the World, the BAMs to really embed it at their stage. And these are established traditional construction minds, like the Mount Rushmore of construction. We have to prove, we have to evidence, we have to keep banging the drum.
Dale Sinclair (12:26)
Great. I suppose one of the things that interests me is that you're obviously working internationally, as you know, in my role is now working across the globe, seeing the MMC trends, which is fantastic.
And I do believe that a lot of what we're doing in the UK is setting benchmarks for the industry elsewhere in the world. But I do think some in the Middle East, it’s really interesting to see the work that they're doing there. Because they don't have the infrastructure, so I think there's a very compelling case there. And they can see with the scale of what they have to do that they can't construct their way to the future. They need to manufacture and really to drive the scale of what their ambitious plans are trying to do.
But from your perspective, what sort of trends are you seeing between, say, the UK and the Middle East?
Dan Pollard (13:16)
Yes, we’ve discussed this many times. We've discussed a project in Riyadh, it was 8,000 modular villas they just couldn't produce. So, we're looking at pop-up facilities, pop-up factories. But again, it has to be linked.
So, in my simple mind, the global North Star for me is DFMA should not be a UK aspiration, but a global manufacturing mindset. We need to think bigger than project wins and site deadlines. It's about assessing the global North Star of how off-site products are conceived, designed and delivered. And this case, once that's unlocked and the buzzwords stop, that will truly unlock the industrialised construction across global regions. It will reduce waste and carbon, as you said, that's free of charge. Enable profit-led portfolios rather than one-off project deliveries. It's not just a project, as we discussed, it’s an ecosystem.
And also create global consistency, quality, safety and bring that cost down.
Dale Sinclair (14:12)
I couldn't agree more. Any other tips that you might give to someone that's wanting to dip their toes into the world of manufacturing?
Dan Pollard (14:35)
At the moment, we're looking to go into robotics as well. So, we've got the work of a robotic firm for robotic welders, taking away the human elements in order to run 24 hours a day. But again, Kit of Parts, that goes back to early engagement. Again, the DFMA must evolve from a design concept because it seems like DFMA has been out for a while, years, years and years. But it's got no further on. People are using it, but no one truly understands it. And I mean, I’ll be quite honest with you, you're the only person on the planet that holds a conversation with me because I speak to somebody for two minutes and they just don't get it. They don't get it, it's a buzzword.
So, for me it must evolve from design concept into an industry-wide operating system that drives disciplines at every level, every level. And the earliest engagement from manufacturers is key. And it would be good to have a case study of a project or a company that are willing to have a manufacturer at the very beginning and then gauge that against one that hasn't, regarding the RIBA stages, and then we'll see a real case study of what good looks like in manufacturing industry.
Dale Sinclair (15:22)
Great, thank you very much for joining me today, Dan. It's been as ever a pleasure having a discussion with you and thanks for giving our listeners some pointers how to dip into the world of offsite manufacturing. And in particular how to transform workflow into design for manufacture and assembly. So, I guess the final question when we finish this recording, anything that you still got to go and see as our one thing that you're saying, “Right, I really must find out about this today.”
Dan Pollard (15:54)
I think I'm going to go and look at the BIM stage and see what they're discussing about the BIM 360. Now we're integrating that, but again, I don't think BIMs been utilised into its full potential as well. There's a couple of other stalls with robotics and some robotic dogs that are quite interesting.
Dale Sinclair (16:07)
Great, thank you very much Dan, great to have you here today and I'm looking forward to seeing the final recording. Thank you very much.
Dan Pollard (16:31)
Pleasure as always, Dale.
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Shifting from construction to manufacturing
Dale Sinclair (00:00)
Hi everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. If you're wondering what the noise is in the background, that's Digital Construction Week 2025 and we're delighted to be here in London recording this podcast. Today I have two very good colleagues with me that I've spoken to many times over the years, who're pioneering in the shift from construction to manufacturing. Let me introduce Bruce Bell from Facit Homes and Tim Hall from Total Flow. So, Bruce can you introduce yourself further?
Bruce Bell (00:40)
Sure, I'm Bruce, I'm the founder and CEO at Facit Homes. We're a digital manufacturer of homes, so we’re a small, custom manufacturer of homes utilizing digital technology across the board.
Dale Sinclair (00:56)
Fantastic and Tim?
Tim Hall (00:58)
Hi, Tim Hall from Total Flow, one of the originators of the Total Flow Consulting Group. We've been industrialists before we got involved in the detail of construction and I brought my passion for construction products manufacturing and said, “It's time to help save the construction industry from muck and bullets and wet trades on the shop floor.” We've been helping set up new factories across the globe from Hong Kong and China, Thailand, supplying into Australia, as well as some notable startups in the UK, some more successful than others.
Dale Sinclair (01:31)
Fantastic, so before we get into the nub of the conversation, what's brought you to Digital Construction Week? And in your journeys today have you seen anything that's excited you or anything new that you want to talk about?
Tim Hall (01:45)
I think from my perspective, the first time I came to Digital Construction Week, it was all about BIM, it was all about COBie data, it was all about the software and a little bit on the tech and the hardware. And it was just like a digital industry talking to itself. I think now it's much more about different facets of the industry talking to each other and the idea of true collaboration is much more coming into play. I think that's the big shift over the last three or four years. And so, I'm glad that you invited me back.
I've actually bumped into a lot of people today that I didn't think I would see here because they're not from the likes of Autodesk and Revit and Trimble, they're from the industry wanting to make a difference.
Dale Sinclair (02:25)
Great, thanks, and Bruce?
Bruce Bell (02:26)
Actually, I haven't been to Digital Construction Week for a few years. It's interesting to see how it's changed since the last time. Like Tim says, slightly less focused on BIM. There's a lot of data capture companies I can see doing 3D, 2D data capture plus management systems. I'm only just starting to see people add into that more interpretive software that actually tells you something about the data. A lot of it is still capture for humans to look at and I'm still waiting for that time where somebody must be talking about analysis of data and that it can do this or that. Not much I can see yet, particularly on that documentation side of construction as it goes.
There's this idea that we can capture a report on the construction site and tell us if it's been built right, how progressed it's been. It's a really interesting area but I'm still yet to see anything quite that I would adopt.
Dale Sinclair (03:24)
Fantastic, so you're seeing the industry shifts quite fast through the lens of digital construction, is that fair to say?
Bruce Bell (03:30)
I think the really exciting thing is it is about digital transformation of construction, which I think is the critical thing, regardless of whether that's on-site or off-site, is digital. And that's always been the focus of Facit. We've done factory fabrication, we've done on-site fabrication, but it's a much broader approach. recently we trialed the HP SitePrint for the first time. Which for anybody who doesn't know, it's a little robot, looks like a little vacuum cleaner, it prints out your drawings onto the slab.
That was the first time we've used it on a live construction site. It was fantastic. We learnt a lot about how to use it, but for me it's that kind of technology, that kind really embedded into traditional practice where I'm really interested in it.
Tim Hall (04:17)
I think from my side, one of the interesting things is when it came to BIM, you kind of get the outline level but it always under-delivered compared to the potential. "Oh, you could do asset management with it, you can do 4D tracking with it!" But nobody ever got that because it was so difficult to populate with data. Now, one of the things I'm hearing is that the opportunity to use AI to extract from a whole load of noise the data that you really need to do the 4D tracking, the data that you really need to put into the as –built model. That sounds like it's not going to be my area of specialism but that means that actually digital solutions can start fulfilling more of their potential.
Dale Sinclair (04:58)
Fantastic. So, now to the conversation that we really want to have. We're here this week showcasing our kits-of-parts approach and as you both know we're really keen to transform the industry around this approach. Which is really about how do we drive more manufacturing-led approach and certainly what I've learned over the last couple of years is that designing for manufacturing is a completely different thing to designing for construction. And certainly, most of the barriers that we see to the change in the future is around that perception that we're still designing for construction and subsetting manufacturing.
But I think what really fascinates me is, Tim, over the years we've had lots of conversations and of course we're up the supply chain here, working with the client from the brief into design and we work our way through, and we push small batches of elements into the factory. That's the way traditional manufacturing works with a construction led process and design and build. But of course, what we've spoken about repeatedly is well how do we get those manufacturing insights upstream and I think recently we spoke about bringing the voice of the manufacturer into the room into the early stages. So, I've got to come back to that in a second because I like to hear what you think are some of the things that we might do.
Listen, how do we define that manufacturing knowledge into a process where we're fundamentally designing for manufacture, not designing for construction? Of course, Bruce, I am super jealous of you because what's great about what you do is you have that ownership from end to end if you like. You have the ownership from the initial designs and of course the tools you're using, automating all through to your factory solutions, which are based on site. And I think those I think those approaches are absolutely fantastic because it allows manufacturing to happen still in a site environment but in a very economical way. So maybe, I'm not sure who's first, but maybe can you give us some insights of your let's say more connected process and what you would advise listeners and then to maybe come back to what you would say.
Bruce Bell (07:11)
My background is as an industrial designer. So, I trained as an industrial designer, and I was very aware of how things are made in the industrial design world. So, let's say cars or phones or most products that we buy. And in those processes generally there is a design on the computer in 3D, usually owned by the company that's going to have their name on it.
And it gets translated into a physical object by computer. And I think for me that's always been like, “Wow, that's so powerful. We can design something on computer and the computer makes it. And that gives you that consistency and quality.” And so, for me it's how do you tap into that process? And I think that what you find in the traditional construction process is it's very siloed. So, architects have access to these amazing, sophisticated design tools, and they have the knowledge and the experience and everything you need to actually make use of computers, but they're one step removed from the making process. For me it's a lot about exploring the procurement route and how things are made and organisational as much as it is about technology. You know, actually, if look at my business, we're basically using BIM, we’re using industrial manufacturing software. Both of these products have been around for 20 years, or 30 years in case of production engineering and production manufacturing software. We're using a standard bit of manufacturing kit, but we're using it in a different organisational way.
Our business model is different. How we make money is different. And I don't think everyone's going to work in the same way that we do. And one of the conversations I had with Dale recently was, "I love what they're doing, that kit-of-parts, but I'm like, there is some real opportunities here if you can figure out how to get one layer down further, right?” So, I'm like, I know things that I've never used, and I'd love to... tube laser, right? Tube laser is like CNC manufacture of steel tube parts. So, they can be rectangular sectioned, rectangular hollow, square hollow, tube, whatever. And a lot of what I see Dale doing uses this technology. And there was an opportunity to go straight from what you do to that laser machine if you can figure out how to have a relationship with the person with that machine. Does the contractor want to use it?
How do you do it around those type of things? Whereas if you just define it, I remember I used to work Foster & Partners in the early 2000s working with Hugh Whitehead who was on their advanced geometry team and they would have to define all the geometry of the building perfectly using Bentley microsystems, generative components and they can basically kind of rote it and then they would have to define it geometrically and then give it over to somebody else, who would then define it themselves on their own system.
This is mad. This is absolutely insane. You would never do that in an industrial design. And I think that for me is how do we get over that? I think, you know, looking at, going back to what Tim said about BIM.
The big failure in companies to utilize BIM is because they're not incentivized to create good BIM geometry. Architects are not incentivized to invest in it and the BIM itself is an amazing product. We get amazing things out of it. But at the moment you still have a lack of really well engineered, production engineered BIM models because people aren't incentivized. It's not because the technology doesn't allow us to. So, for me it's that organizational thing, that relationship with technology, with design systems, which is key to unlocking it. I'm always encouraging people to look a bit sideways on it.
Dale Sinclair (10:51)
I think that's a really good point because one of things that we've seen happening with design and build as it's evolved over the years is less and less definition from, I guess a fabrication point of view. Whereas when I was a younger architect, because we were used to designing for construction directly to the contractor, we were used to delivering that higher level of detail. And I think some of that has gone away. And certainly, with the left shift, as we call it, where we see the need to have a higher level of detail in the early stages. And we now have the train driver in the room in some of our projects so that we can figure out not just how we're going to make this, but how do those pieces come together like a giant LEGO kit. So yeah, I think some great examples there. And Tim what are your kind of thoughts on this?
Tim Hall (11:40)
It's interesting taking the contrast with Bruce's kind of what we call soup-to-nuts concept design, all the way through to hand over of the keys. And I don't know if you get involved in any facilities management afterwards but it's almost the entire end-to-end process even if it's not doing the facilities management. And as you say the barrier between each of those layers is where things go wrong and one of the things I like to be rude to everybody across the value chain -- and Dale and I have had some conversations about my view of architects who have taken Dale’s DFMA overlay that he did for RIBA back in 2017, 2018, something like that.
And they say, “Oh yeah, we do DFMA! Look we’ve got the overlay on our wall.”
“Well yeah, but what does that actually mean to you?”
And, “Well it’s design for manufacturing and assembly.”
That’s about as far as their understanding goes. They don’t understand about reducing parts count, they don’t understand about the interface details, they don’t understand about standardization in the true sense of the word.
So, there’s a lot of kind of bluff and superficial knowledge in different things. And that's where Dale and I are really working hard is to try and get the - rather than a client trying to specify I need an 80 kilonewton floor because I've seen somebody write an 80 kilonewton floor on a drawing somewhere. I've no idea what it means, whether it's you know forklift truck traffic or whether it's just pedestrians in stiletto heels, but I've specified something because it makes me look cleverer or stops me being bluffed by my consultants and suppliers.
And there's too much of that in this industry between those layers. You think you're specifying something and you're probably adding cost. And one of the things that Bruce will know from his industrial heritage is 80% of the product's cost is already baked in before you make your first prototype. Because you've set the concept, you've set the parameters and once you've started production you can only tweak with the 20%. So, the idea is let's work out what adds cost to your process. Let's work out what adds cost to redesigning for an architect. What makes it really difficult for a project manager to do his job is lots of paperwork? Can we streamline paperwork so that the manufacturer provides the paperwork in exactly the right format for the guy on site to be able to do his health and safety, due diligence and all that kind of stuff?
So, it's that integration is the key word and if we can use digital tools to enable it and not abdicate responsibility for simplifying first. I'm a big fan of, when it comes to any digital system, simplify first and then use digital to build on that simple structure.
Dale Sinclair (14:10)
That's a great point and one of things that we're trying to recommend to clients is, to try and shift away from project approaches to program approaches.
And I think over the years, I guess I've had so many of the same conversations and even a few weeks ago I was doing a review of the project and we were talking about how to connect the unitized cladding panels to the frame and I'm thinking, “I've had this conversation a hundred times before. Why do we have to do this on every project?” And I certainly see massive inefficiencies on projects as we redo the same thing that we've done on every single project over the last... last 500 years arguably, since we started using scale drawing. So, I suppose my question to you then is from both your perspectives, I mean certainly Bruce, you have a process that, as Tim says, soup-to-nuts. Is geared to a single project, but do you think there's a lot of program approach to what you do, maybe even through the workflow that you use? And I guess Tim, what would you be recommending to people? Do you think programme approaches help to drive standardisation and maybe becoming the catalyst to how we change to the processes of the future?
Bruce Bell (15:31)
If you look at what we do, right, so at Facit, what we do is we say our houses are built of the same set systems. Every house. So, it's got the same foundation systems, it's got the same superstructure, it's got the same doors, windows, heating systems, and then we reconfigure it through our system, right? You could do the same thing with multiple different typologies. So, you could do the, let's say there's WSP’s spin-off for airport buildings, right? And you would do that, and you would have your systems, and you would take a further responsibility though.
I think that's the thing. I don't think you can do it just as that separate consultant. Really, I think really to get down, I think you have to take a little step further. And I don't know how, that's probably the most difficult question to answer. Actually, there's company in Netherlands who are called Finch. They do five, six story apartment blocks, CLT. They’re not really a manufacturer.
Actually, what they are is they're a spin-off from an architecture practice, but they do the same thing. It's the same products, they've got the same suppliers, they've got a relationship with the contractor, and they just build apartment blocks.
And they do it over and over again and they're doing it really, really well and I was like actually you could do the same with all sorts of other building typologies but it's a different business model, it's a different promotion. I think the idea that as a customer, as a client, I can go to any architecture practice and get any building I want made that's possible, is a bit like, “Well you know if you want to do that then you're going to be kind of stuck in the same place.” So, I think it's that change in mindset which is the biggest challenge.
Probably needs the most amount of experimentation and it needs large companies such as WSP or other large contractors to really not just collaborate, not just say, “Hey, we're going to try something out” but actually try to put business out, you know really, and I think it could be incredibly successful. Going back to what Tim said a moment ago about architects designing, I think one of the things that I like to do in our business is we have architects working within the business, especially the younger boys and girls who come in and you know they design stuff. I'm like, "That's great, how are we going to build it?" And they're like, “What?” Literally how are we going to build this thing that you have drawn?
And it's never really occurred to them, and it blows their minds that that would be the case. There definitely has been, particularly in the last 25 years as Dale said, this kind of movement away in the architecture sector from architects being responsible for construction detailing to D&B contracts where they're just doing concept, and it's handed on and now we seem to have two extremes. We've got modular companies that Tim has been working with who do soup-to-nuts and that's the whole thing and then we've got architects working in a very light way using D&B contracts which has got, you know, good work but they're not very progressive they're very difficult vehicles to try and modify and I think that the question is what's in the middle?
What new things can we do that are neither one extreme nor the other? How do you make them viable?
Dale Sinclair (18:44)
Some great points there and certainly the big challenge as we do more kids' projects and we're giving clients confidence of what we do, we're seeing the narrative shifting to supply chain uncertainties, supply chains and of course how do we procure sub-assemblies on a program level? So, you do believe that new business models are inevitable as part of this shift to manufacturing.
Bruce Bell (19:14)
Not necessarily inevitable. It takes effort and willpower and people like yourself to push it and make people think. I have started to see lots of, particularly on the younger generation of architects, starting to try out different business models. But I think needs a very collaborative approach and I think that's where a lot of these younger companies fail because they still take a very siloed approach, you know. I see young companies start up and they try and spin out some kind of different business model but they kind of do it in a slightly half-hearted way.
And actually, to really do it properly you do need to bring together disciplines. Like we have architects sitting side by side with production engineers, we're side by side with construction managers. It's literally that gluing together of different people and making sure they've all got the same focus and the same alignment where you can make it work. But you really have to bridge those gaps.
Tim Hall (19:56)
I would say in a smaller organisation like yours; you can afford to wrap your personal arms around the whole team that has all of those skills. But when we're talking about building Manchester Airports, you can't do that. Tacit has not got the bandwidth to do that. So, you have to find a way of getting that collaboration endemic. And it does work in aviation, it does work in automotive, it does work in electronics.
Samsung don't design Snapdragon chips. They trust the chip designer to do their bit, but it's the language between those two and even though they're not co-located there's a level of trust. And I think that's a conversation that you and I have been having, Dale, is getting the voice of the chip manufacturer into the phone maker. Do you know we could do this? And you’re very welcome to say, “Actually, we don't need that, we're not interested in that, but what we are interested in...” And it shouldn't always be about cost. And that's where construction is a bit old school. It's all about banging the table, “Let's sharpen your pencil, fellas, let's take some price out of this.” And it becomes transactional. And that's where I am a little bit cautious about your enthusiasm for serial clients who have a pipeline of projects and a whole program of work because what they'll do is they'll buy the first one and have a look, “No, I didn't like that experience, I'll try another value chains.” And will they really do that serial thing.
Bruce and I know that Toyota would never suddenly change their gearbox manufacturer halfway through a project because they didn't fancy the way it worked last time. But the guys that once they're in, they have to screw up really badly because those guys know us so well that nobody could possibly step in and have anything better unless it's a breakthrough technology. So that's the mindset I think WSP has the potential of engendering in your client base. What we want to do is we want to find a partner in the same way as we may or may not have found life partners. It's not something where we're used to saying, “I’ve tried that for a couple of weeks, I'm going to marry somebody else now.”
Dale Sinclair (21:50)
No, it's a good point. I mean, I've heard people in the past say, every building's a prototype and I think my retort to that now is, well, that kind of misses the point. The whole point about construction as a paradigm is we take thousands of small things to site. What that allows us to do is every time do a unique building. Because every product can be different. But of course, then we're creating interfaces that are into their billions, if you like, because these products are not necessarily used to coming together. And I guess that's why, as you know, our fascination is with things like the car industry reducing number of permutations and beginning to look at how you have configuration options that will help the manufacturer but still give the customer an ability to choose. But of course, it's hard for architects to understand that because it puts really different constraints onto the process.
Bruce Bell (22:45)
Tim just said, you have to have those supplier relationships. I think if they're not there, then you're going to struggle to really transform. Exactly as Tim said, we are so reliant on our long-term relationships with our suppliers, our timber suppliers, our window suppliers. And we rely on it so much. Just the other day, we had a problem with one of our windows. And we've been working with them for 15 years, the same company. I've used the same roofer since 2010.
Those things are really critical and the idea that they can all be interchangeable with anything you like, it just undermines that bottom-up input of better ways of doing it, better costs, evolution of design details over time. So, I definitely think that is probably one of the biggest challenges not sure how you would do that because it's not if you're in a very competitive, open-tender, best-price scenario. You need a client with a very different mindset.
Tim Hall (23:46)
I can give a really concrete example, emphasis on concrete perhaps. So, working out in Hong Kong for Hong Kong University student accommodation, we were funded to do a piece of work to look at their manufacturing and supply chain after the design had been done. So, it wouldn't be the design we would have chosen but it was a volumetric modular student accommodation.
And there was quite a lot that was right with it. We worked with a steelwork manufacturer who was producing a hot-rolled steel cage and their first time pass rate when we started working with them was about 68% and the rest of it had to be modified or adjusted and by the time we got into module 50 out of 1500 they were down well up to 98%. So, we got that process. The project was successful, it was on time, it was stressful, there was a change of supplier in the middle, all sorts of things were difficult, but it was a success.
Phase two of the project, they iterated the design. They said wanted it to feel higher quality. So rather than just having a concrete floor, they wanted concrete walls between apartments, lightweight walls between the rooms within an apartment. So, they went out to tender, new architect, new structural engineer, new contractor, new supplier, and it was a total disaster. It's now a year late and it's probably going to be two years late.
We were novated to the contractor as basically as a tax on them in order to help them do their process and they just weren't interested they just wanted to do it the way they've always done and as a result it was taking them 70 days to manufacture a module whereas when we were working at Berkley when we're doing it in 35 hours and they didn't believe we could do it in 35 hours to do a module. Until you've seen Liverpool play Barcelona at football, you might think that five-a-side played by a bunch of six-year-olds is the best it can be. And it ain't, fellas. We've got a long way to go, and we want to work with WSP and companies like Facit to show the art of the possible.
Dale Sinclair (25:40)
So, what's the one thing that you think might help us to get onto that transformation journey. Is there one thing or do you think it's a massive reset that's required to how we do things?
Tim Hall (25:51)
I think if you can get somebody that is an iconic client that will almost evangelize about the experience that they've had. Not in a everything's perfect, but we started off with this and it was 70% of what we wanted. The second phase of the project was 95% and the third phase was over our expectations and the cost started to come down. If you can get somebody that people trust and believe in to do that and show that actually 75% plus of the team that worked on project one was still, there by the end and it's about behavior; I think that would be a game changer.
Construction is a great industry for the rush to be second. They'll follow somebody who's made money out of it. And so far, unfortunately, the volumetric modular story, there aren't many to rush and follow.
Dale Sinclair (26:45)
True, true. And, Bruce, any thoughts on that front?
Bruce Bell (26:49)
Yeah, I think that kind of educational piece of the client is probably the first step to make sure they really understand the long-term benefits and just to bring some kind of framework where you say, “This is where we're going to go.” Really have these kind of conversations with enough senior people as well. Not just one person from the company that's going to buy in and then leave and you’re dead. You know, stuff that's really going in a quite detailed level, quite a senior level, quite a long-term commitment. If you can get that and you can demonstrate, say it's going to take X amount of time, this is where we're going to go. If you decide to change your mind, it's all in the bin. And I think it can work really well. I think if you can get them to buy in, I've no idea how easy or difficult that is.
Dale Sinclair (27:32)
Anyway, this has been a fantastic conversation, and I'm sure we can talk for hours as we usually do, but we need to draw this to a close. So, one final question for you. Obviously, you'll go back out into digital construction week. Any final things that you plan to see before you leave here today?
Bruce Bell (27:51)
I might go over to the geospatial side and just have a look at what's going on over there. I'm particularly interested to see, you know, there's some scanning stuff, analysing as-built buildings is one of my interests, so I want to see what the latest on that is.
Dale Sinclair (28:04)
Great, and Tim?
Tim Hall (28:22)
I think for me, one of things I haven't yet seen here, although I have had a look on the zero-carbon stage, is that I don't see enough of linking the power of BIM and digital to actually working out what the embodied and in-use carbon is in a building. And if that's not a focus for us now, it's going to be hard to get it back up on the agenda. So, I'll go and see if I can dig in some dark corners and find some people doing some good stuff in that respect.
Dale Sinclair (28:32)
Tim and Bruce, thanks for joining me today. Brilliant conversation and look forward to seeing you again soon.
Tim Hall (28:37)
Always a pleasure, let's just make stuff happen.
Bruce Bell (28:40)
Thank you.
Hi everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. If you're wondering what the noise is in the background, that's Digital Construction Week 2025 and we're delighted to be here in London recording this podcast. Today I have two very good colleagues with me that I've spoken to many times over the years, who're pioneering in the shift from construction to manufacturing. Let me introduce Bruce Bell from Facit Homes and Tim Hall from Total Flow. So, Bruce can you introduce yourself further?
Bruce Bell (00:40)
Sure, I'm Bruce, I'm the founder and CEO at Facit Homes. We're a digital manufacturer of homes, so we’re a small, custom manufacturer of homes utilizing digital technology across the board.
Dale Sinclair (00:56)
Fantastic and Tim?
Tim Hall (00:58)
Hi, Tim Hall from Total Flow, one of the originators of the Total Flow Consulting Group. We've been industrialists before we got involved in the detail of construction and I brought my passion for construction products manufacturing and said, “It's time to help save the construction industry from muck and bullets and wet trades on the shop floor.” We've been helping set up new factories across the globe from Hong Kong and China, Thailand, supplying into Australia, as well as some notable startups in the UK, some more successful than others.
Dale Sinclair (01:31)
Fantastic, so before we get into the nub of the conversation, what's brought you to Digital Construction Week? And in your journeys today have you seen anything that's excited you or anything new that you want to talk about?
Tim Hall (01:45)
I think from my perspective, the first time I came to Digital Construction Week, it was all about BIM, it was all about COBie data, it was all about the software and a little bit on the tech and the hardware. And it was just like a digital industry talking to itself. I think now it's much more about different facets of the industry talking to each other and the idea of true collaboration is much more coming into play. I think that's the big shift over the last three or four years. And so, I'm glad that you invited me back.
I've actually bumped into a lot of people today that I didn't think I would see here because they're not from the likes of Autodesk and Revit and Trimble, they're from the industry wanting to make a difference.
Dale Sinclair (02:25)
Great, thanks, and Bruce?
Bruce Bell (02:26)
Actually, I haven't been to Digital Construction Week for a few years. It's interesting to see how it's changed since the last time. Like Tim says, slightly less focused on BIM. There's a lot of data capture companies I can see doing 3D, 2D data capture plus management systems. I'm only just starting to see people add into that more interpretive software that actually tells you something about the data. A lot of it is still capture for humans to look at and I'm still waiting for that time where somebody must be talking about analysis of data and that it can do this or that. Not much I can see yet, particularly on that documentation side of construction as it goes.
There's this idea that we can capture a report on the construction site and tell us if it's been built right, how progressed it's been. It's a really interesting area but I'm still yet to see anything quite that I would adopt.
Dale Sinclair (03:24)
Fantastic, so you're seeing the industry shifts quite fast through the lens of digital construction, is that fair to say?
Bruce Bell (03:30)
I think the really exciting thing is it is about digital transformation of construction, which I think is the critical thing, regardless of whether that's on-site or off-site, is digital. And that's always been the focus of Facit. We've done factory fabrication, we've done on-site fabrication, but it's a much broader approach. recently we trialed the HP SitePrint for the first time. Which for anybody who doesn't know, it's a little robot, looks like a little vacuum cleaner, it prints out your drawings onto the slab.
That was the first time we've used it on a live construction site. It was fantastic. We learnt a lot about how to use it, but for me it's that kind of technology, that kind really embedded into traditional practice where I'm really interested in it.
Tim Hall (04:17)
I think from my side, one of the interesting things is when it came to BIM, you kind of get the outline level but it always under-delivered compared to the potential. "Oh, you could do asset management with it, you can do 4D tracking with it!" But nobody ever got that because it was so difficult to populate with data. Now, one of the things I'm hearing is that the opportunity to use AI to extract from a whole load of noise the data that you really need to do the 4D tracking, the data that you really need to put into the as –built model. That sounds like it's not going to be my area of specialism but that means that actually digital solutions can start fulfilling more of their potential.
Dale Sinclair (04:58)
Fantastic. So, now to the conversation that we really want to have. We're here this week showcasing our kits-of-parts approach and as you both know we're really keen to transform the industry around this approach. Which is really about how do we drive more manufacturing-led approach and certainly what I've learned over the last couple of years is that designing for manufacturing is a completely different thing to designing for construction. And certainly, most of the barriers that we see to the change in the future is around that perception that we're still designing for construction and subsetting manufacturing.
But I think what really fascinates me is, Tim, over the years we've had lots of conversations and of course we're up the supply chain here, working with the client from the brief into design and we work our way through, and we push small batches of elements into the factory. That's the way traditional manufacturing works with a construction led process and design and build. But of course, what we've spoken about repeatedly is well how do we get those manufacturing insights upstream and I think recently we spoke about bringing the voice of the manufacturer into the room into the early stages. So, I've got to come back to that in a second because I like to hear what you think are some of the things that we might do.
Listen, how do we define that manufacturing knowledge into a process where we're fundamentally designing for manufacture, not designing for construction? Of course, Bruce, I am super jealous of you because what's great about what you do is you have that ownership from end to end if you like. You have the ownership from the initial designs and of course the tools you're using, automating all through to your factory solutions, which are based on site. And I think those I think those approaches are absolutely fantastic because it allows manufacturing to happen still in a site environment but in a very economical way. So maybe, I'm not sure who's first, but maybe can you give us some insights of your let's say more connected process and what you would advise listeners and then to maybe come back to what you would say.
Bruce Bell (07:11)
My background is as an industrial designer. So, I trained as an industrial designer, and I was very aware of how things are made in the industrial design world. So, let's say cars or phones or most products that we buy. And in those processes generally there is a design on the computer in 3D, usually owned by the company that's going to have their name on it.
And it gets translated into a physical object by computer. And I think for me that's always been like, “Wow, that's so powerful. We can design something on computer and the computer makes it. And that gives you that consistency and quality.” And so, for me it's how do you tap into that process? And I think that what you find in the traditional construction process is it's very siloed. So, architects have access to these amazing, sophisticated design tools, and they have the knowledge and the experience and everything you need to actually make use of computers, but they're one step removed from the making process. For me it's a lot about exploring the procurement route and how things are made and organisational as much as it is about technology. You know, actually, if look at my business, we're basically using BIM, we’re using industrial manufacturing software. Both of these products have been around for 20 years, or 30 years in case of production engineering and production manufacturing software. We're using a standard bit of manufacturing kit, but we're using it in a different organisational way.
Our business model is different. How we make money is different. And I don't think everyone's going to work in the same way that we do. And one of the conversations I had with Dale recently was, "I love what they're doing, that kit-of-parts, but I'm like, there is some real opportunities here if you can figure out how to get one layer down further, right?” So, I'm like, I know things that I've never used, and I'd love to... tube laser, right? Tube laser is like CNC manufacture of steel tube parts. So, they can be rectangular sectioned, rectangular hollow, square hollow, tube, whatever. And a lot of what I see Dale doing uses this technology. And there was an opportunity to go straight from what you do to that laser machine if you can figure out how to have a relationship with the person with that machine. Does the contractor want to use it?
How do you do it around those type of things? Whereas if you just define it, I remember I used to work Foster & Partners in the early 2000s working with Hugh Whitehead who was on their advanced geometry team and they would have to define all the geometry of the building perfectly using Bentley microsystems, generative components and they can basically kind of rote it and then they would have to define it geometrically and then give it over to somebody else, who would then define it themselves on their own system.
This is mad. This is absolutely insane. You would never do that in an industrial design. And I think that for me is how do we get over that? I think, you know, looking at, going back to what Tim said about BIM.
The big failure in companies to utilize BIM is because they're not incentivized to create good BIM geometry. Architects are not incentivized to invest in it and the BIM itself is an amazing product. We get amazing things out of it. But at the moment you still have a lack of really well engineered, production engineered BIM models because people aren't incentivized. It's not because the technology doesn't allow us to. So, for me it's that organizational thing, that relationship with technology, with design systems, which is key to unlocking it. I'm always encouraging people to look a bit sideways on it.
Dale Sinclair (10:51)
I think that's a really good point because one of things that we've seen happening with design and build as it's evolved over the years is less and less definition from, I guess a fabrication point of view. Whereas when I was a younger architect, because we were used to designing for construction directly to the contractor, we were used to delivering that higher level of detail. And I think some of that has gone away. And certainly, with the left shift, as we call it, where we see the need to have a higher level of detail in the early stages. And we now have the train driver in the room in some of our projects so that we can figure out not just how we're going to make this, but how do those pieces come together like a giant LEGO kit. So yeah, I think some great examples there. And Tim what are your kind of thoughts on this?
Tim Hall (11:40)
It's interesting taking the contrast with Bruce's kind of what we call soup-to-nuts concept design, all the way through to hand over of the keys. And I don't know if you get involved in any facilities management afterwards but it's almost the entire end-to-end process even if it's not doing the facilities management. And as you say the barrier between each of those layers is where things go wrong and one of the things I like to be rude to everybody across the value chain -- and Dale and I have had some conversations about my view of architects who have taken Dale’s DFMA overlay that he did for RIBA back in 2017, 2018, something like that.
And they say, “Oh yeah, we do DFMA! Look we’ve got the overlay on our wall.”
“Well yeah, but what does that actually mean to you?”
And, “Well it’s design for manufacturing and assembly.”
That’s about as far as their understanding goes. They don’t understand about reducing parts count, they don’t understand about the interface details, they don’t understand about standardization in the true sense of the word.
So, there’s a lot of kind of bluff and superficial knowledge in different things. And that's where Dale and I are really working hard is to try and get the - rather than a client trying to specify I need an 80 kilonewton floor because I've seen somebody write an 80 kilonewton floor on a drawing somewhere. I've no idea what it means, whether it's you know forklift truck traffic or whether it's just pedestrians in stiletto heels, but I've specified something because it makes me look cleverer or stops me being bluffed by my consultants and suppliers.
And there's too much of that in this industry between those layers. You think you're specifying something and you're probably adding cost. And one of the things that Bruce will know from his industrial heritage is 80% of the product's cost is already baked in before you make your first prototype. Because you've set the concept, you've set the parameters and once you've started production you can only tweak with the 20%. So, the idea is let's work out what adds cost to your process. Let's work out what adds cost to redesigning for an architect. What makes it really difficult for a project manager to do his job is lots of paperwork? Can we streamline paperwork so that the manufacturer provides the paperwork in exactly the right format for the guy on site to be able to do his health and safety, due diligence and all that kind of stuff?
So, it's that integration is the key word and if we can use digital tools to enable it and not abdicate responsibility for simplifying first. I'm a big fan of, when it comes to any digital system, simplify first and then use digital to build on that simple structure.
Dale Sinclair (14:10)
That's a great point and one of things that we're trying to recommend to clients is, to try and shift away from project approaches to program approaches.
And I think over the years, I guess I've had so many of the same conversations and even a few weeks ago I was doing a review of the project and we were talking about how to connect the unitized cladding panels to the frame and I'm thinking, “I've had this conversation a hundred times before. Why do we have to do this on every project?” And I certainly see massive inefficiencies on projects as we redo the same thing that we've done on every single project over the last... last 500 years arguably, since we started using scale drawing. So, I suppose my question to you then is from both your perspectives, I mean certainly Bruce, you have a process that, as Tim says, soup-to-nuts. Is geared to a single project, but do you think there's a lot of program approach to what you do, maybe even through the workflow that you use? And I guess Tim, what would you be recommending to people? Do you think programme approaches help to drive standardisation and maybe becoming the catalyst to how we change to the processes of the future?
Bruce Bell (15:31)
If you look at what we do, right, so at Facit, what we do is we say our houses are built of the same set systems. Every house. So, it's got the same foundation systems, it's got the same superstructure, it's got the same doors, windows, heating systems, and then we reconfigure it through our system, right? You could do the same thing with multiple different typologies. So, you could do the, let's say there's WSP’s spin-off for airport buildings, right? And you would do that, and you would have your systems, and you would take a further responsibility though.
I think that's the thing. I don't think you can do it just as that separate consultant. Really, I think really to get down, I think you have to take a little step further. And I don't know how, that's probably the most difficult question to answer. Actually, there's company in Netherlands who are called Finch. They do five, six story apartment blocks, CLT. They’re not really a manufacturer.
Actually, what they are is they're a spin-off from an architecture practice, but they do the same thing. It's the same products, they've got the same suppliers, they've got a relationship with the contractor, and they just build apartment blocks.
And they do it over and over again and they're doing it really, really well and I was like actually you could do the same with all sorts of other building typologies but it's a different business model, it's a different promotion. I think the idea that as a customer, as a client, I can go to any architecture practice and get any building I want made that's possible, is a bit like, “Well you know if you want to do that then you're going to be kind of stuck in the same place.” So, I think it's that change in mindset which is the biggest challenge.
Probably needs the most amount of experimentation and it needs large companies such as WSP or other large contractors to really not just collaborate, not just say, “Hey, we're going to try something out” but actually try to put business out, you know really, and I think it could be incredibly successful. Going back to what Tim said a moment ago about architects designing, I think one of the things that I like to do in our business is we have architects working within the business, especially the younger boys and girls who come in and you know they design stuff. I'm like, "That's great, how are we going to build it?" And they're like, “What?” Literally how are we going to build this thing that you have drawn?
And it's never really occurred to them, and it blows their minds that that would be the case. There definitely has been, particularly in the last 25 years as Dale said, this kind of movement away in the architecture sector from architects being responsible for construction detailing to D&B contracts where they're just doing concept, and it's handed on and now we seem to have two extremes. We've got modular companies that Tim has been working with who do soup-to-nuts and that's the whole thing and then we've got architects working in a very light way using D&B contracts which has got, you know, good work but they're not very progressive they're very difficult vehicles to try and modify and I think that the question is what's in the middle?
What new things can we do that are neither one extreme nor the other? How do you make them viable?
Dale Sinclair (18:44)
Some great points there and certainly the big challenge as we do more kids' projects and we're giving clients confidence of what we do, we're seeing the narrative shifting to supply chain uncertainties, supply chains and of course how do we procure sub-assemblies on a program level? So, you do believe that new business models are inevitable as part of this shift to manufacturing.
Bruce Bell (19:14)
Not necessarily inevitable. It takes effort and willpower and people like yourself to push it and make people think. I have started to see lots of, particularly on the younger generation of architects, starting to try out different business models. But I think needs a very collaborative approach and I think that's where a lot of these younger companies fail because they still take a very siloed approach, you know. I see young companies start up and they try and spin out some kind of different business model but they kind of do it in a slightly half-hearted way.
And actually, to really do it properly you do need to bring together disciplines. Like we have architects sitting side by side with production engineers, we're side by side with construction managers. It's literally that gluing together of different people and making sure they've all got the same focus and the same alignment where you can make it work. But you really have to bridge those gaps.
Tim Hall (19:56)
I would say in a smaller organisation like yours; you can afford to wrap your personal arms around the whole team that has all of those skills. But when we're talking about building Manchester Airports, you can't do that. Tacit has not got the bandwidth to do that. So, you have to find a way of getting that collaboration endemic. And it does work in aviation, it does work in automotive, it does work in electronics.
Samsung don't design Snapdragon chips. They trust the chip designer to do their bit, but it's the language between those two and even though they're not co-located there's a level of trust. And I think that's a conversation that you and I have been having, Dale, is getting the voice of the chip manufacturer into the phone maker. Do you know we could do this? And you’re very welcome to say, “Actually, we don't need that, we're not interested in that, but what we are interested in...” And it shouldn't always be about cost. And that's where construction is a bit old school. It's all about banging the table, “Let's sharpen your pencil, fellas, let's take some price out of this.” And it becomes transactional. And that's where I am a little bit cautious about your enthusiasm for serial clients who have a pipeline of projects and a whole program of work because what they'll do is they'll buy the first one and have a look, “No, I didn't like that experience, I'll try another value chains.” And will they really do that serial thing.
Bruce and I know that Toyota would never suddenly change their gearbox manufacturer halfway through a project because they didn't fancy the way it worked last time. But the guys that once they're in, they have to screw up really badly because those guys know us so well that nobody could possibly step in and have anything better unless it's a breakthrough technology. So that's the mindset I think WSP has the potential of engendering in your client base. What we want to do is we want to find a partner in the same way as we may or may not have found life partners. It's not something where we're used to saying, “I’ve tried that for a couple of weeks, I'm going to marry somebody else now.”
Dale Sinclair (21:50)
No, it's a good point. I mean, I've heard people in the past say, every building's a prototype and I think my retort to that now is, well, that kind of misses the point. The whole point about construction as a paradigm is we take thousands of small things to site. What that allows us to do is every time do a unique building. Because every product can be different. But of course, then we're creating interfaces that are into their billions, if you like, because these products are not necessarily used to coming together. And I guess that's why, as you know, our fascination is with things like the car industry reducing number of permutations and beginning to look at how you have configuration options that will help the manufacturer but still give the customer an ability to choose. But of course, it's hard for architects to understand that because it puts really different constraints onto the process.
Bruce Bell (22:45)
Tim just said, you have to have those supplier relationships. I think if they're not there, then you're going to struggle to really transform. Exactly as Tim said, we are so reliant on our long-term relationships with our suppliers, our timber suppliers, our window suppliers. And we rely on it so much. Just the other day, we had a problem with one of our windows. And we've been working with them for 15 years, the same company. I've used the same roofer since 2010.
Those things are really critical and the idea that they can all be interchangeable with anything you like, it just undermines that bottom-up input of better ways of doing it, better costs, evolution of design details over time. So, I definitely think that is probably one of the biggest challenges not sure how you would do that because it's not if you're in a very competitive, open-tender, best-price scenario. You need a client with a very different mindset.
Tim Hall (23:46)
I can give a really concrete example, emphasis on concrete perhaps. So, working out in Hong Kong for Hong Kong University student accommodation, we were funded to do a piece of work to look at their manufacturing and supply chain after the design had been done. So, it wouldn't be the design we would have chosen but it was a volumetric modular student accommodation.
And there was quite a lot that was right with it. We worked with a steelwork manufacturer who was producing a hot-rolled steel cage and their first time pass rate when we started working with them was about 68% and the rest of it had to be modified or adjusted and by the time we got into module 50 out of 1500 they were down well up to 98%. So, we got that process. The project was successful, it was on time, it was stressful, there was a change of supplier in the middle, all sorts of things were difficult, but it was a success.
Phase two of the project, they iterated the design. They said wanted it to feel higher quality. So rather than just having a concrete floor, they wanted concrete walls between apartments, lightweight walls between the rooms within an apartment. So, they went out to tender, new architect, new structural engineer, new contractor, new supplier, and it was a total disaster. It's now a year late and it's probably going to be two years late.
We were novated to the contractor as basically as a tax on them in order to help them do their process and they just weren't interested they just wanted to do it the way they've always done and as a result it was taking them 70 days to manufacture a module whereas when we were working at Berkley when we're doing it in 35 hours and they didn't believe we could do it in 35 hours to do a module. Until you've seen Liverpool play Barcelona at football, you might think that five-a-side played by a bunch of six-year-olds is the best it can be. And it ain't, fellas. We've got a long way to go, and we want to work with WSP and companies like Facit to show the art of the possible.
Dale Sinclair (25:40)
So, what's the one thing that you think might help us to get onto that transformation journey. Is there one thing or do you think it's a massive reset that's required to how we do things?
Tim Hall (25:51)
I think if you can get somebody that is an iconic client that will almost evangelize about the experience that they've had. Not in a everything's perfect, but we started off with this and it was 70% of what we wanted. The second phase of the project was 95% and the third phase was over our expectations and the cost started to come down. If you can get somebody that people trust and believe in to do that and show that actually 75% plus of the team that worked on project one was still, there by the end and it's about behavior; I think that would be a game changer.
Construction is a great industry for the rush to be second. They'll follow somebody who's made money out of it. And so far, unfortunately, the volumetric modular story, there aren't many to rush and follow.
Dale Sinclair (26:45)
True, true. And, Bruce, any thoughts on that front?
Bruce Bell (26:49)
Yeah, I think that kind of educational piece of the client is probably the first step to make sure they really understand the long-term benefits and just to bring some kind of framework where you say, “This is where we're going to go.” Really have these kind of conversations with enough senior people as well. Not just one person from the company that's going to buy in and then leave and you’re dead. You know, stuff that's really going in a quite detailed level, quite a senior level, quite a long-term commitment. If you can get that and you can demonstrate, say it's going to take X amount of time, this is where we're going to go. If you decide to change your mind, it's all in the bin. And I think it can work really well. I think if you can get them to buy in, I've no idea how easy or difficult that is.
Dale Sinclair (27:32)
Anyway, this has been a fantastic conversation, and I'm sure we can talk for hours as we usually do, but we need to draw this to a close. So, one final question for you. Obviously, you'll go back out into digital construction week. Any final things that you plan to see before you leave here today?
Bruce Bell (27:51)
I might go over to the geospatial side and just have a look at what's going on over there. I'm particularly interested to see, you know, there's some scanning stuff, analysing as-built buildings is one of my interests, so I want to see what the latest on that is.
Dale Sinclair (28:04)
Great, and Tim?
Tim Hall (28:22)
I think for me, one of things I haven't yet seen here, although I have had a look on the zero-carbon stage, is that I don't see enough of linking the power of BIM and digital to actually working out what the embodied and in-use carbon is in a building. And if that's not a focus for us now, it's going to be hard to get it back up on the agenda. So, I'll go and see if I can dig in some dark corners and find some people doing some good stuff in that respect.
Dale Sinclair (28:32)
Tim and Bruce, thanks for joining me today. Brilliant conversation and look forward to seeing you again soon.
Tim Hall (28:37)
Always a pleasure, let's just make stuff happen.
Bruce Bell (28:40)
Thank you.
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Normalising MMC
Johnathan Munkley (00:00)
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the WSP EXPECT DIFFERENT podcast and we are live from DCW on day two in London Excel. Do not mind the noise in the background, there's a lot of people wandering around, nothing we can do about that, but I think it adds to the value of the content because it's raw and real. So, my name's Jonathan Munkley, I'm head of digital services for WSP but I'm joined by two esteemed guests. So, let's get them introduced. Over to you, Paul. What are you doing, where are you from?
Paul Drayton (00:31)
Morning. Yeah sure, it's Paul Drayton, I have the privilege of leading the digital team in Laing O'Rourke
Johnathan Munkley (00:35)
Claire.
Claire Callan (00:36)
Hi, good morning. I'm Claire Callan. I'm part of the Building Technology Systems team at WSP where we look at technology and buildings from all different perspectives.
Johnathan Munkley (00:44)
This is probably the most serious conversation we've probably ever had Claire; this is very serious. Normally we're chatting projects over coffee. So, we're here today to talk everything MMC, offsite, probably some digital, a little bit of smart, probably blend the whole thing together.
MMC and offsite has been something that has always been thrown as the big fix to lot of the construction industry's problems since I started my career. But I don't think it's really had a foothold over the 20 years I've been in the industry. I think it's starting to make progress. Let's start with the barriers to adoption. It’s always a good kind of grounding point. What's stopped MMC and offsite really kind of snowballing into the normal way of working?
Paul Drayton (01:26)
I'm not sure everyone has it in their crosshairs as the way of doing things. It is different. It's breaking away from the norm. I mean, it's a core part of our operating model and I know it's absolutely at the heart of WSP's approach as well. So, I think for people like us, it makes a huge amount of sense. And I think when you see it with your own eyes, whether it's you're making modules in a factory or how quickly it comes together, it's just a no-brainer.
So, I don’t know, why hasn't it been? We're very lucky. We've got the appetite. We've been set a challenge from our founding father to really embrace it. And we have our own factories, so it's a no-brainer for us. Other people don't have access to that, so I think just access to the facilities could be part of it.
Claire Callan (02:14)
I think one of the challenges I heard early on was that delivering like this is often about scale and repeatability. So, if you're building a set of houses that are all the same, the time you take to design is longer than the time it takes to build. So, if you're only building three of them, it's not really worth the effort. But if you're building 40 of them, it starts to change. It's all about being able to deliver at scale in some ways.
Johnathan Munkley (02:37)
I had the honour of spending some time with Barclay Homes, with the CEO of Barclay Homes asking about their journey and the challenges they had. They started with the factory, which is houses and then projects got delayed because of planning. They had a factory full of houses, didn't know where to go. So, they ended up trying to control the entire process from buying land to designing.
So, you can see the challenges that people are facing. Like projects I've worked on through my career, the process of concept design through to planning, through to then getting a contract that hasn't changed really. And that to me is probably the main barrier I've seen because we hand over projects to contractors that are bespoke, architected that you can't put in a factory.
Paul Drayton (03:23)
One misconception maybe is that to get MMC working it needs to be repeatable, and it absolutely doesn't. Everything coming out of a factory can be different. There's an economy of scale if you take that kit-of-parts approach, but we take a design from people like yourselves, we'll break it down how we are going to build it and we're going to build it in bite-sized chunks that we can put on the back of a wagon. So, every part coming out is different.
Now if we then look at a high rise, a hospital where there is a greater level of repeatability, it's quicker, you get more economies of scale, but you can build anything offsite. We have a target that a minimum of 70% of our projects we believe should be built offsite for various reasons that maybe we’ll come onto in a moment. But if we don't think we can achieve that, we need to think really hard, is this the right thing for us? Are we building this in the way that we believe is the right way to do construction?
Johnathan Munkley (04:17)
So, what has always been the drivers for Laings? Because I think even when I graduated, when did Laings build their factory? When was the strategic shift?
Paul Drayton (04:29)
We've had the factory for kind of 15 years. For me the number one driver is safety and quality, actually, rather than cost. Schedule is there as well, but if you go into the factory and you see how people are building things, it's safe, it's not that breaking work, they're in dry, warm conditions rather than being out on the banks of the River Mersey.
We were talking about Everton yesterday, driving rain and so on. It's a much better place to work. You've got much more control over the quality of what you're doing and part of that is because you're looking down, it's right there, it's all the truth. And you can be building stuff three, four, five, six months ahead of time so it's an incredible way of protecting the schedule.
Claire Callan (05:13)
One of the things we've seen that's very interesting is we've had projects come in now that are in more rural locations and they know they don't have the building skills in that area to build, so it would be too expensive for them to complete the project locally. But if they can build offsite and drive in the components, it's a much more cost-effective way to deliver, and so they can achieve a project that wouldn't otherwise be achievable.
Paul Drayton (05:34)
That’s a great point.
Johnathan Munkley (05:35)
So, we've not seen mass adoption in the construction industry, however, as simple as that. And I think one of the key changes to the industry that is going to drive it is carbon.
No matter what you say, the construction industry is worse for –the statistics don't lie—17% of everything bought on construction sites goes in the bin, 37% of landfill is from the UK construction site. Still in the UK, I think it's 40% of people globally, which is just mad. Economically, it's a $600 billion figure that goes into landfill from construction sites, that's big numbers economically. What's the kind of waste reduction from offsite?
Like in terms of projects is the like metrics you've got where it's like we reduce waste by X if it's done through an offsite manufacturing process.
Paul Drayton (06:23)
I don't have a measure to hand that we track off-site because we do it on every one of our projects and we're constantly challenging what materials are we using. I think a lot of it is driven by the quality of the information. So, for off-site MMC to work, you need a higher level of design maturity much, much earlier in the process. If you've got that, you get greater surety over uncertainty over your bill of quantities. You get better certainty over getting it right first time, not having rework. To enable it, it needs a real focus on information.
Johnathan Munkley (06:59)
Lots of terms thrown around in industry that kind of put this in different categories. Offsite, DFMA, manufacturer's approach, kit-of-parts, what terms should we be using as an industry?
Paul Drayton (07:10)
For me it's DFMA, it's Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, and there are three key points to it. It's all about getting high levels of design maturity as early as possible. You then apply that into a manufacturing context, so we're going to be manufacturing things rather than constructing them. And once you've got something manufactured, that's when you can then assemble it out on site. And that's a fundamental change to the construction process because you haven't got people constructing, you've got people assembling. You know, like a Meccano set.
Johnathan Munkley (07:42)
You’ve heard it here first, that is the term we need to use moving forward. DFMA.
Paul Drayton (07:45)
DFMA.
Johnathan Munkley (07:46)
From now on I'm only going to use the term DFMA and there's nothing else. Maybe occasionally kit-of-parts because I work for WSP but I'm definitely going use DFMA moving forward. Forever.
Paul Drayton (07:56)
You heard it here first. [All laugh]
Johnathan Munkley (07:58)
We're going to create a standard and that's going to be it. Going back to my career and the projects I've worked on, probably the most successful and enjoyable collection of projects I've ever worked on as a professional was a data center program in the US. And the supply chain all worked together on every project from blank sheet of paper to handover and they repeated that across all the projects and that completely transformed the way they operated. It wasn't necessarily completely focused on offsite or DFMA, sorry I've already broken my rule. [Paul laughs] Do we need to see more of that being constructed rather than disjointed, sporadic supply chains where you work from RIBA naught to three and then someone else comes in and...
Do you know what I mean? That is still a constant challenge for us.
Paul Drayton (08:42)
100%. The most important thing about construction and about digital and construction is people. At the end of the day, I truly believe that the more we can collaborate right the way through from architects to designers out into the supply chain and then actually through to the clients as well, the better the outcomes. And a lot of that is based on trust. A lot of that is based on relationship and being able to unblock things, but also fundamentally to delight our customers no matter where you sit in that chain.
But if we're to build something, deliver it with certainty on time in full, we have to have those relationships all the way through. I'd offer where you've had the most enjoyment for a project is where you had the best relationships.
Johnathan Munkley (09:27)
100%.
Paul Drayton (09:28)
Conversely, where you've had the most sleepless nights and you've lost the most hair have been where that trust isn't there, the relationships that you're lacking.
Claire Callan (09:38)
Well, and I think coming from a different industry, I spent 20 years in financial services. When you walk past a building site and it has one name on the outside, it looks like one team built a building. But actually when you come into the industry and you realize there's 80 or 90 different teams from the moment the architect gets on board, through the design stages, through the construction stages, through to the vendors that are involved, the number of parties you have to collaborate with is so huge that building those networks and those trusts to enable you to deliver is so important.
Johnathan Munkley (10:06)
What levers can our industry pull to change that? Because there's a term I use a lot, the term pointy carrot, which is business case plus legislation. But if you speak to a commercial developer. All they care about really is commercials and risk and they're obviously driven by legislation as well. So, is there something our industry needs to do, or the government needs to do or needs to change from a legislation perspective or policy perspective to help drive adoption of this tech, DFMA on construction sites? Because if they cannot do it and there's something cheaper, they'll probably not do it.
Paul Drayton (10:44)
I think there is a challenge with that. Ultimately, it always all comes down to cost, right. And I get it, people have got shareholders to please and so on. And we will work with clients who, they have the appetite to do something differently. They believe in the power, the impact on delivery certainty, on safety, quality that digitally enabled DFMA can offer. And we'll actively not work with companies where we think it's going to be a battle from day one. We were talking a minute ago about the importance of those relationships. If you're not going to get those relationships, then why would we do that? Is there a way of mandating that? I'm not sure.
I think it's down to the likes of ourselves to come together, to clients, to forums like this and really extol the virtues and be able to demonstrate the benefit of doing it. Be able to quantify the benefit of doing it.
Johnathan Munkley (11:43)
Just for the audience, I was actively nodding throughout all of that conversation.
Claire Callan (11:47)
I think if you're looking to get legislation changed, often it's because people are advocating for it. And I think it's when people understand the benefit and the impact that DFMA can have on communities. Nobody wants to live next door to a building site for four years. If you're living next door to something that is a building site for three months with two to three weeks of very active assembly, that's quite different to living next door to a really noisy building site with lots of diggers and trucks coming and going for years on end. I think it again comes around to marketing, that if you can get communities on board and advocating for it, the legislation will change, the developers will change.
Johnathan Munkley (12:23)
I was watching the news yesterday morning and this is really relevant to what you just said. The council is issuing a £400 compensation package to all the residents around the Grenfell site because... isn't it like four years overdue? Something ridiculously long now, isn't it? I don't know the reason for that but that kind of tricked in my head of like that's probably costing them a lot of money. Obviously not my area of expertise and I don't really know much about that, but I did see it on the news yesterday.
About that being a challenge, that's really relevant to be honest.
Paul Drayton (12:52)
It's a really interesting point you made Claire, when I joined Laings a couple of years ago, one of the first projects I went to was in the centre of Oxford and we're building a new facility for the university there. Heritage city, everything's listed, narrow streets etc.
And it is the cleanest, most uncluttered, safest, quietest construction site I think I've ever been to. And that's not unique to Oxford because it's in Oxford and it's a requirement or a stipulation. That's just what you get when you're using DFMA and employing it. The contrast of that, like you say, you look at a typical site that's done in a typical way, but again, can you legislate that?
Waze is an incredible way of navigating and helping me not just pick a route but avoid busy routes. But my mum will still use her 99p Atlas that I get from W.H. Smiths every Christmas, you know? [All laugh]
Johnathan Munkley (13:49)
Valid point, it's a valid point. Right, slight direction shift into my area of enthusiasm. So, one of the discussions that happens a lot around DFMA projects is information and data. It's digital construction week so it's a very relevant topic. How do projects need to shift to a more data-driven approach or when is the information required? When is the data needed in projects? I think the easier response is it's needed earlier. Probably has to be the starting point. But how are you seeing, how are you both seeing that shift in projects too? On these kinds of projects, the data being pulled in at the start of jobs. That's been relevant to you, Claire, being in your world of SMART expertise.
Claire Callan (14:31)
Yeah, so I mean, my specialist area is SMART building technology, so typically that's more about the finished building and the products we hand over to clients, what services they're putting in the building. But for us, a very early and important step in stage two is to sit down with the digital team, also with the client, because if it's a big client, they will often have a policy around their data and how they like to receive their data, and they might already be aligned with a particular naming initiative that they might use.
So, we sit down very early in the project to make sure we're very clear what data naming are we going to use on all our drawings throughout the whole project. And then we make sure in the subsequent stages of the project that that's very clearly enforced. Because at the end of the day, if the client wants a building where they understand what are all the sub-meters doing, what are my fans doing, is everything working as it should be. When the client wants that level of data, that conversation has to start early.
And we have to make sure we drive consistency in how data is used throughout the project so as to achieve that.
Paul Drayton (15:29)
I agree. DFMA will not work if you don't have the right data with the right people at the right time. And that's, I know that's an obvious thing to say for any project, any stage of construction, but actually when you're building things three, four, five, six months ahead and it's, you're printing it in a factory and then you're shipping it to site, it has to be right.
So, I don’t think about that as a challenge, I think about it as a consideration because it's something that everyone in the industry is talking about. It gives you an opportunity as well. So, all the rich data that we can and should be procuring and collecting in the early design stages and then through the construction process and supply chain as well. That is the oxygen to feed the smart building.
So huge opportunity comes from getting the right information earlier. I think the challenge is, we're working with clients now that are talking about wanting a digital twin, a smart building, and we're halfway through construction. You're like, we're probably four years late speccing and actually collecting that data. The opportunity that that provides is huge. That will give you efficiency when you're running your building, utilization, energy usage.
You're talking about the need for carbon earlier. If we've got the right information, and we're collecting it the right way. You get so many more freebies and add-ons, if you like. the other consideration is, if we're priming something, it's kind of up to us how we go about that. If we're in a JV and you're doing some of the big national infrastructure projects and there's three, four, five, six tier ones involved, the importance of getting those information standards defined up front, not just for us but for the client, are absolutely vital. And we've got projects I can think of where we've got those information standards agreed up front, and it's been simple and effortless and comfortable. There's other parts of the project where we haven’t, and it's been a bit like the Wild West, and it's been hard for everyone.
Claire Callan (17:31)
There's also an aspect around the client demand and one thing I think that's positive is we're seeing standards like for example NABERS which is all around measuring building energy consumption in operation. So not just did you build something that should work well but actually when it goes into operation is it working effectively and so we're seeing those become much better known across clients and they're coming in asking for it at the start. I think that probably does help that they're asking for it early and not sort of suddenly halfway through thinking, “That would be nice.”
Johnathan Munkley (17:58)
I did a presentation yesterday on why ISO 19650 is only the beginning of information management on projects and compared adoption of ISO to construction productivity. And basically, there's been no productivity gains really. Been some very small, but I think the basis of the presentation was that it comes down to people and collaboration and the standard is such a small part of that.
Paul Drayton (18:24)
The ISO19650 piece is really interesting. It's easy to go, “Okay, that is for the information management team, or the BIM manager, or the digital engineer.” And it’s a great starting point to make sure that we're all on a level playing field in our trade. But actually, we're seeing real value in exposing the wider business, the design managers. They need to understand what's the importance of this in our team. And procurement, they need to understand when we're asking for these things in the contract, all this data and it to be in the middle, in the loin in a certain way with a certain coding structure. There's a really important reason why we're doing that and so there's a huge education and literacy piece. So, it’s very simple in principle but as you said it's all about people it's all about change and actually that that's probably the bit where I don't think as an industry, we're investing enough time and energy at the moment.
Claire Callan (19:16)
And it can make all the difference when it's enforced. I was told a story yesterday that horrified me. As I said, one of the things we do in stage two is we define very early what is the data naming standard going to be across this project. We make sure it's socialized well, and we make sure from there all of our drawings pick up on it. And somebody told me a story, I don't know who it is in the industry, “Oh yeah, we do that at the beginning of stage two, but then we draw whatever we want on the drawings.” I was like, that's nonsense.
Johnathan Munkley (19:39)
Whoever that person is, Claire is coming for you. Run for your life. [Claire and Paul laugh]
Claire Callan (19:45)
What I'm very pleased with is the teams we work on have amazing document controllers who do the grunt work of making sure that's enforced throughout the project and I'm so grateful to them because that's what makes our project successful.
Johnathan Munkley (19:56)
So, what do we think has stagnated construction productivity? It's always a question that probably has 50 different ways to attack it then. Because DFMA is definitely one of the key pillars to improve construction productivity. The statistics of projects that take kit-of-parts, DFMA approach.
The numbers don't lie, do they? They're quicker, they're faster, they're built faster. Simple as that. So, what have been the blockers over last 20 years that have stagnated the construction productivity index? It is globally as well; it's not just the UK. I mean I can see some lots of cogs moving in brains there. And it's a big, wide, broad question.
Paul Drayton (20:35)
Yeah, jeez, this is probably another podcast in its own going.
Access to data and that's quite broad in itself. I think designers having access to data, that coming to the contractors and then really importantly going down to the people that are really earning the pennies for all of us, the guys and girls at the workplace who are actually delivering. Giving them access to design data, material data, simple easy visualization of where something should go, visual work instructions.
And then having quality sign-off processes at the tip of their fingertips rather having to go back to the office. That's where I see huge opportunities still. There are inroads being made there, but every project you go to is doing it to a different level. So, I'd offer access to data right the way through the supply chain.
Claire Callan (21:44)
I think for me there's a very interesting tension that's always ongoing around the planning process. I was reading a piece of research last year by an American researcher who looked at, they looked specifically at roads projects over the course of 100 years, and they were able to identify that at the point where planning became a thing.
In the early 60s, in I think it was California, there was a project being built and it was the first time they allowed for community consultation. So, it was the first time the community could come and look, but it was also the first time then that a developer had to kind of robustly provide information back to validate what they were doing and get that planning and approval. And I think it's something that has spiraled since then and there's a very heavy cost in projects in being very clear upfront what we're doing, how we're doing, what the impact will be.
And I think there will always be attention in society about what is the right level of interrogation because I think at the moment, we've gone a little bit too far and I think what we're seeing politically at present is someone coming back to a more appropriate level of interrogation before sign-off because when it's too hard to get planning, developers just don't bring forward projects.
Johnathan Munkley (22:33)
Valid. And I think that drives a lot of the developers wanting to keep fees down in early stages and not want to appoint people in early stages because they want to reduce their risk profile.
Paul Drayton (22:46)
And ironically, if you look at MacLeamy’s curve, the more level of effort you put in upfront, the greater that is, the lower the defects, the lower the design change you're going to have later down the line. So, you've got this unhealthy tension where actually we as contractors and probably you guys as designers would love to see more investment upfront to get it, to get the level of information high.
That relies on a really constructive conversation with the clients. And it's not that we're going to spend more, ultimately, we're going to spend less and we're going to be de-risking things, but the cost profile will change, and it has a left shift in there.
Johnathan Munkley (23:27)
It's just a constant conversation that is, and it's such a... I would love to see the shift to just employ the right people earlier and get things fixed and sorted. So, if you're listening to this podcast and it's something you want to learn more about, or it's an area of a topic you want to really get into, you might have no knowledge, some knowledge, what's the first step you should take as a professional, either engineer, architect, QS, graduate, undergraduate to kind of get into the world of DFMA and kit-of-parts. Where can you learn about this?
Paul Drayton (24:16)
Come and apply for a job with Laing O'Rourke [All laugh] You've heard of those?
Johnathan Munkley (24:20)
We've got lots of jobs going at Laings, guys.
Paul Drayton (24:05)
It's a really interesting question. It is showing up more through higher education. We’re very privileged to support a number of undergraduate degrees. And it's something that we teach at those. Exeter and Cambridge to call out a couple. I think you are seeing more of a pull through contractors and through designers such as yourselves as well.
And coming to something like this, there are various forums where people can get involved, jump onto Google.
Johnathan Munkley (24:33)
Claire, over to you.
Claire Callan (24:34)
I would definitely recommend DCW for next year to anyone who wants to learn more. I think one positive thing is we look at, we're always talking about skills and how do we bring young people in and how do we get people interested in the industry. And you don't walk into a classroom full of 14-year-olds and try and explain information requirements to them, but if you walk in and pull up some Roblox or some Minecraft and actually start designing spaces, you can get people quite involved. So, I'm excited that those platforms being big will get people involved in actually, "How can I build and design in the real world?" So, I'm positive about the future on that point.
Johnathan Munkley (25:07)
So as a closing point, is DFMA the future of our industry? Because I think it aligns to so many objectives we have of carbon reduction, cost reduction, quality and safety. So, if you're joining the industry, if you become an expert in DFMA, it's probably going to give you a better career, I would expect. Because I did it with digital. I was like, “Right, digital is going to give me a stronger career than just being a traditional architect.” And so, I deviated.
Paul Drayton (25:34)
Interesting.
I think it, I guess I'm coming at it from a slightly different perspective. I don't think it's the future, I think it's the now. And like I said, every one of our projects will have a minimum of 70%, be it Everton football stadium, be it a hospital, be it Old Oak Common, these are all projects that are being done with 70% or more offsite. So, it's not the future, it's the now. I think we'll see wider adoption across other designers and other contractors, and I think we have to. You look at that skills gap, you look at the demand for buildings and infrastructure globally, you can't keep doing things the way we have. There simply isn't enough capacity in the system to be able to do it. And people won't want to come and do it in these old ways.
Johnathan Munkley (26:19)
Any closing remarks, Claire?
Claire Callan (26:21)
I think it's brilliant. Bringing the cost down, we need to build so much more in the UK. And so being able to do it in an effective and efficient and safe way, fantastic.
Johnathan Munkley (26:31)
Well, on that point, I think it's probably a great place to close. So, thank you very much to our guests. Thank you, Paul. I've been Jonathan, and we've been joined by Paul and Claire. Thank you very much, everyone.
Claire Callan (26:37)
Thanks.
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Construction materials for longevity and sustainability
Dale (00:00)
Hi, everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. And if you're wondering what the sound is in the background it's Digital Construction Week 2025 here in London. Today, I have my good friend Peter Fisher from Bennet's Associates with me and I'm looking forward to having a conversation about some of the things that we've spoken about recently.
So, Peter, give me a brief introduction to what you're doing and the sort of topics that you're looking at.
Peter (00:33)
I'm an architect, I'm director of Bennetts Associates, I'm based in London. Working mostly in the UK, but most of my work recently, and our work as an office has been in commercial workspace, particularly looking at more sustainable materials, especially using biogenic materials, timber, etc. And increasingly looking at natural stone as well. So, lot of it has been around materially led construction but that is leading into a lot of interest in how we make a kit-of-parts I suppose out of dry construction is where it's come from.
Dale (01:07)
And what's brought you to this year's Digital Construction Week?
Peter (01:11)
Well, an invitation to talk on your podcast. [Both laugh] And a more general interest in digital innovation, particularly in how we use BIM. I think one of our concerns about BIM has been it might be a platform that has actually enabled us to manage complexity and, in some instances, perhaps, driven buildings that are more complicated because we can manage in a way that we couldn't in a manual or an analog world.
And part of our interest is how do we make buildings simpler? How do we exploit BIM to make buildings simpler rather than using BIM to manage buildings that are more complicated?
Dale (01:57)
I think that's fantastic point actually. When Peter and I first met we were both speaking at a conference and I think it was one of these serendipitous moments where we both realised that we were talking about very different things but they were very aligned and I was obviously talking about our kit-of-parts but I loved some of work that Peter was showing and this whole idea that materials could be more honest in the future.
And at the time I was working on a project where we were using panelized construction and we realized that we were having to make a move to large sub-assemblies that could hold up themselves in the rain, which obviously meant that we had to start thinking about a shift away from plasterboard and dry lining. And of course, that's a great thing because if we can avoid putting additional materials into our buildings, we reduce cost and we reduce carbon. So, that was my mindset and since then we've had some wonderful conversations.
Peter (02:57)
Yes, I think likewise, that same conference, I didn’t really understand why I was being invited to talk at it, to be perfectly honest. We'd been working particularly on a project in Southwark called Timber Square, which is a hybrid steel and cross-laminate timber structure on a big office building. And we were looking at trying to use self-finished materials, which was really driven by sustainability and just not having finishes.
And I guess a lot of it was dry simply because steel and timber are dry construction materials. It wasn't an ideological attachment to dryness as a construction technique. So, in some senses, I couldn't quite work out why there was such an interest in me speaking at that conference. But it was then very interesting. I think a penny dropped for me listening to you talk, Dale, about a platform-based approach, which isn't something I'd considered what we were doing as being.
It was just a steel and timber structure really, and us trying to use as few materials as possible. But a lot of it was generally dry. And I think my misunderstanding, think particularly of DFMA, was probably that it's something that happened almost after we'd designed the building. It was something that contractor chose to do or chose not to do to make the building, you know, quicker to build, but it wasn't really a design issue. But I think through that conversation, through that conference, listening to you talk about platforms, I think I began to really think of that as, this is how we design. It's for us to almost have our own platforms. And I think the interesting thing was also that sense it could be generic and interoperable things, or something I've probably seen DFMA as being a very bespoke and specific set of techniques or technologies, rather than generic, interoperable ones.
Dale (04:44)
Yeah, that's great and you're absolutely right. I think going back to this point of complexity, I do believe, having been the lead designer on many projects over the year, that the design process has got more complex as we push more data into the process and as we try to decarbonize our buildings. I guess one of the reasons that I'm really keen on a platform approach is the more that we can take to the platform, the more we can be looking at project-specific issues.
Because I find that we spend a lot of time in meetings making the same decision that we made a year ago on another project and then the year before that. So, I suppose one of the things that we are trying to do is one, stop that repetitive decision making and record decisions and minimize our own decisions to the ones that are really important to drive a really unique piece of architecture but also at the same time if we can look to have, as you say, platform approaches we can have more stable components, which through economies of scale will help to drive down the cost of the buildings in the future.
So those are some of the drivers, but I think it's all aligned to what you're trying to do as well.
Peter (05:55)
I think you're absolutely right that we put a lot of effort into designing and redesigning things that are not actually that essential to the reading or the architecture of a building. They're very central to functioning, they don't alter how a building feels. But we put loads of effort into riser configurations and fire tamper details which does feel like that is all stuff that should be generic, but it really isn't.
And actually, we're a quarter of the way through the 21st century and I think to anybody outside of construction listening to this they'd be probably in dismay that that isn't utterly generic. And yet I look at, you know used to have a flat in a Georgian house in Islington and it was built off a pattern book 200 years ago. It was a series. You can still find the cornice that was in the front room of my flat at a thermoplasterer’s in North London. It's just from their Georgian pattern book.
Dale (06:54)
It's quite interesting. I've started to do this thing with colleagues and also clients where I take them to a staircase and we say, this looks like a relatively simple and straightforward part of a building.
But when you start to look at all the rules about the slide that you need to get the handrail to work and the connection between the balustrade and the stairs and the finishes and the lighting, people begin to realise, “Oh, I see what you mean.” Every stair I go into, to me, seems sub-optimal. There's something I can find that is not quite right. And I suppose if I use the stairs as a metaphor for changing an old building, it's like, well why can't we just absolutely nail every single geometric detail for that staircase and have an amazing staircase that we can then maybe configure.
So, you're right, on one project we might say well, we want a timber handrail, and another. It may be that the handrails are used more, so we've got a stainless-steel handrail, or whatever it is, but it's this whole idea that by making repetitive decisions you can actually deliver better outcomes for design, I believe.
Peter (08:03)
Yeah, I think there's several things within that. One is stairs are unbelievably complicated to design, and I think people who are not designing them probably never quite appreciate how complex a stair is. And then we've recently done a refurb of a building that I was involved in like 15, 20 years ago and you go around the back of house staircases and my first reaction was wow, this is really nice. The handrails are really nice. And a little bit of you thinks, “Why on earth have we ever designed another back of house handrail?” Front of house, something that's a handshake of the building, yes, we need to be thinking about that.
But really, back of house staircases, why are we designing each back of house staircase? There should be a few, and as you say, a few upgrades, a few options that you can do, what colour is it, what handrail does it have, etc. But the basic infrastructure of the staircase should be just sorted.
Dale (08:54)
True and it's quite interesting, if you go to New York or any kind of office building in America you'll find that the stairs are really basic. There's exposed block where you can see all the fire protection. So even simpler because people are never using them unless there's a fire of course. Maybe we should be looking at the quality of the finishes depending on how well the stairs are used. Of course we should encourage people to use them for environmental reasons.
Peter (09:22)
Well, there's also, I worked in Germany for quite a few years, early in my career, and there's a really interesting period of West German architecture in about the 1950s, when Germany was on its knees, it had no resources. So, everything was as spare as it could be, you get very, very beautiful, elegant 1950s buildings in West Germany.
Then Germany gets wealthier in the 60s, 70s. I mean their buildings literally put weight on and they just start to become more lumpen. In a way this idea of something that's repeated, using as few resources as it possibly can. A little bit like Georgian architecture actually. It was very spare and a bit like as Britain got wealthier you moved to Victorian architecture. But it gets literally heavier and more pompous. It’s the stuff that's paired back is often much more elegant.
Dale (10:12)
Absolutely, and I think I'm sure if we went to look at one of the staircases at the Bauhaus or somewhere that we would see a stair that we were wow this is really well done.
Peter (10:22)
Let's just repeat it.
Dale (10:24)
So, moving away from staircases and this whole idea of new materials being used that are facing circular economy principles and so on and so forth. What sort of materials do you think will begin to come to the fore? I mean you've obviously spoken about CLT and timber structures and so on but what other trends do you think we might start to see?
Peter (10:46)
There's a few that we're very interested in at the moment. I mean we're doing a lot of research on different materials. You know, trying to keep ahead of the curve in a way. To one extent, if you told me ten years ago, we'd be building big mainstream commercial offices out of timber, I’d have thought, no way, but we are. So, we're trying to keep ahead of the curve on what is coming. I think some of the interesting ones are - I think modular straw is actually really interesting, where it's within a timber cassette. In effect, it's a SIPS panel with unconventional insulation, but that's carbon that's been sequestered from the atmosphere within the last year. Whereas, arguably with timber sometimes, it's 20, 30, 40 years ago and it's dry and it's modular and it's natural. So, I think that's got a lot going for it.
I'm actually very interested in natural stone. At the moment, mass-augmented stone where you're prefabricated by post-tensioning stone blocks. I think with suddenly our firm, our interests probably from a heavyweight modern tradition rather than the lightweight sort of more meso-y one in a way. And there's an appeal about masonry.
But masonry, really, for numerous reasons clay-fired bricks are heavy carbon. The idea that we send the average age of a bricklayer gets something like six months a year older. So, the idea that we're increasingly elderly people clambering up the outside of buildings in all types of inclement weather to stack burnt clay on top of burnt clay seems anachronistic. Whereas we can do proper masonry buildings using big lumps of stone, that particularly if they're sourced relatively closely are very, very low carbon.
Dale (12:24)
That’s a good point and going back to Germany, it's obviously been in the press this week about their infrastructure, huge problems with bridges and lack of maintenance. I mean we tend to design buildings for 60 years but if we obviously use materials like the natural stone, we could really increase the life of the building. And certainly, my view is that we talk about disassembling buildings, but I think we should be getting conversations about how buildings adapt and maybe buildings should be lasting 150 or 200 years. And certainly, round the corner from our office there's a 250-year-old building, okay it's maybe a bit wobbly but it's still standing there.
And I do believe that if we begin to look at architecture that has better longevity, maybe around the shell and core and having fit outs that are more capable to adapt to maybe the way of the future, any thoughts on that?
Peter (13:20)
Yeah, I mean one I've got to be careful the way that I phrase this to not criticize something that I think is right... but material passports, there's been a lot of emphasis on material passports and I think that is absolutely right that we have that information available. But in a way, if you need a material passport that's already a point of failure. What you really want is to not need a material passport and then the material passport is the next tier. So yeah, the first point of call isn't just having a building that's enduring, and you can keep.
And I suppose the interesting thing there is if you can end up using materials rather than, I suppose, composite products, I mean more chance of something that's just a single homogenous material that can be repaired as well. And that is one beauty of stone, or actually timber. When we first started down at the CLT route, you worry about it getting damaged.
And when you actually begin to see it being repaired, it's surprisingly easy to repair. You just cut a lamella out, you glue it back in, flame it off, and it's visible for a few months until it tones down. But the idea that you have these materials that patternate rather than simply degrade, and materials that can be repaired. And that's much more difficult, really, with composite products.
Dale (14:38)
True and one of the challenges that we've always had as architects is that even although we can justify lower whole life costs, there's still always been that focus on capital costs. And certainly, some of the trends that we're seeing like ceilings being deleted from buildings, I think we're not quite there because I look at a lot of the MEP components for example and they all look as though the ceilings have been deleted rather than we've designed building services to look fantastic without the ceiling.
So, obviously taking materials out is fantastic for cost but it's also fantastic for carbon. So, do you think that shift away from some of the finishes in buildings will perhaps begin to save money for the fit out that we can then reallocate into some of the areas of the building that might last longer term?
Peter (15:35)
Certainly, that's our hope, that if you have less stuff, it uses less carbon and it costs less money by just having less. And we need to just use less stuff.
It might be that we end up putting more money into the bits that matter. I mean, I've always found it, in a way, an anomaly that we, on average, in commercial offices, we spend probably 35% of the budget on MEP. And we spend something like 10% on the facade.
And a lot of the MEP is actually correcting things that the facade isn't doing properly. So, some transfer of money into the facade would probably not hurt in that regard. It's more fabric, less kit. And then also looking at, I think modular MEP. I think it's really a route that we've got to go down. We've got to maybe have buildings that require far less of it to start with, but then you get to a point where, as you said, at the moment if you take a ceiling out it just looks like MEP without a ceiling.
And it probably needs to go down more of a route of it being actually beautiful. I mean don't know if you've come out, we've been looking at an air-source heat pump for home and we've got quite a small go of them in North London and most air-source heat pumps are just horrible. So, your first question is how far away can I put the screen in and how do I screen it?
And then we've come across recently the one that we're looking at is a Swedish firm called Aria who are the first people who've just designed an air-source heat pump. It's like if Apple had done an air-source heat pump. It's just beautiful. So, you don't suddenly think, “How do I screen it? In effect, how do I put my garden equivalent at the ceiling?” It's just lovely enough to have just stood in the garden as an object. And do we get to a point of modular, decentralized, almost consumer-level MEP rather than it always being bespoke and designed. It's stuff that's plugged in and if you need more capacity, you plug more in.
Dale (17:25)
That's a great point. So, we'll need to bring this conversation to a close. So as ever, Peter, I really enjoyed our chat and it's been great to have you here. And I hope you enjoy the rest of Digital Construction Week. So, thank you.
Peter (17:38)
Thank you, Dale. It's been a delight to be here. Thank you.
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Mobilising Kit of Parts
Johnathan Munkley (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the EXPECT DIFFERENT the All Smart, No Hype podcast live from DCW 2025. We’re going to do a podcast on how you mobilize kit-of-parts at scale, what information is needed, what data is needed, how the industry needs to change to allow offsite to kind of scale across the industry. But more importantly I am joined by two esteemed guests.
David Miller (00:22)
I’m David Miller from David Miller Architects.
Mark Thorley (00:24)
Hello everyone, I'm Mark Thorley from KOPE
Johnathan Munkley (00:27)
And I'm your host, Jonathan Munkley from WSP. I think it would be good to hear a bit more background to you two as individuals, because you've got quite unique specialist backgrounds in this space to kind of contextualise it. This is my area expertise, the data side potentially, hopefully, because it's my kind of job. But David, could you just do a bit of introduction to who you are, what you come from and what you do actually, because you're a bit specialist in the world of David Miller Architects, aren't you?
David Miller (00:50)
Yes and no. I think we're a very typical medium-sized architecture practice but if we have a special interest, it’s in leveraging technology to be more efficient. So, we have an approach where we consider delivery to be as equally important as design.
Johnathan Munkley (01:09)
What about you, Mark? Tell us about KOPE.
Mark Thorley (01:12)
Yeah, I mean guess my journey to get here has been interesting, I guess. David and I actually know each other from 10 or 11 years ago. I had a consultancy practice; we were working alongside David and his architectural firm at the time. This was around 2013, 14, 15 maybe. And then from that I founded another company in 2019, and we were doing a lot of work with offsite manufacturers and contractors at the time.
That really was our first introduction into this space. And from then that was kind of the origins of now, we're really focused around building a platform to help people design with kit-of-parts, prefabrication, anything that's going to drive the industry forward.
Johnathan Munkley (01:58)
So, we're here today to talk about the key topic of information and data being at Digital Construction Week, it's very relevant. But our industry has very particular way about collecting data, organizing data, procurement kind of structures that it probably creates friction in the world of offsite and DFMA. So as an opening gambit, what needs to change? What's going to be the catalyst from a data and information management perspective that enables off-site and DFMA to kind of get more traction in the industry?
Because it's still... I mean I'm on a podcast this morning talking about scale and how the industry needs to scale off-site kit-of-parts. So, what would be the first transitional piece?
David Miller (02:41)
I think it's having more information prepared earlier in the process and perhaps going into a project already knowing where you're trying to go. So not starting with a blank piece of paper.
Mark Thorley (02:56)
I can say the same thing about what David said there. It's about having structured information at the forefront of the project as early on as possible. I think when we look at kit-of-parts, we really start to think about information around manufacturing constraints, logistical constraints, delivery, and it's understanding how that is going to affect the design up front as early on as possible.
Johnathan Munkley (03:21)
So, what typical bottlenecks do you see at the you get projects that are just dataless or messed-up data at like stage four when you're expecting to see a complete design? What kind of things do you see as the bottlenecks at the moment?
Mark Thorley (03:33)
I mean think if you asked me that question five years ago it would be very different answer. I think nowadays we are starting to see manufacturers engaged earlier on, contractors really engaged early on in the process as well and really trying to understand how they're going to deliver these buildings up front. So rather than there being these kind of gateways at different stages of the process that we're so used to, going through stage two, three, four, really having the information that we need at stage five earlier on. And so, I think those bottlenecks are starting to...
Johnathan Munkley (04:06)
Is there a particular collection of manufacturers or is it a building typology that you see in that area?
Mark Thorley (04:13)
Yeah, mean think David and I were speaking earlier just before this podcast, you know we're doing a lot of work with steel manufacturers at the moment. So metal, steel frame, suitable for low-rise to medium-rise resi, you know it's used a lot in commercial projects, hospitality, healthcare as well. I think in the UK we've seen a lot of a push towards that. Obviously, still things like timber and CLT are prevalent. I guess with some of the challenges around building safety acts and fire provision, there's a bit more of a hesitation towards those materials, I guess.
Johnathan Munkley (04:49)
David, what kind of projects do you see the most success on with the approach? Could you explain a little bit of the approach you're taking? I think you mentioned it earlier when we were outside of the podcasting studio. The approach you're taking with Revit, with assemblies.
David Miller (05:02)
There's two parts to that. The first part is around the projects and the intentions around the projects. So, with the sort of projects that we work on at DMA we do a lot of very normal buildings. We do schools, we do housing, we do life science buildings.
The projects that have been successful from an MMC point of view is when that approach has been there from the very inception. So perhaps we've won the project with a pitch around using cross-laminated timber on a school project or light gauge steel frame on a housing project, that sort of thing. So, the project's been developed with construction method in mind.
We're quite often fitting into a procurement context where we haven't got control of that and where it's difficult is when we're trying to retrofit into an existing design, different methods of offsite construction. So, it really needs to be there from the beginning.
The second part of the question is around information and how we're managing information within our practice is to effectively build a library of… it used to be components but now it's a library of systems. And those systems have the specifications attached to them and they're kept in an external database that the team can then draw down into a project. So, they're effectively using a digital kit-of-parts to assemble a building.
So those assemblies could be at the early stages it could be a classroom or a two-bedroom flat or something like that but at later stages it could be a bathroom, an external wall system. It’s the idea of having already preconceived what it is that you're trying to achieve on these sorts of everyday projects. There'll always be room very innovative special projects that are done from a blank sheet of paper. But the majority of what we see around us on a day-to-day basis, 80% of those buildings are repeatable elements.
Mark Thorley (07:15)
Probably even higher than 80%, I’d say. Yeah, like that's a good portion of the buildings that are needed for society, hospitals, schools, homes. They can all be standardized and we should be using more repeatability in those designs.
Johnathan Munkley (07:32)
So, what's stopping adoption then? We had this discussion this morning about what percentage of construction projects, in the UK or globally. We probably could find the answer out if we chat GPT'd it, but what percentage, off the top of your heads, based on your experience, are seeing an offsite manufacturing approach? And that might be bit of loaded question because you both work in the world of offsite, but if you look at the broader industry, where do you think that figure is at the moment?
Mark Thorley (07:58)
Certainly, from my experience and like you say I'm probably a little bit biased because I'm kind of operating within this space but I think it's very rare that we see a project now that doesn't have some form of offsite construction or prefabrication as part of it. And you know it doesn't have to be an all-singing and all-dancing solution. And it doesn't have to be something volumetric that particularly the UK construction industry has seen a chunk of failures in recent years. It could be precast concrete, could be internal partitions, it could be balconies to some extent. Balconies are prefabricated offsite and brought to site.
David Miller (08:35)
Well, I think similarly to Mark, we're in a world where it's bit self-selecting because we're interested in the subject so we will attract clients that are interested in exploring these things. I think that you can break it down into two parts. There's the project, whether there's the intention from the early stages to do something innovative and they're very satisfying. So that's quite often the projects that will end up being cross-laminated timber or volumetric elements in them. The other thing that we're seeing increasingly which is very satisfying is once we are working with a knowledgeable contractor, they're bringing specialist elements to the table that we might not have necessarily thought of.
So, twin wall construction for a core, prefabricating as much as they can offsite to improve their quality onsite. I think, as Mark was saying, doesn't have to be that overriding concept to improve the outcome. It could be just best practice and that's often been driven by knowledgeable, good quality, tier 1 contractors.
Johnathan Munkley (09:54)
I'm going to have to do some Googling after this to find the actual numbers, because I'm sure we can find them. You can add something to that, Mark?
Mark Thorley (09:59)
I was just going to say, yeah, I think it's probably going to be driven by the tier 1 contractors predominantly. I think the more they get comfortable with delivering these buildings in a different way, whether that's a slightly different system to what they're used to, I think it's going to become more prevalent in the industry.
David Miller (10:16)
And I think the changing procurement climate at the moment being driven by the Building Safety Act and Gateway 2 is going to mean that those contractors are involved earlier and they're going to want more complete information, well they're going to have to have more complete information earlier and that's going to drive that whole design.
Johnathan Munkley (10:43)
That's the perfect pivot point into the next question. So, this is something we were talking about before we actually started recording, how the Building Safety Act is changing the way we need to design for fire-stopping components. I think that is a great example of how level of detail, level of information, of detail design, that kind of curve is shifting towards the front end because you can't get away with just, "Oh, it's kind of coordinated, it'll be alright, the subcontractor will sort it on site." Because that's the approach many traditional design consults have been taking for... in my entire career.
They get to a point where it's a stage four coordinated design, they hand it over to the contractor, the problem is then fixed. Building Safety Act is stopping, it's basically put a halt on that, and I'm actually presenting on that in about 40 minutes.
How do we get design teams to really push up? And it probably supports what you're doing as well. The level of detail of design in the concept stages to actually make offsite work. Because if you come with a really loose concept, you probably can't offsite it. If that makes sense.
Mark Thorley (11:43)
Yeah, I mean think David touched on it before. If you don't consider these things upfront, it's very hard later in the design process to shoehorn them in. So, if you don't design for a precast concrete slab, it might be difficult to change the design to cater for that later on. I think if we look at what we've done historically, when we had the transition to BIM, and we approach building manufacturers and we asked them to create Revit content and digital BIM content.
Johnathan Munkley (12:18)
Oh, the BIM library movement where everyone needed every single nut and bolt model and that's now fallen off a cliff!
Mark Thorley (12:23)
Exactly and I feel like we can now learn from you know what was good about that and what was bad about that. And I think one of the challenges we saw... you know I was in practice at the time when all that happened, those digital files that were produced were easily customized or changed into something that couldn't be built. We were relying on designers to have the knowledge that the manufacturers and contractors had, but that just wasn't their space.
And so, I think particularly where we're heading with KOPE is how do we digitize these systems in a way where you can only configure them to something that can be built, something that can be constructed so that we're not relying heavily on people that maybe don't have the knowledge and the experience. I'm choosing my words carefully as I have David sat next me.
Johnathan Munkley (13:06)
Really dodgy architects that just make it up in Revit. [Laughter]
Mark Thorley (13:10)
I am choosing my words carefully as I have David sat next to me.
Johnathan Munkley (13:12)
Sorry, I am one of them. [Laughter] But yeah, I think that's the thing, the tools are not constrained in a way, are they?
Mark Thorley (13:17)
No.
Johnathan Munkley (13:18)
So, Revit, Archicad, the traditional design tools, they'll let you draw anything, don't they?
Mark Thorley (13:23)
Yeah, they have complete flexibility, and I think this whole again this drive towards a kit-of-parts is actually quite an interesting approach and again I'm probably okay to ask David a question directly here. Lots of people talk about kit-of-parts and limiting creativity, you know, I have a completely different view on that, maybe from an architectural standpoint.
David Miller (13:47)
I think the creativity part of the process is actually a small portion of it and the vast majority of the building is actually repeatable elements. It's the same components that go into building up the building. What we're striving to do within the practice is almost limit the choices. So having that limitless ability to produce stuff is really an opportunity to lose control of the quality.
If we can refine and reduce and control the information that we're working with, and our team understands what it is that they're working, that gives us an inherent quality when we're assembling something new. And if you're using something repeatedly, there's also an opportunity to refine it and improve upon it. So, the next time that you use it, it's better.
So, in a way it's applying the principles of Modern Methods of Construction to the design process.
Johnathan Munkley (14:53)
So, on to the point that I'm really excited about because it's my nerdy world. So structured data, how important is structured data to the world of offsite? Is there a world of offsite without structured data?
Mark Thorley (15:07)
I think the short answer is no. I think the data backbone to all of this is very important. From my perspective and some of the stuff that we're doing at KOPE, we in essence leverage that data to run optimization studies to achieve outcomes within the design process. Embodied carbon is very important at the moment, push towards net zero as well, costs and programme are always important as well. So, if we have the information that's pulling through from these building systems, building products that can drive decisions based around some of the things that we're trying to achieve, I think that becomes very important.
Johnathan Munkley (15:49)
So, it's basically moving from pretty 3D models to actually data-rich things that can be built.
David Miller (15:55)
I'd take it bit further. I don't think it's just within Modern Methods of Construction. I think it's within what we do, structured data is really important. And from a selfish point of view, it’s very difficult to economically design a building without having almost a structured library before you start. If we start in these sorts of difficult times, if we start every job from a blank sheet of paper, it’s very difficult to make a profit.
Johnathan Munkley (16:27)
Most of the projects I work on, which if we look at them, follow the traditional RIBA stages, the issues I see is developers or client owners, they want faster programs, they want tighter programs, they're pushing their design teams to the limit. The majority of the design teams I work with are still working very traditional.
I think it's getting to the point now where they're at their limit and I think that's what's driving offsite within those teams because they can't physically work any harder and they can't design any faster. So, do you think what needs to change from a client perspective? Because they are pushing teams because they can't make their projects commercially viable, construction costs are going up, material costs are going up, so they're like unless we hit this program, we aren't making a building for this project. So how can clients support us? Because clients try everything.
Mark Thorley (17:16)
Ultimately, I think interestingly, again to go back on history, there was a big movement towards BIM and that was really driven by the government mandating that on public procured projects. I think, I mentioned that contractors are at the moment steering the drive towards off-site construction. It's particularly based on what you just said there that they're looking ahead and going, “How are we going to deliver some of these buildings?” The labor pool shortages, material prices are up and down all the time. And so, there's some real challenges there.
And I think what we're now seeing is that message is starting to pass up the chain towards clients as well. So recently we were... a shameless plug here but we...
Johnathan Munkley (17:59)
Be shameless, plug it away.
Mark Thorley (18:00)
We were one of the parties that won the bid as part of a consortium for the new hospitals programme. That's the government scheme to deliver the new hospitals and extensions and refurbishments to the NHS over the next 15 years. And a real part of the bid of that, and I think the reason our consortium won that, was really this drive to do something a bit different. If we're looking at building that many hospitals, how can we standardise some of the approaches across all of them, how can we standardize some of the materials and the systems that are used and really get into kind of what we're trying to achieve there. So, you know I think the message is actually now beginning to pass up to the clients and long may it continue, I guess.
David Miller (18:46)
I think the changes that are happening with the industry, within the industry at the moment, is actually just going to drive us to do it better, to do things more efficiently, to be more structured about how we do things. And that whole process of being more prescriptive earlier, because we can be, has got to create more efficiency and better outcomes.
Taking away all those grey areas where one stage sort of merges with the other, having hard stops at the different stages I think is going to help us be much more definitive about the information.
Johnathan Munkley (19:28)
For the audience, Mark is nodding profusely at David's comment there.
Mark Thorley (19:32)
I mean, I guess the more the clients begin to see the benefits, again the more they're going to mandate it on the people delivering the projects for them.
Johnathan Munkley (19:43)
What are the commercial incentives for clients? iI work a lot with developers that are funding the jobs. Obviously, they're driven by cost and profit and program. So, what are the commercial incentives for them to take this approach? Is it a very obvious ROI? Is it a bit washy? Is it sometimes hard to nail down?
Mark Thorley (20:01)
I guess the challenge at the moment is, you know, who's getting the benefit?
Johnathan Munkley (20:06)
Valid.
Mark Thorley (20:07)
Because offsite construction obviously has huge benefits as you say across the program and cost in relation to that as well. But who's actually getting that benefit at the moment? Is it the contractor? Is it the design team? Is it the client? But again, I think the more that becomes apparent the more everyone's going to work towards that. We did a project recently with British Gypsum, obviously a big plasterboard supplier across the UK.
Our goal was simply, how do we reduce the waste that goes into a project, and I can't remember the exact numbers, I think we have a case study on it somewhere, but it was huge amounts of plasterboard that we saved on this one project. So, you know who's benefiting from that immediately? Probably the manufacturer because they're the ones who we're working with, but at some point, that changes, and it probably goes up to the client quite a support problem.
Johnathan Munkley (20:52)
There's this big, focus on carbon.
That costs from the client’s carbon budgets, depending on how they report it, you would expect, because every project I work on has a carbon budget. And we throw out a lot of plasterboard on building sites, the statistics don't lie. 37% of the UK's landfill comes from construction sites, still. And it's like, how? That's a joke. So obviously offsite, reduce how?
Mark Thorley (21:24)
A similar sort of statistic, again I'm not sure of the factual nature of it but apparently one in every four buildings we build goes in the bin, in essence. Due to waste, I mean that's disgraceful really, isn't it? It's almost embarrassing to be involved in an industry where that's case right?
Johnathan Munkley (21:43)
If I put my ZERO hat on, I literally presented on this yesterday about the statistics are 17% cost of every construction site is rework. It's a $600 billion problem globally. Like they are big numbers, like for the amount of rework and waste we've bought on the construction sites. But think of what you could do with 600 billion quid? You could fix a lot of countries.
David Miller (22:07)
It's almost as if we've been making it up as we go along. [Laughter]
Mark Thorley (22:13)
But again, I mean it comes back to what we were discussing earlier, you know, every project at the moment is unique in quotation marks.
Johnathan Munkley (22:22)
Are they?
Mark Thorley (22:23)
Well exactly, they're not. I think you said 80% at a normal level, but I'd even say it's higher than that. Unless you're designing something very unique and one off, walls are the same, columns are the same, floors are the same.
These are the things we can standardise across different typologies of buildings that we should be doing.
David Miller (22:44)
In the early days of BIM, we did a series of projects with the same contractor, the same main contractor and the intention, which I understand, would be to keep things fairly open and descriptive. Until halfway through stage four because there was a commercial advantage to going out to the market. But what we could see was that in the end they were always using the same doors, the same walls, the same roof finishes, that sort of thing. So, we started to build a library, a BIM library that reflected those components. What would have been more, in hindsight, what would have been better was almost to build strategic alliances with those suppliers at the beginning. And you know, said that there's a half a dozen projects coming, what's your best offer?
Mark Thorley (23:41)
I mean that's always a challenge in offsite construction, isn't it? You asked about, "What are the bottlenecks?" and throughput has always been a challenge. If you're maintaining a factory, you need to have constant throughput through that factory to keep the lights on. And again, I think coming full circle that will be driven by clients. The more clients that are working at portfolio level with multiple buildings and multiple projects and sites, they can begin to standardise them.
Johnathan Munkley (24:10)
Yeah, the Barkley Home example is really good. They started with just building houses, then they started buying land, then they got sick of contractors putting projects on hold, so they tried to control the entire process because they needed their factory working. David, are you going to add something to that?
David Miller (24:24)
Yeah, was going to say, going back to your question about what's in it for the clients, it's potentially improved quality, improved speed, surety of delivery. But what it has to do is also reduce the risk. And part of the issue I think some clients might have is just that kind of worry about the confidence in a new industry.
And whether there's the resilience in it to deliver what it is that's being promised. And there's been some high-profile failures.
Mark Thorley (25:03)
I mean, there's a risk in the unknown, isn't there?
Johnathan Munkley (25:06)
Yeah, absolutely. People don't like doing new stuff.
Mark Thorley (25:08)
And our industry loves talking about risk and focusing on risks.
Johnathan Munkley (25:13)
Stagnating productivity. Right, we've got time for some calls and comments. So, I think the Building Safety Act is putting offsite on the next frontier. It's probably going to increase its use; it's going to put it in focus given the projects I'm working on. What is the one thing that could change from an information flow perspective or data flow on projects that is going to really boost its use on site and actual use in projects? So, like I say, what's the big key unlocker for offsite in the industry? I can see lots of confused faces at that question.
David Miller (25:44)
The Building Safety Act is a big opportunity for offsite, but I think it's also a big opportunity for structured information and helping us finally realise that idea of better information, closer to good quality information earlier in the process, being more prescriptive, less descriptive earlier in the design process.
Mark Thorley (26:13)
I guess this whole drive towards golden thread as well. Like if you want true golden thread you need to go right down to the manufacturer level information, the stuff that's actually going to go into the building. So, maintaining that and understanding that at the forefront of the design as you say then is only going to be beneficial.
Johnathan Munkley (26:31)
And on that bombshell, that is us for today. So, thank you very much. to my guests. Thank you very much, David.
Mark Thorley (26:38)
Yes, thanks Johnathan.
Johnathan Munkley (26:39)
Thank you very much, me! [All laugh]
And I've been your host, Jonathan, from WSP
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Robotics
Dale Sinclair (00:00)
Hi everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. If you're wondering what the sound is in the background, hat's Digital Construction Week 2025 here in London.
Today I have two people with me, Sebastian Andraos that we have spoken to for many times over the last few years about how do we get robotics used more in our industry to help to solve that productivity program and we're going to come back to that in more detail in a second.
And Az Jasat from Autodesk who's leading on the industrialised construction strategy. So, could you please introduce yourself before we get into the nub of the conversation.
Sebastian Andraos (00:43)
Yeah, of course. So, yeah, as Dale says, I'm Seb or Sebastian Andraos I'm the CEO at Hal Robotics. We're a robotics software company developing solutions to simplify the programming of industrial robots and co-bots and make them more adaptable, more flexible within manufacturing, construction, craft industries.
Dale Sinclair (01:03)
Great, Az?
Az Jasat (01:03)
I'm Az Jasat, I'm Senior Industry Manager for Industrialised Construction at Autodesk, responsible for developing, building and socialising Autodesk's strategy for industrialised construction and how we're going to build the tools that are needed in this important convergent space between architecture, construction and manufacturing.
Dale Sinclair (01:22)
Wonderful, and just to start with, so what brought you to Digital Construction Week this year? Is there anything specific that you wanted to see or messages that you're trying to get across about the things that you're doing?
Sebastian Andraos (01:35)
For me it was really about seeing where robotics is in a broader sense. I used to be an architect so I have a vested interest in construction and robotics converging and it's been slightly surprising the sparseness of robotics and automation that I've seen here today Hopefully that's something we might get into in a bit.
Az Jasat (01:56)
For me this is about, well DCW is always about the networking. This is a great event for socialising and meeting with generally the who's whom in digital construction in the UK and elsewhere. There's quite a good international audience here as well. I've had a long meeting with a few Japanese contractors today also. So yeah, a fantastic event. Autodesk have a strong presence here as do a lot of other technology vendors. And yeah, it's great to see how this scene has progressed over the years.
Dale Sinclair (02:23)
Wonderful. How I want to start the conversation is a theme that we've been speaking to with various people in the last couple of days is that obviously we're seeing some really great stuff happening as we look to automate between the briefing process and the design process. But I suppose what I find challenging is I can see downstream this opportunity to optimise what we do, drive economies of scale and programme approaches.
But it's really difficult to, I mean, as you know, we've done one project together, Sebastian, and always we've been desperate to try and do some others. But that's the challenge, isn't it? We're so disconnected by this fragmented supply chain. So, I mean, have you got any thoughts on how do we bring, if you like, the voice of the robotic specialist into the room in the concept phase? Any thoughts on how we might do that?
Sebastian Andraos (03:16)
I mean, it's an obvious answer, but bring the robotics specialist into the room, and in particular at an earlier stage, I think that's the biggest thing that happens when you shift from a more traditional construction approach to a kit-of-parts type approach or a DFMA approach, is everything has to come earlier in the process.
It means that everything is much faster onsite, but that means there's less time on site to make adjustments and to make changes. So, yeah, you need to bring people in early and you need to bring people in with the right expertise because not everything is obvious, which seems a bit redundant when we're talking about robotics, but there are things that are really easy to do with robots that are complicated to see as easy to do with robots, unless you're experienced in the field. And there are things that appear easy that are actually really complicated to do with robots. So, I think making sure that you pick the brains of people who have that experience, who know where they can push things, what's easy, what's hard and make sure you take that low-hanging fruit first because there's plenty of it there, as you say.
Dale Sinclair (04:15)
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean we're constantly trying to convince our clients to bring manufacturing expertise into the room. And we talk about early contractor engagement. think maybe the shift in the industry we need, Az, is that early manufacturing engagement is maybe that's the title that we should be working towards. But I do agree. I mean I see design for manufacturing assembly as a completely different thing. And yesterday we had a discussion, and it almost flipped itself in the head. Well maybe it should be manufacture for configuration and assembly. So maybe we've actually got the wrong title, maybe some of the acronyms that we're using actually allude to a construction-centric kind of mindset. So, any thoughts on that?
Az Jasat (05:00)
Whichever acronyms and definitions you use, ultimately this is about, as you say, bringing ideas, bringing concepts and manufacturers and supply chain partners to the front of the process. It's about a greater level of collaboration and integration. It's about eliminating and reducing the silos that we have in the industry. Now, the architecture, engineering and construction industry have taken a lot of time over the recent years to reflect and understand that, yes, some of the problems are due to them being relatively siloed in these various stages of the design and construction process.
What the technology industry also needs to reflect on is how silent we've been in the tools that we provide. I'm not just talking about Autodesk here; I'm talking about the entire software industry. We have generally evolved tools for specific parts of the workflow aimed at particular personas as opposed to looking at what is the complete end-to-end workflow here. What's the most efficient way of continuing data to be used without breaking the workflow, without having to recreate this data? How do we make this a more seamless and continuous process?
And in order to do that, our tools really should have been evolving outside of these silos and should have been evolving in a more integrated manner. And I think that's the approach that we'relooking at now. How do we take more of a workflow or solution-based approach to technology as opposed to point product-based?
Dale Sinclair (06:35)
That's great point and I think that [ISO]19650 has been great in driving information standards that are second to none, but we are seeing in projects now our sub-assembly designs, we're taking pieces of the structure and breaking them down and adding mechanical components into these. And then of course adding architectural pieces like the ceiling going into the MEP sub-assemblies and the challenge there is we've then got sub-assemblies that are multi-disciplined and of course that breaks away from the traditional architect, structural and MEP model.
And something of course that we've spoken at length to you about, Az, at Autodesk is that need to then bank these. We want to store all of these fab-ready components in a catalogue where we can, like in a PLM kind of way, track change and monitor change. Is that the sort of direction that you see Autodesk going in and supporting that kind of workflow?
Az Jasat (07:31)
That is one of the directions we're going in, yes. So, what you're effectively talking about there is product lifecycle management, which is a very mature and very well understood capability in the manufacturing space. In architecture and construction terms, we're very used to a project lifecycle management mentality. So really, this is about how do we integrate the two together? How do we ensure that your product lifecycle is fully integrated with your project lifecycle? Which comes back to my earlier point, that then supports this smoother and more integrated and uninterrupted flow of data throughout the entire workflow.
Dale Sinclair (08:10)
I think we've nailed it exactly because we see this trend in the future where maybe ACC [Autodesk Construction Cloud] is used to manage the project change but there's another system hat's managing the product change at that PLM level. So yeah, I think we're aligned in the way that we're trying to go. And from your point, Sebastian, I mean we talk about creating these new products, but do you think it’s the repetition of process in the factories that’s more important? How do you see robotics mobilizing for mass customization for example. Is it in the product or is it in the process itself?
Sebastian Andraos (08:44)
I think one of the important things that's shifting both in manufacturing and in construction is actually that the outputs of those workflows that, as you just mentioned, are different now. So, whereas previously you would have printed some drawings, given them to some people, and they'd have read those drawings and done something with it, we need to retain everything in a digital format so that we can interpret that CAD and BIM data and generate robot code from it.
And because that's the way that we try and tackle things, and that's the way that lot of the robotics industry is moving to offline planning and things like that, it allows us to create unique parts. A robot doesn't care if it's doing the same job a billion times or a billion slightly different jobs. What is complicated is reprogramming the robot to do all those jobs. Automated tools like ours and many of our competitors, of course, allow that to be done much more simply, but you still need consistency of process. A robot that's welding some plates one day is not suddenly going to be cutting those same plates. That's a whole different system, whole load of tools that need to be changed, a whole load of
fixturing that needs to be changed. So as long as you can maintain the process, the vague geometries of what you're doing, if it's always flat or it's always curvy, that helps keep things a little bit more straightforward. But as long as you can keep that process consistent, then actually you can have a lot of flexibility in what those parts of components are that you're designing. So, you're not stuck to, "I need 10,000 of these elements." Actually, I can have 10,000 unique elements at basically the same cost because we're automating from a digital source and therefore, we're not having to introduce the manual processing of all of those components into unique bits of robot code.
Dale Sinclair (10:21)
One of the discussion points over the last couple of days has been around how do you fund the investment of this whole new generation? Because if we want to take billions of pounds of construction activity from the site to the factory, we have to build lots and lots of factories. terms of that shift do you think it's possible to go to factories that are say low level of automation initially and then start to ramp that up. There is a methodology that you would support to help start layering in?
Sebastian Andraos (10:55)
There's always an incremental approach to automation. It's very rare that we walk into somewhere that's got no robots and the next day we replace the entire line with robots. It's one component, one element, one bit of process at a time. But there is plenty of manufacturing out there and I think leveraging the existing manufacturing capabilities of the UK or whatever other country we're talking about constructing in is a good first step. And bringing those orders into those factories will allow them to invest in automation.
There's a very British problem with contract length in manufacturing at the moment, which is that most contracts are one to two years long and then they stop. Which means that your guaranteed income is, let's say, 24 months and investing in a robotic system for 24 months' worth of work doesn't get you the ROI. 36, 48, 60 months, absolutely. So also increasing the incoming contract lengths and duration of those contracts will allow manufacturers to invest more in those systems and therefore you kind of get the snowball effect because they can take on more work because they have the assistance in place, and everything progresses from that point onwards.
Dale Sinclair (12:02)
Are you seeing the trend of like some of the companies that rent out forklifts and so on to contractors now renting out robots? Do you think that's a trend?
Az Jasat (12:13)
Robots as a service?
Dale Sinclair (12:14)
Yes, robots as service, exactly, you got it!
Sebastian Andraos (12:16)
Robots as a service and hardware as a service is absolutely a thing. Whether it's a thing in construction yet, I don't think we're quite there. However, I've been speaking to people today who are absolutely planning on doing that. So, it will be available. But I think first and foremost, it's the factory-based information. There's so much to do in that space before we overcomplicate things and bring robots from factories to construction sites. It's definitely well worth factorizing first.
Dale Sinclair (12:42)
Absolutely. And Az, one of the reasons that we're recommending this shift away from projects to programs is not just to try and take some of the complexity away from projects, but if we can take the procurement away, we can automate more from those early design right through into the machines. I mean, what sort of changes do you see in the software stack that you've developed that would facilitate that automation from, let's say, the client requirements into the kit-of-parts and then straight into Sebastian's robots in the factory?
Az Jasat (13:15)
This comes back to the title of our discussion yesterday, "Programs plus Productisation equals Productivity Squared.” So, this idea that productisation, the application of the use of kit-of-parts can have so many transformational benefits. It can help you scale the manufacturing side of the house. But the impact that productisation can have on how you design a building. Now, there's a lot of talk about AI at the moment, “AI is going to solve this; AI is going to make the whole design process redundant and we're going to transform the way we work.”
I have a hypothesis here that there’s no outcome of AI in building design that can't be improved with the use of productisation. With productisation comes rules and constraints. With productisation comes a level of certainty of outcome of design. If your design is made up of a combination of products and assemblies that contain rules, that contain constraints, that contain certainties, surely that's going to increase the likelihood of automation improving the outcome of that design.
The quality of output that you'll get designing with products as opposed to designing with… I call it manual or traditional stick build elements is far greater. So, I think that's where we're really seeing improvements in automation as well.
Dale Sinclair (14:44)
Oh, I would agree with that. I'd certainly say we work with a wide range of architects on our kit-of-parts and I think that the rules around manufacturing are so different to design for construction because, let's face it, construction anyone can change anything at any time and that's its biggest strength but it's also its biggest weakness and of course what that means is that, you know, doors just get nudged along. And then all of sudden you find that this one sub assembly has like 10 variants because the construction mentality is seeped in and the rigor has not been there.
I think that's the rigor that we need to change. And as you both know, I get asked all the time, “Is your approach going to result in cookie cutter architecture?” And think my answer to that is quite straightforward. Well, of course not. The manufacturing mindset is just a constraint on the design process.
Az Jasat (15:41)
Variation is not a bad word. As you said, robots are more than happy with manufacturing a variety of outputs as long as they fit within the constraints of what that robot is able to do. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with having variation in terms of the design of the building as long as it fits within the constraints of what can be manufactured. And that's hopefully where the software will come into play, where it can apply the guardrails that it needs to ensure that anything that is designed is ultimately suitable for manufacture and assembly.
You've got to keep that constraint in mind.
Dale Sinclair (16:14)
And one of the areas that fascinates me in terms of how we're working with clients just now is going almost up to that country level of manufacturing, where we're aggregating demand and saying, "Well, you've got thousands of these to make. This is what this means. This is how you can set up that factory infrastructure.” And I guess what that then shifts my mindset on is what do you see as the future of the factory? The World Economic Forum they've put their heart on their sleeves and are saying that the micro factory is the future.
Have you got any views on factory size? Do you think micro factories and communities where people can walk to work will be a trend? Do you think bigger national factories will be the trend? And let's not stray into some of the international procurement stuff just now, but do you think there will be trends in factories in terms of their size and locations?
Sebastian Andraos (17:07)
I don't necessarily think size will be fixed. I think you'll still have a variety of sizes of organisation and of manufacturer.
But I do think that the distributed manufacturing approach is going to grow. It's something we've been doing a lot of work on recently. taking those products and sending them to different robots in different places and having those robots interpret, even though their requirements, their kinematics tooling is slightly different, interpret their job so they can all deliver the same thing. It's often also referred to as manufacturing as a service because of the double-a-s acronyms. It's not a phrase I use because manufacturing is already a service.
So, it gets confusing. Yeah, I think definitely distributed manufacturing, being able to manufacture closer to site or closer to wherever those components need to be delivered, adding robustness to the supply chain because if one manufacturer goes down those jobs can automatically be rerouted to someone else. I think there are huge benefits there, absolutely massive.
Dale Sinclair (18:05)
Any thoughts on that from your perspective?
Az Jasat (18:07)
I agree with everything. I think there's this one other aspect that I would really like to see changing and improving in terms of the future factories that we see in this space and that's about learning curve. What I've observed over my time in industry is so many businesses investing valuable time and effort, going through basi cally the same learning curve and going through the same problems and some of the same dead ends. And what would be great if that knowledge can somehow be contained and be shared and could that ultimately find its way into either factory-as-a-service or manufacturing-as-a-service. So that as people are building new, whether they're small, they're distributed factories in the future, they're not having to go through that same learning curve, that same pain, that same early investment.
And I see with a lot of the standardisation that will emerge through productisation, through kit-of-parts, that will only lead to us being able to have more standardisation in the way these factories are set up.
Sebastian Andraos (19:16)
That is something that we are starting to see from robot OEMs, building kind of stores and kit-of-parts for their own robotic systems. So, you can now go and buy a welding cell, rather than just a robot from some of these OEMs. You can buy a whole cell that all works on its own. So, you're not having to work out how this connects to that, and this to that. You can reconfigure it so it's bigger or smaller for your requirements. But you are skipping some of that learning curve. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that still needs to be shared.
But we are getting there especially with the most established processes in manufacturing.
Az Jasat (19:48)
What's interesting, I’ve had the privilege of having seen the inside of many, many offsite factories around the world. Having seen two different timber framing factories in two different regions, one pretty much brand new and another one that's been established since... probably before I was born.
And the machinery and the equipment hat's being used to position the framing and the turning. And I'm like, "That's pretty much exactly the same, just one's a little bit grimier than the other." So, not a huge amount has moved on and changed. The learning opportunities are out there.
Dale Sinclair (20:26)
What we are seeing is it's not just about a shift towards industrialised construction, a shift towards repetitive decisions is really essential for the future because today we make all our decisions around the table just like us having our chat today. We're really bad at recording them and then even if we do record what decision we made, don't say why we made it. So of course, in three months' time someone says, "Well, why did we decide to do that?" We can never remember. And certainly, that's where we see AI coming in to actually start to move towards the expert systems so we can use AI to recall why we made that decision.
But even more importantly, we love this idea that we can then look across multiple projects if we can use voice records of what's happening across our business. I mean we've got 70,000 people, so imagine the potential for contradictory conversations and if we can begin to harvest all those discussions, we can begin to look at the anomalies and how we're doing things. That's certainly an area I see AI really coming to the fore is making more predictive decisions and reusing decisions and I think reused decisions helps bizarrely to improve offsite manufacturing.
Az Jasat (21:41)
Absolutely, as we've talked about before, this notion of single project mentality and when the learnings on a project are retained within that single project silo without it being shared and continued and propagated to the next project and the next project, that's when you fail to apply one of the core manufacturing principles, which is that of continuous improvement. And we fail to do that in construction all the time by not having that ability to communicate and pass information on.
Dale Sinclair (22:11)
No, you're absolutely right. I mean, we talk about continual improvement, but even if we do some feedback at the end of the project, on the whole, we're not quite the blank piece of paper, but because that's the thing, the knowledge is residing in our heads. And it’s back to that "construction as a paradigm." It's all about taking thousands of small things to site and the design process is geared to putting small things to site and thousands of drawings that result from it.
Az Jasat (22:40)
I think it's much easier to have that intelligence, that knowledge, kind of associated and attributed to the product because the product is much likely to be moved on from project to project.
Dale Sinclair (22:54)
In terms of trying to encourage investors to come in, obviously if I was going to invest in a factory I need to see the pipeline, I need to see what's my return on investment, and what things do you think we need to do to try and get ourselves into position that instead of people investing in coffee shops in the high street, they're investing in our next generation of factories?
Sebastian Andraos (23:22)
I have no answer to that. [All laugh] From a manufacturing point of view, it's about having the demand there, knowing what your current bottlenecks are. If we're talking about upskilling and up technology-ing, existing infrastructure, it's really about knowing what the problem is that you're trying to solve. Because that also allows you to deal with the comparison between the status quo and the new version.
There's a lot of automation gets compared to perfection, and it's impossible to get to that level of perfection. The same is, I believe, true in construction when we've dealt with that space, is that you have to compare and try to improve on what you've got. You can't compare to the ideal scenario and is it going to reach that? No, okay then let's not make that change. So, I think it is, as Az says, all about that continuous improvement and working with what was there before.
Dale Sinclair (24:15)
But I think it's also about productizing more. There are so many products we use like from staircases and balustrading that are designed for projects. I mean, let's face it, and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that we could push into the factory and encourage investors to then come in and move to that automation process.
Az Jasat (24:36)
I'm going say something potentially controversial here, which is it's not necessarily about reaching for the stars and going for that huge investment to procure all of the best robotics and the ultimate production line right from the outset. So many successful off-site businesses started very simple, started very basic. Now, there's often a lot of criticism about this whole “construction site with a roof” mentality. I think if you start and continue with a “construction site with a roof” mentality, yes that's bad. If you start simple but then with a mindset that that's only your starting point, that's your test bed, that you're going to evolve it, you're going to adapt it, you're going to bring in automation in a progressive and successive manner, that's potentially the right way you're going to go about this.
Sebastian Andraos (25:30)
I think you need to do that to understand what the problems are that you're trying to solve. On a construction site there are so many people doing so many different things. Feeding back where the problem areas are, the Kaizen, Toyota approach of anyone being able to feedback and try and improve the process, doesn't happen. In a factory setting, even if it's a fully manual setting, you can have people saying, “Oh, this is kind of a pain. What if we did this in a different way?" Or "Actually, if you made this part slightly smaller, I'd actually be able to pick it up." Or "You put some holes here, I could grab it with a robot.” You can get that automation approach starting to build in and absolutely agree, it is not a one-shot implementation. You have to understand what the bottlenecks and what the problem areas are and build on it, build on it, build on it. But be aware that it is a moveable piece. You are constantly improving what you're doing. You're not stuck as a “construction site with a roof.”
Dale Sinclair (26:27)
But I think that point you've made, Az, I think that's come up a few times. We don't need to go to full automation. Let's get the factory process going and then let's keep adding to that.
Az Jasat (26:37)
Exactly.
Dale Sinclair (26:38)
Each time getting an incremental shift in productivity.
Az Jasat (26:41)
Absolutely.
Dale Sinclair (26:42)
Okay, so we're unfortunately running out of time and as ever, I'm sure we could easily talk for another hour, but we've got to draw this to a close. And of course, Digital Construction Week is drawing to a close. So, any last stands or topics that you want to see before you leave here today?
Sebastian Andraos (26:59)
I think my passing message would be to engage with people. If you're interested at all in automation or kit-of-parts, engage with people who have some experience in that field. It can be us, it can be Az at Autodesk, it can be WSP, can be whoever it is who has that experience. But don't try and learn from your own mistakes. Learn from everyone else's mistakes first.
Dale Sinclair (27:19)
Yeah, yeah.
Az Jasat (27:20)
I think what's been really fascinating and reassuring over this event is speaking to so many people that are from the traditional construction space that are starting to embrace ideas from outside their industry. People are looking to manufacturing, people are looking to retail, people are looking to alternate industries. Where can we learn from? What can we adapt and bring into our space to improve it? I think that's happening very much so.
Dale Sinclair (27:43)
Az, Sebastian, thank you very, very much and enjoy the rest of digital construction week.
Sebastian (27:48)
Thank you very much.
Az Jasat (27:49)
Thank you, Dale.
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EXPECT DIFFERENT: Better use of digital tools
Dale Sinclair (00:03)
Hi everyone, I'm your host Dale Sinclair and you're listening to WSP's All Smart No Hype podcast, where we dive into how digital is changing the industry. If you're wondering what the noise is in the background, that's Digital Construction Week 2025 here in London. Today, I have someone that I've been speaking to for many years with me, Eva Magnisali from Dataform Labs. So delighted to have you here, Eva.
Can you maybe just give us a bit of your background and explain what your company does?
Eva Magnisali (00:33)
Sure, thank you very much for the invitation, Dale, it's great to be here. My background is in architecture engineering, including robotic programming. So, what Dataform Lab is about is a software platform that we have been building to seamlessly connect design and manufacturing for the construction industry and specifically focusing on off-site construction. So, we have created the bridge between design and production, creating the software and automation tools for making this knowledge available to the wider industry.
Dale Sinclair (01:08)
Fantastic. So just to start, what's brought you to Digital Construction Week and what's your experience been so far? Have you seen anything that stands out above anything else?
Eva Magnisali (01:18)
It's really interesting to attend this event, both to meet old friends and customers and also to network with people. It's very interesting to see how lively it is today and how people have come from all different places around the UK and abroad. Really interesting discussions going on, specifically on automation, AI. I think it's a hot topic right now.
Dale Sinclair (01:43)
Fantastic and we've had some amazing discussions over the years. As you know, what fascinates me is this whole idea that we can really drive manufacturing at scale. And certainly, I think since we've had our last discussion, I just keep becoming more emphatic about how different design for manufacturer is, well design for manufacturing assembly is than designing for construction.
And I guess my constant frustration is that when we're up in the concept design phase, we're developing digital tools that allow us to bridge from the requirements into our early kit-of-parts proposals. But for some reason, it always seems really hard to bring the voice of the manufacturer into the room. So, are you seeing any changes in that front? Or do you think there's anything that we can do as an industry to try and bring the constraints upstream because as you know architects are not used to designing for manufacturing.
They're used to designing for construction and subsetting pieces of the building to the factory. So, what do you think is happening, what are you seeing? And of course, recently maybe you could tell us something about you've had another seed of funding. So, I hope that is pointing towards more of what you do and a change in the industry.
Eva Magnisali (03:03)
No, definitely, and actually, yes, we've been discussing this a lot the last few years. This is actually what made me start Dataform lab, my experience as an architect. Understanding how we can create very complex geometries and buildings and files that then might not be manufacturable or might need value engineering and back and forth with the production facilities to understand how to bring them to the specifications that production needs was the first revelation.
Working with robotics and programming robotic arms helped me understand as well that design and production are so closely related and it's practically the data that needs to be transformed from one stage to the next. So, these two things are at the core of why Dataform Lab exists and that's what we also do inside the platform.
We have a module for design configuration, so automating the translation of design into production information straight to go into the factory floor and also optimizing the production scheduling within the factories for the exact design that needs to be manufactured. Now it's really important to understand the manufacturing constraints early on and that's the reason we have been working on these two different areas and bridging them.
Because you need to know how things are made in order to design them properly. You need to know the guidelines and you need to know the creative constraints that you work within. As an architect, it's exactly the same thing as working with a specific material. You need to know what the material can and cannot do to design for it. So, it's no different when it comes to manufacturing.
We do understand though that the complexity is a bit higher because not everybody knows how a factory operates and what the limitations and the opportunities are. So that's why we have been embedding those manufacturing constraints in our design automation module to make sure that this knowledge is available to the wider audience without having to be an expert in offsite manufacturing.
Dale Sinclair (05:20)
Fantastic. And your customers, are they manufacturers or are you working directly for contractors? Where does your work come from?
Eva Magnisali (06:07)
We focus right now on offsite manufacturers, and we have been working with 2D panelized systems, 3D volumetric, timber, steel. We are agnostic of the typology, both residential, commercial projects, hospitals. To put it simply, as long as you want to configure floors, walls and ceilings, we work on that area, but we have much bigger plans. This information, once it's structured and put together in a very clear way, that can really create big efficiencies upstream and downstream. The supply chain, for contractors as you mentioned, for property developers, for material suppliers.
Dale Sinclair (06:14)
Does that mean that you're really getting involved in projects at the stage three, at the end of stage three? And if so, are there lots of frustrations you see? Are you having to optimize information or change the stage three information that you receive to make it more efficient for manufacturing?
Eva Magnisali (06:33)
There is a bit of discussion happening. There are different cases. A manufacturer might have an internal design team, so they are in control of how things are being designed for production, where we don't need to make any modifications, or they might receive external files from external architects or third parties.
Where we create the guidelines that they can share with these third parties. It is an ongoing discussion and it's actually a very interesting one because we're not expecting the industry to change from one day to the next. So, we want to be part of this discussion of how you make this information available. We create a lot of educational content, present a lot in conferences and events to raise awareness that this is not something different. It's not eliminating what we already do. As a metaphor, you need to know the words you're using, the vocabulary, to make sentences. So that's all it is.
Dale Sinclair (07:35)
When I was involved in writing the first DFMA overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work, I was really conscious that if we don't look at manufacturing and the concept design, we risk just embedding construction or baking construction into our designs. Are you seeing architects coming around to this whole notion of shifting away from construction into manufacturing?
We talk about early contractor engagement, but maybe we should be having more early manufacturing engagement. Have you seen those conversations helping to shape the nature of design proposals, or do you still think there's a lot of work to be done to change the culture of our profession?
Eva Magnisali (08:14)
We are not working immediately with architects, so I wouldn't want to say that I see much change happening there, although I do, up to a certain degree. We work more with the manufacturers for them to be able to express what their systems can and cannot do and help their customers design accordingly.
Definitely like any other change, it needs some time, but there is a lot of interest and a lot of motivation for that change. And being an architect myself as well, architects are very flexible. They just need to understand what the rulesets are and what's the new way to do things.
As an architect I've used all kinds of software tools and all kinds of coding, all kinds of materials, different programs, small, big. Architects are adaptable. It's just about bringing them in and making them part of the discussion and explaining the rulesets. So that's what we are very clearly documenting and sharing. The manufacturers do know those rulesets, although many times they might leave people's experience, knowledge in their heads.
So, we are helping digitize that information to apply it automatically in every project. But that also helps us share it very transparently with the industry as well.
Dale Sinclair (9:36)
Good point, people say to me all the time when you're doing your kits-of-parts, is that going to stifle creativity or are we going to end up with a generation of buildings that all look the same? My response to that is quite simple, it's just really what you've been alluding to is the rules of manufacturing just put a constraint on the design process. We see lots of products that look beautiful, and I don't think putting a constraint on the design process results in poor or repetitive design. I think it actually creates better design because constraints are actually a good thing in a design process. Any thoughts on that?
Eva Magnisali (10:16)
Well, I think the current design process, even for traditional on-site construction, is full of constraints. Planning constraints, material constraints, traditional construction constraints. So, this is no new thing for architects and designers. I understand where the concern comes from, knowing it myself as a designer. It's more people are concerned when the design is standardized.
And that's exactly what we have been doing differently when it comes to automating the design process and creating our project configurator. We don't standardize the design; we standardize the rules that create the design. And that allows for design flexibility and customization within certain manufacturing constraints. Now, the standardization of the design, like taking the same shape and copy pasting it on a building, I think that's what worries people, which is exactly the opposite of what we do.
And the reason why people have been discussing about standardizing designs is a), because it takes a very long time. If the design is always customized and translated into production information, because think about a wall as a box. Somebody and that somebody is the design team of the manufacturer needs to put all the elements in there, all the studs, insulation boards, everything that goes in there.
Now we have eliminated that complexity by automating this translation when it would take 4 to 12 weeks to translate design to production. It takes about a minute on our platform. And the second reason for the discussion for design standardization is it has to do with the factory.
People not knowing how to plan production when everything is customized and not knowing how to calculate how long it will take, what's the complexity. Again, that's what our second module on the platform addresses. Optimizing the production scheduling and automatically exporting in what order you need to make things, what resources you need to bring in. What complexity its design embeds.
So, if you eliminate those two factors, then you can customize offsite products within constraints of the manufacturing facility.
Dale Sinclair (12:33)
I think you make a great point that architects have always been used to constraints. I think the challenge is that constraints are different. So how do you think we can educate architects about how to shift their mindset away from the constraints of construction to the constraints of manufacturing? Is it just keeps speaking to people or is there any big one thing that might help architects to make that shift?
Eva Magnisali (12:59)
I think engaging them in discussions early on is really important. I believe that general discussions can help for preparing for a new mindset, but I'm a very practical person, so I think guidelines and explaining the rulesets of offsite and sharing that with the designers makes a huge difference.
If you know that you shouldn't be placing a door at the edge of a wall because there is a frame that's going to be there, it's very easy to take that into account when you're actually designing something. You just need to know it in advance, the same way that you need to know in advance how tall to make your building.
Dale Sinclair (13:39)
It's funny that door and the edge of a frame keeps coming up. I don't know why it is, but that seems to be the hardest rule is trying to get a door into the middle of a sub-assembly. So, it's interesting how simple some of these changes are. And you're right, we just need to educate the profession that this is not trying to radically change how we design buildings. It's just the tweaks that we need to do to really facilitate a shift to industrialized construction.
One of the things I think though is that we, I mean… I've been doing projects for my whole career and every time I go into a project meeting now, I just get frustrated because I think I've made that decision like, so many times over the years.
Well for me one of the things that's really crucial for shifting to industrialized construction is actually reusing decisions like for example why do we have to have a six-hour discussion on every project about how we're going to fix the unitised cladding to the slab. So, it amazes me. That's how simple I see it. But that's why I love this whole shift to a programme approach, because for me it's about taking away the complexity and trying to focus on the future and I guess the unique challenges to every project, but at the same time not scaling manufacturing, trying to, of course, through reduction in waste and all the amazing things that come from being in the factory is reducing costs, reducing carbon and so on.
But in terms of the manufacturers, are you seeing any trends around shifts in materials? What would they like to do? Would they prefer to productize their components? Are they happy to be doing customized products that come from a, let's say, a traditional design flow?
Or they, rather, designers were working with their products and configuring them and any trends that you're seeing there that you think might influence the future?
Eva Magnisali (15:31)
I think manufacturers are also very flexible. The difference between off-site manufacturing and other kinds of manufacturing is that you will never eliminate the product variability. It's in the nature of construction. We're not talking about making the same car chassis again and again.
So, we work with this product variability. So, it makes no difference for us on our platform whether the product is customized or standardized. Now for the manufacturers, they also adapt to this reality. So, they might have different product lines. They might have their standardized products, and they do a lot of custom projects as well. And I think that's really interesting. And something I personally find extremely interesting to look into which is the business model.
We do create technology, we sell a software platform, but for me the important part is to create the data-driven business decisions. Because a manufacturer might only be manufacturing off-site, they might also be developing, and they might also be assembling and there is a combination of those business models. They might be doing temporary buildings and permanent buildings or both at the same time.
So, it's not about choosing one or the other is about having the tools to be flexible about where you shift your business because demand fluctuates, the industry is very fragmented and you always work with different entities so it's really important to have the knowledge digitized and be able to apply it fast in different locations.
And on that topic like for us an add-on to the platform is to simulate all these cases and work the what if scenarios. What if demand increases in one specific part of the business? What if the industry fluctuates? What if material supply fluctuates? Because we know that these are risks and we have seen that they are actual risks that can make or break a business. The same way that we test whether automation technologies can come into the factory, when should they come and what kind of technologies should be integrated to make sure that they have an actual impact, not that you just automated a process that was not your main problem.
So, for me it's really important to work with this flexibility and that's why simulating all that is finding better ways to describe complexity rather than trying to simplify the problem.
Dale Sinclair (18:08)
Okay, some amazing points there, Eva. So, thanks for coming along. And as ever, I'm sure we could talk for at least another hour, but we have to draw this to a close. Is there any last stands or people that you want to see before you head off?
Eva Magnisali (18:24)
First of all, thank you very much for inviting me here today. I believe we could definitely talk for hours. [laughter] There are always amazing things to see in events like this. So yeah, I'll be going around again.
Dale Sinclair (18:39)
Enjoy the rest of the show and thank you for coming along, Eva. As ever, it's been a fantastic discussion. So, thank you very much.
Eva Magnisali (18:45)
Thank you very much, Dale.
