Make UK Modular is helping promote the benefits of modular homebuilding and bring a fresh focus to the use of offsite technology. Head of Make UK Modular Steve Cole, spoke to us about progress so far and a busy year ahead.
Q: Since your launch in December 2021 – with some of the sector's leading names – how is Make UK Modular progressing as a trade body?
Steve Cole (SC): I'm delighted with Make UK Modular's first year, though I must say I did not think we'd have got through five housing ministers. Year 1 was always going to be about getting the fundamentals right. We had five priorities to create the foundations we needed to deliver for the sector: establishing a strong working relationship with Government, the opposition, MPs, and the Civil Service, building a robust and credible evidence base about the benefits and potential of modular housing, establishing and delivering against a new set of sector policy priorities, delivering a consistent, positive media and public affairs presence and of course, growing our membership. With more than 20 MP meetings, the publication of 'Greener, Better, Faster: Modular's Role in Solving the Housing Crisis' is the first 'state of the sector' report into UK Modular housing, establishment of five core policy asks, more than 80 pieces of positive media coverage and a 40% growth in membership, we really delivered in a political environment of unprecedented volatility. We couldn't have done any of this without our amazing members who have taken the time to craft policy asks, attend party conference, host factory visits for MPs, journalists, and TV crews and provided data to inform our reports.
Q: There has been a lot of investment into UK modular businesses and offsite systems in the last 5-6 years with new industry entrants, but also some notable failures – is the sector at a crucial stage of development?
SC: Absolutely, if you look at the innovation curve the sector is now at the inflection point between innovators and early adopters. What is often unreported is the sheer scale of investment which has gone into the sector. Nearly £1billion of finance has been invested and modular alone is responsible for nearly 1/3 of all R&D investment in the construction of buildings sector. Between 2022 and 2025 we expect to see modular increase it's delivery fivefold to roughly 15,000 new homes per annum. Of course, the external operating environment remains extremely challenging. The construction industry as a whole saw over 2,500 insolvencies registered in 2021, amounting to 19% of all insolvencies and modular is certainly not immune to the pressures facing our economy. Which is why we believe it's so important that Government continues to back the sector.
Q: The discussion surrounding the number of new homes required across the UK never ends. How can the modular sector make a dent in the oft-quoted 300,000 homes a year?
SC: Our ambition is for modular to deliver 30,000 new homes a year by 2030. 10% of all homes but, importantly, 30% of the current shortfall on the country's new homes target. With 15,000 new homes a year expected to be delivered by 2025, we're convinced that modular can make a real dent in that shortfall. Equally importantly, modular can do this without cannibalising the existing (and rapidly shrinking) housebuilding workforce as 65% of the jobs in modular are in manufacturing rather than construction.
Q: The built environment is under pressure to be more energy/material-efficient, decarbonise and use more sustainable approaches to construction – how does modular construction fit into this equation?
SC: In my mind, net zero and modular are two sides of the same coin. The sort of efficient low carbon designs, net zero, ESG, and, more importantly, the physics of climate change demand of housing are ideally suited to modular. In 2022, an academic study of Vision Modular Systems' modular high-rise development in Croydon found that it contained 40 to 45% less embodied carbon than an equivalent building built using traditional methods. For low-rise buildings, these savings are
even greater.
One of our members produces low-rise homes with just 18% of the whole-life embodied carbon of the average new home being built today, already surpassing RIBA's 2030 targets for the residential building sector. Some manufacturers who produce low-rise homes using timber (one of the building materials with the least embodied carbon) calculate upfront carbon savings to be over 80% on traditional build. In one case study, it cost just £3,000 extra to make a modular home zero-carbon (and £5,000 extra for an apartment), whereas achieving this through traditional building methods would be prohibitively expensive for clients.
Q: A criticism levelled at volumetric modular generally, is the lack of interoperability amongst systems and providers in the event of failures and this is putting off clients and developers from adopting long term modular commitments – is that a genuine worry?
SC: This is something we've had very productive engagement with government about. It's more of a concern in the infrastructure space than residential where designs have only the government as a client and there is far less investment in proprietary IP. Housing is a much more varied market and developers (both traditional and modular) need varied products to compete in that space and deliver the different homes people need such as apartments vs houses or affordable vs luxury. The experience to date has been where there have been failures, another developer comes in and builds out the scheme just as they do in traditional construction.
Another thing we're seeing, is that as more clients work with modular, they better understand the unanticipated benefits of modular such as a 50% reduction in on-site disruption and 80% fewer vehicle movements, meaning lower than expected costs and reduced concern from local people and planning authorities.
Q: The UK suffers from low levels of productivity– how can modular methods bring improvements here and boost building safety and design?
SC: Construction is one of the least productive sectors of the UK economy – falling behind both service and manufacturing. Shockingly, construction of buildings is less productive now than it was 25 years ago. Modular housebuilding is over 40% more productive in terms of hours worked per m2 built than traditional brick and block/timberframed on-site building. It takes a modular manufacturer seven to nine hours of labour per m2 to build the superstructure of a house, compared with 12 hours per m2 for both brick and block and on-site timber framed methods. In addition, modular reduces waste by an average of 90%. This is unlocked through the efficiency gains of the factory's assembly line system. In terms of building safety, we've had experts like Dame Judith Hackitt and the Government's Director General of Building Safety, visit our members and see first hand how homes manufactured in a controlled factory environment, using a continuous improvement process, delivers industry leading levels of safety both for the buildings and the workforce producing them.
Q: Modular buildings are faster to produce and construct than traditional build but there seems to be a lack of data to prove its many merits – can Make UK Modular help here?
SC: It's an area we've been keen to address and was covered in our first major report 'Greener, Better Faster: Modular's Role in Solving the Housing Crisis' which came out last autumn. We found that modular homes are typically built 50% faster than traditional build and that's without considering the potential to deliver a more efficient critical path in which homes are produced in a factory as the groundworks are undertaken.
Q: What plans does Make UK Modular have for 2023?
SC: As you'd expect given the sector leaders we work with, our board and I are extremely ambitious about 2023. Likely, it will be the last year before we see a General Election so a lot of the agenda until 2030 will be set in the next 12 months. In 2022 we created a platform to engage with Government. In 2023 we want to build on our success by delivering a more campaigning approach focusing on: tackling the cost-of-living crisis through net zero, energy efficient homes, developing new skills and creating new jobs for the UK economy and delivering new housing to meet growing demand. We have several major reports planned and have already begun speaking with major political figures such as our recent roundtable with Shadow Business Minister Bill Esterson.
The first key output of this year will be a major report into modular's role in solving the housing labour market crisis which will be published in March. We are also actively looking to grow our membership. You'll see announcements about new members joining us soon. We are also launching several new membership categories for smaller modular manufacturers, members of the supply chain, and Category 2 providers. We're always keen to hear from anyone who is interested in joining us. As an organisation, we're only ever as strong as our membership.
For more information visit: www.makeuk.org
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