The Modular Dilemma

The construction industry will face some difficult challenges in the next decade. Many Modular construction companies have tried to step up to the increased demand for housing construction in the UK but found that increasing the output of volumetric modular units in an offsite factory is not an insignificant issue and is fraught with problems and challenges. The road is littered with unsuccessful attempts and failed companies. Most of the “successful” companies are still making significant annual losses.

The strategy currently being applied to manufacture of the volumetric modules is to approach it from a familiar place. The companies typically have a background in construction and can see the benefits in construction under cover. The staff, tooling, expertise does not have to be mobile and work can move on at a pace in inclement weather and all year round. An element of quality control is relatively easy to implement. It seems like a win-win for everyone, however, there is a major catch which cannot be overcome using that approach as many have found to their cost.

Everyone is familiar with the obvious drawbacks of this strategy.

• It is difficult and expensive to provide variety of style and bespoke designs;

• Transportation of high numbers of large volumetric modules is logistically challenging;

• High capital investment and engineering effort is typically needed for each different design;

• Changes in quantity demand from customers can leave massive stock wastage issues;

• A high number of skilled staff are required in the locality of the factory;

• Supporting all sites across the UK from one plant is not really practical;

• Significant lifting equipment is required onsite for final installation.
  

As heard in many a board room, “If only everyone would live in an identical house, we could make this work”.

The truth is that despite best efforts and a not insignificant amount of intellectual might it can never be made to work and the elephant in the room are two vital and key factors interchangeability and scalability; these cannot be achieved using the traditional approach to construction. However, Abode Industries has developed a solution which does resolve all of these drawbacks.

• Flexibility of design with billions of possibilities;

• Transportation using traditional road haulage methods;

• Zero capital investment for each design;

• Full interchangeability of product between different customers;

• Low skilled staff required for offsite manufacture and final onsite construction;

• Multiple scalable factories to support the UK market and reduce the carbon footprint;

• No specialised lifting equipment required to construct the final building onsite.

At Abode Industries we take a completely different approach, an automated factory has the potential to make a module every 5 seconds and construct buildings with an overall tolerance of a few mm, whilst manufacturing greater than 30,000 buildings per annum. The Holy Grail of building construction. The fact that the founders of Abode Industries have a background in automotive production and aerospace gives you the first hint of how this is achievable. This annual production number also sounds outrageous until you realize that a typical car has approximately 30,000 components and a car is produced perhaps every 2 minutes on a typical production line. An Abode Industries module has typically only 70 parts, orders of magnitude less complex and far simpler to manufacture in volume, manufactured on fully autonomous single piece flow production lines manned by robots, not unlike all volume car production facilities today.