The AIMCh Feasibility (Advanced Industrialised Methods for the Construction of Homes) project is a collaboration between BRE, Stewart Milne Group, Barratt Developments and Crest Nicholson. It is part funded by Innovate UK. The project builds upon the very successful AIMC4 project looking into the volume production of low-carbon housing. The AIMCh research is intended as a feasibility project for a much larger piece of work, which will require further external financial support to be viable.
The consortium is very much aware that a variety of different offsite construction methods have been trialled in the past, but none have really been adopted, with the exception of open panel timber frame. In the research they have worked with a computer simulation company to model a building site, from initial land investigation through to completion, to try and understand the commercial and often unaccounted for barriers to the introduction of offsite systems and whether all the costs of building conventionally have been accounted for.
The model can be run with different forms of construction; masonry, open panel timber frame and advanced closed panels to compare their commercial performance. Although it is only a first cut model it is able to consider productivity implications and costs that would be hidden in a normal analysis, such as those incurred due to delays in materials, the non-availability of labour or poor weather. It is also able to analyse the responsiveness of the different build systems to variations in sales rates.
The model can explore a number of different scenarios for example with different weather patterns, varying degrees of offsite construction, different quantities and trades to assess the impact on timescales, costs, utilisation and productivity.
Results are due by the end of 2016.
If further external funding is forthcoming it is intended to refine the model to provide greater confidence in the results and to use it as a means of choosing a construction method, which will then be built out on a real site, in volume, to show what performance is like in reality. Developers would like to demonstrate, through evidence, how they would need to change their business to create a profitable offsite (or Smart) construction homes market.