Government procurement should put MMC on the page

If governments want modern methods of construction (MMC) to become a meaningful part of building delivery, their procurement documents should routinely ask the market to assess them.

The Department of Defence’s Living-In Accommodation industry engagement and market sounding questionnaire provides a useful example. The accompanying notice, listed as published on 29 September 2026, identifies a requirement for approximately 2,660–2,750 sole occupancy units across Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra, including 1,500 at the Australian Defence Force Academy, alongside supporting mess and gym facilities.

Repeated accommodation units, a substantial programme and delivery requirements extending to 2032 make this a strong candidate for assessing volumetric modular construction.

Yet the questionnaire does not mention MMC, modular, volumetric or offsite construction.

It invites alternative financing and delivery models, including public-private partnerships, build-to-lease arrangements, adaptive reuse and refurbishment. That leaves room for an offsite proposal. But leaving an option available is different from explicitly asking respondents to consider it.

The distinction matters. Contractors working within familiar commercial arrangements may default to familiar construction methods unless the client signals that alternatives deserve serious assessment.

This document is industry engagement and market sounding, rather than a construction tender. Defence makes no commitment to proceed with procurement. That makes this an appropriate moment to raise the question, while the eventual delivery approach remains open.

Across the Pacific, a military accommodation project offers a useful comparison.

At Joint Base San Antonio–Fort Sam Houston, Gensler and Layton are leading a programme involving Volumetric Building Companies to deliver five dormitory buildings accommodating 6,000 military medical trainees. Gensler’s 11 September announcement describes volumetric modules manufactured to roughly 95 per cent completion before delivery to site, with a targeted 24-month build programme.

The American project demonstrates how industrialised construction can shape a substantial military accommodation programme from the outset, with design, engineering and manufacture organised around that decision. Australia’s requirements deserve the same early assessment.

Make consideration standard
The broader recommendation should apply across government building procurement: explicitly ask respondents to assess MMC alongside conventional construction and explain which approach best meets the project’s requirements.

That assessment should address delivery time, capital cost, whole-of-life value, quality, compliance, transport, site constraints and available manufacturing capacity.

The requirement would make consideration standard while retaining a project-specific choice of construction method. Where MMC offers limited benefit, respondents should explain why. Where it offers a credible advantage, procurement should give that advantage room to develop.

Early consideration matters because factory production depends on decisions about repeatable designs, structural systems, services and interfaces. Those decisions need to be made while they can still shape the project. Introducing modular construction after the design and commercial arrangements have hardened can restrict its value.

There is also the question of continuity.

Manufacturers need a reasonably predictable pipeline to justify investment in facilities, equipment and skilled people. An isolated project provides work, but limited confidence about what follows.

Government cannot sustain the entire offsite industry. It can, however, help establish demand that supports manufacturing capacity and gives businesses confidence to invest.

Publishing forward programmes, coordinating suitable requirements across agencies and identifying opportunities for repeatable designs would make that demand more useful.

Defence’s accommodation requirement brings the issue into focus. Here is a programme with characteristics that warrant serious MMC assessment, yet the method is absent from the questionnaire.

Government should make that assessment a standard part of commissioning buildings. Put MMC in the procurement documents from the outset, and require respondents to explain its suitability on the merits of the project.

Find the Department of Defence Industry Engagement for: Defence Living-In Accommodation HERE (login required – ATM ID: AZ6636)

Source: Simon McCarthy