Martin Fenn delivers Modern Methods of Construction at Sydney Build Expo
At last week’s Sydney Build Expo, Martin Fenn, Modern Methods of Construction Lead – Oceania – for the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), outlined his vision for the transformative Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) building methodology.
(main pic: Martin Fenn, Modern Methods of Construction Lead, Oceania, Chartered Institute of Building.)
Representing the CIOB with over 47,000 members worldwide, they are the world’s largest professional body for construction management and leadership organisation helping to transform the construction industry of how it can move towards Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution.
According to Fenn, a key driver towards construction industry adoption of MMC is to address the productivity decline, labour shortages, supply chain disruptions and material cost escalation issues we face in the post-COVID world.
“One of the reasons houses are unaffordable is they are becoming more and more expensive to build and we are getting further behind the demand curve.
To put it in perspective, in terms of the uptake of technology, the construction industry is now behind agriculture and only site above the hunting and fishing industry,” Fenn said.
A key consideration in the adoption of MMC building methodologies is to address the clear urgency to decarbonise the construction industry.
“To address decarbonisation as well as productivity, we are looking for new ways of building that involves less waste – both physical waste and procedural waste. Precisely engineered, standardised components manufactured in a factory, undercover and not exposed to the elements means less waste than traditional onsite construction.”
“Buildings are assembled from a configurable kit of parts, aided by computational design, AI and machine learning, digital and robotic fabrication, virtual and augmented reality, sensor technologies, are also being incorporated into the process to increase productivity gains and enhance quality with the MMC ‘umbrella’.”
The MMC ‘kit of parts’ ecosystem consists of all the various designers, manufacturers, suppliers and assemblers combine to form the entire building, and value and efficiency comes from economies of scale.
“We are now seeing the rise of this form of delivery, particularly in the UK, where a standardised, common, repeatable set of components is configured to a geometrically precise structural form or core. The ‘kit of parts may include prefabricated facades, prefabricated service risers and cassettes, bathroom pods, joinery and volumetric modules,” Fenn added.
See: linkedin.com/in/martin-fenn-mmc
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