Abstract
Offsite construction is increasingly being presented as a way to increase housing delivery and reduce the housing crisis. Large developers play a pivotal role in the delivery of affordable homes and therefore offsite construction could be beneficial in alleviating the crisis. Previous Offsite Construction (OC) studies conducted into the drivers, barriers and decision factors provide qualitative analysis from manufacturers and larger developers appear to be taking advantage of the UK government’s renewed interest in offsite manufacturing and have begun investing in these methods. However, the role of smaller housebuilding developers in the use of offsite construction systems is rather more uncertain. This research addresses this gap in the literature through an exploration of small housebuilding developers’ best value perceptions of offsite construction methods within the UK housebuilding sector. A questionnaire survey was used to ascertain perceptions of the 134 small developers towards the drivers, barriers and decision factors identified in the extant OC literature. Although survey respondents had not widely used offsite manufactured systems previously, the results indicate a high level of agreement with the drivers identified within the offsite construction literature. The respondents identified the buyers’ perception of traditional methods as superior to OC systems and creating higher sales figures. Many any of the respondents also believe that best value, and hence maximised profit, higher sales value, and greater returns on investment, is achieved through traditional methods of construction. These two factors combined are more desirable for small developers, rather than the perceived increase in sustainability and efficiency offered by OC systems, due to their positive effect on profit.
Highlights
Accepted: 4 March 2021In the UK, there is a belief that mass housebuilding’s future relies on combining innovative building techniques and creative design [1]
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) Directory has a total of 209 developers Table 2 illustrates that developers were sent emails and 62% were delivered to the recipient
Neutral views were found for statement B (Mdn = 4, InterQuartile Range (IQR) = 1.5), statement C (Mdn = 4, IQR = 1) and statement G (Mdn = 4, IQR = 1). These results suggest that small housebuilding developers would find no difference in using either traditional methods of construction or panelised systems for developments, contradicting previous research which identified them as crucial for increasing up-take [8,9,24,25]
Summary
Accepted: 4 March 2021In the UK, there is a belief that mass housebuilding’s future relies on combining innovative building techniques and creative design [1]. The conclusion of the Second World War emphasised the need for increased housing output and provided a strong push for innovation; as a result, prefabrication was implemented to remove and replace labour intensive skills, and numerous advantages were claimed by those supporting these methods, including increased quality, efficient use of labour, improved working conditions, and cost and time efficiency [3]. The Centre for London (2019) [5] believes that modern methods of construction (MMC), offsite construction (OC) technologies, subassemblies, panelised systems, and volumetric systems, are thought to increase time and cost efficiency and create more sustainable housing due to controlled factory conditions [2,3]. The UK government introduced the Home Build Fund, a £3 bn fund set up to assist small housebuilding developers in increasing use of offsite manufacturing, and the Accelerated Construction Scheme, which encourages developers to use time-saving construction methods. In the latest government budget, it was announced the offsite manufacturing would be promoted through government purchasing powers and a presumption offsite manufacturing would be adopted where it represented best value [6].
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