Martin Benn, Head of New Build at Eurocell, which supplies PVC-U windows and doors profiles for new build developments, makes the case for off-site construction to speed up the delivery of new homes in England.
Labour’s shake-up to the house building industry – including the reintroduction of compulsory house building targets – received a warm welcome from both developers and trade bodies alike when it was announced less than two months after the party took office.
The targets, along with the planning overhaul and a reduction in the Bank of England base rate, provide a clear impetus to get building. This should remove many of the bottlenecks, particularly planning delays, currently holding up the building of some 160,000 new homes.
We’re already seeing tentative signs of recovery in the house building market. The number of new home registrations rose by 34% in Q2 2024 compared to the previous quarter, according to the NHBC. However, the organisation has also warned that current house building volumes ‘must double’ to meet the ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes in five years.
Removing the roadblocks
As well as much-needed planning reform, modern methods of construction (MMC) – particularly off-site construction – will be critical if the industry is to meet the new targets.
While off-site building methods are nothing new, and offer many benefits, adoption has been patchy at best, especially in England.
Take timber frame construction, for instance. North of the border, in Scotland, it accounts for around 80 to 93 per cent of all new build homes but in England, the proportion is far lower – simply because, culturally, developers tend to prefer bricks-and-mortar.
Yet timber frame construction could alleviate the ongoing challenges in the industry, including the skills crisis, which 43% of SME building firms blame for holding up jobs.
Producing timber frames in a factory is highly-efficient, since numerous processes can run concurrently. Automation helps to speed up production even more, reducing costs, mitigating labour shortages and reducing the chance of error that results in wastage. It’s also less disruptive for on-site teams too, and can mean fewer delays due to bad weather.
Some of the UK’s biggest housebuilders have already made inroads into offsite timber frame construction. Barratt acquired Oregon Timber Frame in 2019 and is now investing £45 million in a new timber frame factory in Derby, which could produce as many as 4,000 frames per year compared to the current 1,000.
Meanwhile, both Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey are also forging ahead with plans to deliver more timber frames. Last year, Persimmon’s sister brand Space4 was given the green light for a new plant in Loughborough capable of delivering 7,000 frames per year, while Taylor Wimpey has set out plans for a fully-automated factory in Peterborough.
In-built efficiency
It isn’t just the frames themselves that can transform building projects. When other components, like windows and doors, are fitted off-site too, the efficiency gains multiply even further.
This was something we set out to achieve with our own InSite system, a new way of fitting windows to timber frame properties.
It includes a specialist hinge, sealant, cavity barrier and a Eurocell window profile, so windows can be installed in timber frame and LGS panels as part of the manufacturing process. The hinge is attached to the cavity barrier of a fully glazed window, which is then fitted securely into the timber panel cavity, before being transported and installed on-site.
Only the final commissioning of the windows has to be completed on site but it can be done from inside the building, so you don’t need scaffolding. As well as keeping costs down, it means site personnel are no longer required to work at height which makes it safer.
The window system complies with NHBC standards, and is the only one for timber frames that has been fully tested to prevent the spread of fire and smoke from, or to, the cavity – helping the property to meet building regulations.
Because the windows are fitted to panels in the factory, they’re already watertight when they arrive on-site which enables the interior trades, like plasterers, to get to work immediately.
All these efficiencies add up, cutting installation times by as much as 75 per cent in the case of a housing project in Inverness – a block of four terraced houses delivered by affordable housing provider Places for People.
A combination of innovation in the timber frame manufacturing process, and the InSite system, meant the build was delivered nine days faster than even a typical timber frame construction project. This represented a significant cost and time saving on a development that had already been delayed by the pandemic.
Final thoughts
Off-site construction could transform the property industry, delivering huge commercial value to private sector housebuilders and meet consumers’ demand for new homes. It also allows housing associations, like Places for People, to build more affordable houses to buy or rent, and even makes building homes for social rent viable for cash-strapped councils.
Fortunately, timber frame construction isn’t a big unknown – we only have to look to Scotland to see that its benefits have made it the industry standard. With the big housebuilders showing where the market is heading, it is surely only a matter of time before we see more suppliers working together to deliver compatible systems that can be assembled off-site.