How it works
The saving is parallel work, not fast work
We are not building quicker than a good traditional contractor. We are building the superstructure at the same time as the substructure, indoors, while the site is still a field.
Feasibility and transport study
Before anything is priced we check the module geometry against the route, the site access and the crane position. It is where bespoke projects succeed or quietly fail.
Design freeze
Manufacture cannot start until the design is fixed, so we bring the freeze forward and make it explicit. Everything after this point is a change, priced as one.
Foundations in parallel
Groundworks run on site while modules are built in the factory. This is where the programme saving actually comes from, not from building faster.
Manufacture and factory test
Modules are built, fitted out, and services tested indoors, on a line, under cover. Weather stops being a programme risk.
Delivery and craneage
Modules arrive on booked slots and are craned into position, typically twelve to eighteen a day. This is the part clients come to watch.
Stitch, connect and hand over
Inter-module junctions are sealed, services reconnected and re-tested, external envelope completed, and the O&M pack handed over with the keys.
Where it goes wrong
Three ways a modular programme slips
- The design freeze moves
- A change after manufacture starts is not a variation, it is a rebuild of a module that is already half fitted out. We make the freeze date contractual and we say no after it.
- Foundations are late
- Modules are built to a tolerance of a few millimetres and they will not forgive a slab that is out. If the groundworks contractor is not ours, we survey the foundations before we load a lorry.
- Nobody checked the route
- A 4.2 metre module needs a road, a roundabout and a crane position that will take it. We do the transport study before we price, which occasionally means telling a client that modular is wrong for their site.
Programme comparison
A 1,240 m² teaching block
The factory bar runs at the same time as the groundworks, so the client's site is occupied for five weeks rather than thirty-eight. Measured on the Riverbank Academy project.