OFFSITE MANUFACTURING
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Offsite Manufacturing
WILL COVID-19 ACCELERATE OFFSITE TAKE-UP? OFFSITE MANUFACTURING PLANTS CONTINUED OPERATING FOR MUCH OF THE COVID LOCKDOWN. WITH FEARS OF A SECOND WAVE, WILL MORE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS CHOOSE TO EMBRACE FACTORY PROCESSES? WILL MANN ASKS SOME OF THE SECTOR’S KEY PLAYERS, STARTING WITH LAING O’ROURKE
fortnight of lockdown but its DfMA capability has allowed the contractor to keep projects on schedule. “On our Soho Place commercial scheme, for instance, we increased the number of MEP components manufactured offsite,” explains McGeeney. “Horizontal risers are not commonly prefabricated – unlike vertical risers – because project teams feel there’s not enough volume to justify it. However, we do prefabricate horizontal risers in hospitals, and we introduced that approach on Soho Place because of the lockdown restrictions, so we could keep the critical path moving along.” Laing O’Rourke’s positive experience is shared by many across the offsite sector (see boxes). The controlled
NEIL WEBB
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When covid-19 struck in March, it was only a temporary setback for Laing O’Rourke’s design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) plants. “Our factories were running at 75% to 80% operational capacity during the first two weeks of lockdown, but after that, returned to pre-covid productivity levels, once we’d worked out the rules on social distancing,” says Declan McGeeney, Laing O’Rourke head of infrastructure. “We actually think they have been even productive than before lockdown, which may be due to fewer distractions from project teams visiting – the factories have been left to get on with their work.” Productivity across Laing O’Rourke sites dropped 50% during that first
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