A well accepted approach to managing costs in the development industry is the standardisation of products, with most volume housebuilders possessing one or more standard house type ranges that are carefully honed to allow them to build to a given price point.  Modern Methods of Construction envisage taking these standardised products off-site where they can be manufactured more efficiently and to higher quality control standards.  Both these approaches have a chequered history when it comes to design quality, with standard volume housebuilder ranges often viewed as insensitive by local communities to their local context, while off-site prefabricated and timber frame products are frequently associated with post-war construction failures.

When done well, there is a positive story to tell about standardisation and indeed many pre-war builders created homes that are still popular today using pattern books of standard housing designs.  Both the stories in this route utilised off-site methods to deliver high quality products across multiple sites, thus achieving economies of scale and helping to overcome viability issues in low value locations.  The first – St Mary’s (story 15) – achieved this through a timber frame system (manufactured off-site) and the second – Irwell Riverside (story 16) – by producing fully modular homes.  Both were carefully designed to be adaptable and responsive to the context, from site to site.  Ultimately this is an approach that relies on volume and throughput, and which is therefore susceptible to market downturns. It has increasingly been explored by public housebuilders (see Story 8), as well as by private developers, as councils gear up to deliver more affordable homes, albeit that challenging market conditions since the pandemic and the associated failures of a range of modular housing providers in recent years may mean that such techniques are off the table in the short-term until conditions improve.