Industry challenge.
The development will be a high quality and sustainable building with a vastly improved streetscape and public realm, continuing the transformation of Southwark..It will use a hybrid steel and concrete structural platform that was developed as part of an Innovate UK First Phase Challenge Fund research project on Automated Construction.
The structural platform developed as part of the R&D project will provide the chassis for the office floor space and the project will include the development of cladding and building services components to create a reusable kit-of-parts-based solution for offices..The project will validate and showcase the benefits that can be delivered using P-DfMA techniques, Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and digital technologies on a large-scale new build commercial office development.It is designed to a ‘zero carbon in use’ strategy, and is already achieving gains:.
efficiency: a predicted 9.5% reduction in capital cost, 13% reduction in programme, 40% reduction in steel used and 50% reduction in site operatives for superstructure and facade.sustainability: a forecast 19.4% reduction in embodied carbon per square metre, a 36.4% carbon reduction in the substructure and 20.2% in the superstructure and façade..
The Platform approach has been adopted by the Government and is the focus of the Construction Innovation Hub..
The scale and ambition of Sumner Street will be a catalyst for change and a major step forward in proving the new business and financial metrics, whole life performance, and supply chain adoption needed – and deliverable – to accelerate the transformation of the construction sector.. To read more about the principles and benefits of P-DfMA,.Many major clients have national or global rollouts that are happening at a rapid pace.. Often these clients have to procure a bespoke design for every site, introducing unnecessary design cycles and complexity that adds cost and time to construction projects and ongoing operations..
Yet, from our experience, these clients have a very well-informed view on how their asset needs to perform and the layouts and designs that deliver their operational outcomes.This knowledge and understanding lends itself to a repeatable solution that can comprise c.80% of the asset.. We call this a ‘Reference Design’: a highly optimised, site agnostic ‘core design’ for a portfolio client.
Typically, a Reference Design will contain a number of repeated elements at varying scales (from key equipment to whole assets) that can be configured in a number of different ways (with more or less flexibility in how these are arranged depending on the asset type).. For some assets, the Reference Design can become the fixed design.The house blocks we designed for the.
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