14 How House Building is Changing and Why More Homes Through Manufacture A Housing Forum Working Group Report Bathroom pods arrive on site for the Riverlight development in Vauxhall, London (see case studies page 36) Development of new skill sets. Clients and project teams need to understand the properties and constraints of the selected system and the revised project process. The whole project team also needs to collaborate effectively. EU procurement rules make it difficult to get an offsite supplier involved earlier on in the process. That said, cost is often a determining factor in choosing the form of construction and if production could be increased and with it costs lowered, the balance could tip more favourably in offsite’s favour. To increase demand, an incoming Government could use plans for new garden cities to promote offsite manufacturing to build homes. That way, demand would increase and encourage more investment, which could bring down costs. Another suggestion is for Government to stipulate that publicly owned land being sold for development could include an element of offsite construction. However, there are fears that this would depress the sale price and be impractical to enforce. With growth anticipated in both housing and public sector construction, offsite manufacture is expected to play an important role in providing additional capacity.
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