Initiative memberModern Methods of Construction (MMC) may hold the key to delivering social and sustainability value, according to industry experts.
Specialists in law and social housing have called on the construction sector to consider the value of MMC on a holistic level, taking into account social and environmental benefits as well as monetary advantages.
Social housing has been an early adopter of MMC, highlighting the sector as a potential starting point for MMC scalability across the wider property landscape. Ian Atkinson, partner at transatlantic law firm Womble Bond Dickinson, which has a large office in Bristol, explained: “The Government is reinforcing the importance of MMC by continuing to invest in policies and schemes to support affordable homes, including the Affordable Homes Programme (2021 to 2026). This grant will help developers to overcome the cost barriers for implementing MMC methods into large scale construction projects.”
According to Ian, the time is right for social housing to lead the MMC revolution: “We’re at the tipping point for a real push for scalable MMC in the housing sector and this is where collaboration becomes key.”
“Although MMC offers a range of benefits, the cost and need for either collaboration or outside funding is proven in the social housing case; incentivisation drives scalability. Collaboration will be crucial in steering the conversations surrounding MMC towards the social, economic, and environmental value of MMC rather than just the investment costs.”
Jessie Wilde, Deputy Project Director at Bristol Housing Festival, an initiative to make the city of Bristol a living exhibition of the latest and most inventive approaches to housing, believes that as the market engages with MMC, an opportunity will emerge to question what it meant by ‘value’ and ‘best value'. Jessie said: "While MMC is being hailed as having the potential to be cheaper than traditional build, realistically at the moment this isn’t always the case. Particularly with volumetric systems, the significant reduction in price will come with scale. This therefore means that getting ‘best value’ (often a synonym for ‘lowest cost’) excludes a lot of MMC from the playing field. However, it is important that we start to challenge the unspoken and often unquestioned perception of best value.
"MMC provides an opportunity to rethink ‘value’ - to start to look at whole life costs, the ‘value’ of social impact, sustainability, ecology, etc. MMC forces this rethink because it is often more expensive when compared to a traditional build when simply comparing the capital cost of the build at completion - however, there are cost benefits to MMC such as reduced time on site, reduced disruption to the local area, and fixed prices that don’t necessarily show up in the ’cost’ comparison, but the ‘value’ of these elements should not be overlooked as the market grows and matures.
"Value, beyond monetary value, is difficult to quantify, but there are models being built and used to quantify the added benefits of MMC, the social value, the sustainability value, the reduction in carbon value, the local value, and much more. There is a real opportunity afforded by MMC, as the market is forced to start to rethink the model, to start thinking more holistically at the challenges our cities are facing and the opportunities we are being presented in the market to start to join up some of the solutions."
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