At a manufacturing level they can deliver more reliable quality with lower complexity and cost, while driving operations significantly closer to net-zero….

Platform II was designed to use basic materials with the minimum amount of fabrication where possible.Most components use no or low levels of fabrication (these can be thought of as ‘dumb’ components).

These components tend to be the large, heavy, commoditised elements including:.Columns - standard square hollow sections are used with little/no ‘fabrication’ (a single hole is punched or laser cut in each column);.Beams are made using a standard rolled metal profile (metal coils are passed through a highly efficient, automated rolling process with virtually no waste, no double handling etc.)

as a permanent shutter for concrete.As much ‘intelligence’ as possible is then placed in the interfaces (e.g.

bracketry which is self locating to control tolerances and is colour coded to ensure correct application etc.)

The ‘intelligent’ components are small, manually handleable and accurately mass produced..‘Volumetric’ seems to be the first and most obvious starting point, but we believe there is a need for a wider and more sophisticated ecosystem of DfMA.

There may be parallels with what happened with BIM.The UK was the first to mandate Building Information Modelling and our standards became quite widely adopted, or were at least used as a starting point, globally.

It will be interesting to see if construction Platform design has a similar global appeal, once people have understood the limitations of modular.. COVID-19: accelerating the shift to construction Platforms?.COVID-19 has simply accelerated this journey, or accentuated the need to move forwards at speed.