The Traditional Construction Model is not Perfect, but it can be Improved

One after the other, high profile construction projects – and many lower profile ones – announce significant budget and cost overruns. It’s become so commonplace that nobody is surprised any more. When new projects get announced how many people are mentally adding percentages to the quoted costs and timing to get to what they think will be the real outcome?

On the back of this, the industry has evolved adversarial and cost-focused attitudes to contract management. None of which encourages innovative approaches that could actually deliver the improved productivity and reliability that customers and contractors both desire.

One central problem with traditional construction projects is that technical solutions are finalised as each project phase is executed. Sometimes operations take longer than planned and sometimes designs have to be modified as practical details become clearer. Delays then have knock-on effects for scheduling the following phases of work. A few days lost from the plan transforms into weeks or months of delays and significant additional cost.

Is Offsite the Answer?

Greater use of offsite construction techniques is offered up as a way to avoid much of the onsite unpredictability. But this isn’t the whole answer. Grafting offsite elements onto a fragmented and broken process, with the same old relationships based on suspicion and low expectations, will have a limited impact.

That’s why Innovaré doesn’t just re-engineer the technology, we also re-engineer the process and the relationships with our customers, our team and other stakeholders such as architects, designers and specialist subcontractors.

This collaborative approach engineers out project complexity and uncertainty from the outset. The design-led process ensures that there are no onsite technical issues left to be resolved and the structure can be built exactly ‘as designed’ using the precision made system.

With less stress on the construction phase and more emphasis on design, there’s also more scope to consider each customer’s broader objectives for lifetime value and building performance.

We see panelised offsite not as the solution in itself, but as an enabling technology. One that allows construction projects to break free from the constraints and relationships that continue to fail both customers and users of the built environment. Contact us today on 0845 674 0020 to find out more.