But being able to use down time to manufacture ‘short’ orders or contribute to a larger order (the consistent specifications making products from different suppliers fungible) will also help increase utilisation and productivity, reducing prices;.
Still, switching the whole ecosystem to support industrialised construction represents a very difficult challenge..Starting with DfMA.
Marks feels one beneficial change would come from the construction industry committing more broadly to seeking guidance from manufacturing professionals.Currently, that isn’t often happening.However, if we want to shift to more of a manufacturing mindset, she believes it’s essential that we “get the right people in the room.”.
“The majority of the consultants that are working with our customers and myself on the industrialised construction offering are manufacturing consultants,” she says.“You have to think of things like systems architecture, and you have to understand things like flow.
These are guys who live, breathe, eat, drink and sleep manufacturing, who understand how to apply it to these spaces.
Right now in the construction business, you have lots of these contractors opening up fab shops, and they're not going to manufacturing consultants to figure out how to set up a fab shop.Latency requirements, local regulation, and land constraints mean that ‘cookie-cutter’ single-storey facilities are no longer the only game in town.
Lincoln points out that multi-storey or retrofitted data centres may soon become more common, especially when operators seek low-latency connections in city centres..However, building in dense urban environments introduces new complexities: community relations, architectural design considerations, and zoning regulations all come into play.
The standardised ‘kit of parts’ concept helps here too, as a platform-based design can be more readily adapted to tighter sites or existing structures..Ensuring adaptability and reliability.