offsite – Steve Trowbridge

The UK Government initiatives through the Construction Industries Training Board (CITB) and the construction industry in general continues to think in terms of migrating people’s skills.

What has been apparent for a long time is that with the UK’s an ageing population and the crutch of our cheap overseas labour being removed the time is right for the wholesale removal of people from the construction process. Companies like Laing O’Rourke are making the investment, but the rest of the UK construction industry seems oblivious to the tsunami of change about to hit Europe.

China with its ageing workforce is already making huge strides with true OSM and it won’t be long before we see Chinese companies bringing that technology to the UK and the EU. With automated factories and sites running 24 hrs day they will slash delivery times and cost. Soon to be legalised automated driving systems means even the delivery trucks won’t need drivers or be constrained by driving hours.

If the Chinese dont drive OSM the cost of second hand manufacturing robots will. A used robot usually seen in a car factory can now be bought for £10-15k (1/3 of the annual employment cost of a semi-skilled operative) and with 60,000 hours time left in the machine that is less than 25P per hour plus operating cost. It won’t be long before the change in our process is driven from the bottom up.

A look at this advert tells you what you need to know

http://www.globalrobots.com/product.aspx?product=23064

In many ways UK construction stands on the edge of a new industrial revolution with the cost of automating construction dropping and entry levels cost being within reach of small companies and not just the largest the conditions to disrupt UK construction is well timed. It will soon be possible to create low cost production lines using second equipment manufacturing small construction elements for an investment of less than the cost of a UK house.

The CITB initiatives looks less like progress and more like King Canute. UK construction faces with the exception of maintenance being wiped out as an industry unless it changes rapidly.

Building on flood plains is not seen as a good idea but that is only the case when you want to build the same style of house that we build everywhere and is already unsuited to our changing climate and increased recurrence of flooding. Governments have become quite irrational basis for restricting development on floodplains especially when fluvial flooding is considered in the same way as one caused by a failure of our tidal flood defences.

Somerset and similar low lying areas are not flood plains in the normal way, there is a enough room to accommodate the odd flood providing our houses are designed for that environment. There is nothing to stop development on land such as the Somerset Levels , the Fens and other low lying areas. We just need the right sort of housing.

Existing Government legislation uses a very blunt definition to restrict development but it really depends on the flood plain and what your living in which brings to the word vernacular. A misused word used by developers to continue building a product that suits their cashflow, that planners use because its safe and objectors use because apart from the great crested newt they have reasons to object and would rather put up with more of the same. We have a self fulfilling prophecy.

We cannot continue building wholly inappropriate housing just because it’s what we have become used to, our housing needs to adapt to our weather will be more extreme and flooding a regular occurrence. Flooding that in coastal areas is likely to be largely salt water rather than the largely benign floods caused by precipitation.

Its not good to have ground floors we need to put our apartments and gardens above the garages to be safe. This also means that the miserable balconies that have been provided to date need to increased to a size that is equivalent to the equally miserable gardens now considered acceptable. The difference between the two is no longer significant.

Tag: offsite

UK Construction; the coming change is not what people imagine

Houses on Flood Plains