Pre-engineered

Offsite residential construction, Glossary of terms, published by Buildoffsite in 2018, states:

‘Standardisation of product allows the development of pre-engineering, which is a term occasionally used in offsite manufacturing circles. Often it means no more than the production of the drawings before the product is made by adapting or modifying drawings from a previous application of the system. The correct use of the term is where a product is fully engineered and can be described in a technical manual or catalogue, where it is fully detailed and programmed for manufacture, where it is fully costed and the price is available, and then it is pre-engineered.’

‘For example, the manufacture of room modules begins with a 3D computer aided design (CAD) model, which details each component and ascribes a unique part number. This detailed model provides the bill of materials for each module and is then converted into computer aided manufacture (CAM) files. CAM files contain all of the data for the module, broken down into the subassemblies of walls, floor cassettes, ceiling cassettes etc. These files also contain all the machine codes that control the various stations on the automated assembly line. It is this link between the product and production equipment that provides the repeatable dimensional accuracy of a manufactured product when compared with other, more traditional methods of construction.’

‘The term is used to distinguish between bespoke, prototype building (traditional) and factory manufacture, which by its very nature requires pre-design and proving before being incorporated into the works onsite.'

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