Pre-manufacture

The Farmer Review of the UK Construction Labour Model, published in 2016 by the Construction Leadership Council suggests in relation to pre-manufacture that: ‘Many different terms are used in the realm of construction innovation including "off-site manufacture" "modern methods of construction" or "pre-fabrication"'.

This review uniformly adopts the term pre-manufacture as a generic term to embrace all processes which reduce the level of on-site labour intensity and delivery risk. This implicitly includes a ‘design for manufacture & assembly’ approach at all levels ranging from component level standardisation and lean processes through to completely pre-finished volumetric solutions. It also includes any element of on-site or adjacent to site temporary or ‘flying’ factory or consolidation facilities which de-risk in-situ construction, improving productivity and predictability.

‘Industry 4.0’ is a term often used to reference the fourth industrial revolution underpinned by cyber-physical ‘smart’ production techniques. It is however clear that in many respects, construction has not even made the transition to ‘industry 3.0’ status which is predicated on large scale use of electronics and IT to automate production. It is important therefore to see this as the immediate goal and to use terminology and definitions based on industrial strategy benchmarks that reflect this current reality.’

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki

• BRE response to Farmer Review.
• Building Skills for Offsite Construction.
• Construction 2025.
• Construction industry reports.
• Construction Industry Training Board CITB.
• Construction Leadership Council.
• Eight ways to win the fight for talent in construction.
• Farmer review.
• Government Construction Strategy.
• Interview with Mark Farmer.
• Modernise or die - the need for change in construction.
• National Infrastructure Plan for Skills.
• Procuring for value report.
• Recruiting and retaining talent in the construction industry.
• Skills to build.
• Tackling the construction skills shortage.