In meetings with contractors, and other partners, I've had to present my solutions, and work with others to implement them within the overall design.
In short, we want construction sites to be more like factories.. Off-site and modular construction: are factories really all that great?.Prefabrication in factories (off-site construction) is often thought of as a panacea, a sure-fire way for construction sites to achieve greater productivity.
However, factories can also be run inefficiently, and if traditional construction methods are simply shifted into a factory setting, the benefits of MMC can be diluted or lost..In some cases, building off-site in a factory may even be less efficient than on-site construction.For example, prefabricated 3D modules (used in modular construction) involve many additional costs compared to conventional build.
These include transportation (a pre-fabricated room is mostly air, after all) and heavy plant for lifting modules into place.Unless modules are fabricated on a just-in time basis they also have to be stored which costs money, especially if that storage needs to be sheltered from the elements.
3D modules also occupy large amounts of factory floor space and therefore absorb a high proportion of factory overheads..
If these additional modular construction costs can be offset by large improvements in construction site efficiency, for example by relocating wet trades or complex specialist trades away from the site, a 3D module might make sense.Those present represented lab innovation – from pure research to routine mass-testing; from medical, pharmaceutical and genetics, to battery technology..
The need to focus on the future function of labs, rather than generic labs was clear..The group agreed that opportunities to magnify the value output of laboratories lie within the broad spectrum of data, automation/growth in data processing, and smart technology and systems.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning offer transformational change in value creation.Although there are some individual examples of its real-life deployment, we are at the start of an exponential curve.. A thread of discussion around the idea that systems could be self-validating created significant energy in the room, as well as friction between those who understood how transformational such a realised idea could be with those who saw the potential disaster.
(Editor: All-in-One Strollers)