Edinburgh Napier University

  Efficient and sustainable building systems are required in order to achieve the UK government's target of building three million new homes by 2016. Given, the current lack of activity in the housing construction market to achieve this target, increased levels of off-site modern methods of construction (MMC) need to be adopted which conform to future regulatory and code requirements, are environmentally sound and structurally robust. The dominant form of timber construciton for housing in the UK is open panel platform frame construction (approximately 25% UK market share). In order to meet future market and building regulatory requirements this form of construction needs to evolve and become an efficient closed panel system solution. The system solution needs to be capable of being manufactured off-site to the highest possible specification in terms of mass customisation, inclusion of services, application of cladding, and to achieve a high standard of building performance (thermal insulation, reduced cold bridiging, acoustic separation) whilst remaining cost effective. Off-site MMC research has primarily focussed on: understanding the market; the conceptualisation of modern building systems and products; the adaption of production theories to construction; implementation of modern business processes to construction by means of adapting information and communication technologies; and micro-renewable solutions (photovoltaics, ground source heat pumps etc) to provide additional energy.