Platforms at the Forge - delivering results with P-DfMA

Toyota, who are fantastic at lean manufacturing, welcome competitors to look at their processes.

We’ve never sought to patent our work and we have open sourced the code for both of our construction design apps - SEISMIC and PRISM.Our goal is to bring about maximum benefit for the wider industry and society.

We encourage our clients to join us on this journey by allowing others to benefit from the knowledge and systems we create for each project.This creates a kind of reinforcing circle across the public and private sectors.By working together, we believe the industry can apply these transformative, design to value processes at scale and thereby deliver enormous benefit for the world..

In fact, we’re already seeing a wide range of benefits from the adoption of Platforms (P-DfMA) and our wider approach using modern methods of construction.Our recent work in the UK with Landsec on a modular office building project has demonstrated the following advantages: the automation of processes leading to a 30-50% reduction in the numbers of people onsite, an increase in safety as a result of reduced work at height, lower capital costs with a 25% reduction in materials due to component optimisation, and a 13% improvement in speed.

Already impressive, we expect these metrics will only continue to improve over time.. Design to Value.

The starting point, and where we must begin in order to truly maximise the benefits that P-DfMA and MMC make possible, is to rework our core processes (design, procure, construct, operate) around a central, driving principle: process-led design.It must also be excellent next year, in 10 years’ time and 10 years after that.

It must be able to respond not only to its own changing requirements, but those of local and neighbouring environments, populations and infrastructure.As we have seen over 2020, those changes can be radical and terrifyingly fast.

But as we have also seen over the last 20 years, healthcare priorities can be affected by political and social as much as natural changes.. We are also faced with a climate crisis that requires every building to be designed and built for reduction in both embodied and operational carbon..The best response is to create the most efficient, flexible and adaptable design.