Our Journey
Our journey started with an initial design sketch for our very first building drawn on 3rd February 2010 using our prime building component Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs). SIPs are not a new material, having already been used in the construction of buildings across the globe, although not in great numbers, and mainly assembled on site.
SIPs have always been known to have environmental benefits by having excellent insulation U values and thus contributing to highly efficient buildings. However, we could see a further advantage in using this material to begin to revolutionise the way buildings were produced.
Traditional on-site construction methods were hampering the timely delivery of the homes and communities that people
needed. Delivery was often impacted by weather and typically the performance gap existed between predicted and actual performance of these homes due to the limitations of quality control on site between various trades.
Pioneers in SIPs
In our Portsmouth factory, we became the first to produce buildings using SIPs as a standard floor structure and a flat/pitched roof structure, and importantly using only BBA, and CE marked accredited SIPs assembled in modular/volumetric form.
Our SIP modules were fitted out by a team of important supply partners who were carefully selected and who believed in our concept.Once completed in the factory these individual modules were then transported by road to site and craned into position.
Between 2012 and 2016 we successfully delivered ever larger and more complex types of bespoke residential and commercial buildings, which allowed us to prove concept of both design and delivery of our unique build system. Nowadays, there are many modular construction firms using similar methods to those we developed albeit very few using SIPs.
Revolutionising construction
During these formative years we, becoming more and more aware of the chronic shortage of affordable housing, felt
compelled to innovate further and evolve our concept and were extremely excited to extend our vision which really would revolutionise the construction industry, enabling housing stock to be manufactured on individual sites, using our own Offsite/ Onsite method and in 2016 we closed our Portsmouth factory fully.
We realised that fixed factories restrict volume modular house-building. They put a cap on output and are also not environmentally sound, as the homes manufactured have to be put on a low loader and transported to the housing development. Instead, we have localised ‘flying factories’ on site. It is a scalable model, so, for example, we could have 1,000 sites and 1,000 factories simultaneously operating should demand dictate.
We are delighted to be able to continue our journey at speed and invite you to read our Strategic Vision Document which showcases a simple, but to date, unexplored solution; Offsite/Onsite.
