At the end of 2017, following a specific commitment made in the 2017 Housing White Paper Fixing Our Broken Housing Market the UK Government launched a cross-industry working group tasked with supporting the mortgage finance, insurance and valuation communities in better understanding and supporting the greater use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) across residential development.
This working group has been developing various outputs, one of which is a new categorised definition framework for different forms of innovative construction methodologies. The framework was established by a specialist sub-group led by Mark Farmer of Cast Consultancy, the chair of the overall MMC Working Group, supported by representatives of Buildoffsite, Homes England, NHBC and RICS.
The 7 identified MMC categories are as follows:-
Category 1 – Pre-Manufacturing -3D primary structural systems
Category 2 – Pre-Manufacturing – 2D primary structural systems
Category 3 – Pre-Manufacturing – Non-systemised structural components
Category 4 – Pre-Manufacturing – Additive Manufacturing
Category 5 – Pre-Manufacturing – Non-structural assemblies and sub-assemblies
Category 6 – Traditional building product-led site labour reduction/productivity improvements
Category 7 – Site process led labour reduction/productivity improvements
The intention is for this framework to regularise and refine the term ‘MMC’ by defining the broad spectrum of innovative construction techniques being applied in the residential market, both now and in the future. The framework also offers the opportunity to create more structured datasets capturing the use of MMC and its performance, so enabling clients, advisors, lenders and investors, warranty providers, building insurers and valuers to all build a common understanding of the different forms of MMC use. In turn, this should enable confidence building through a better evidence base using the categorisation framework as a data taxonomy including the identification of building height typologies and primary structural materials used.
The RICS will integrate this definition in due course into supporting guidance for its new Home Survey Standard, New Build Valuation Guidance and the next revision of the International Construction Measurement Standard.
The aim of the MMC Definition Framework is also to support industry evaluate the different ways available of increasing the ‘Pre-Manufactured Value’ (PMV) of its residential built assets in line with the Government’s joint commitment with industry in the 2018 Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Construction Sector Deal.
The MMC Definition Framework can be found here.
