51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Can off-site manufacture improve productivity in construction?

24 April 2018 - Professor Jennifer Whyte, Director of the Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, gives oral evidence at The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee into its inquiry into Off-site manufacture for construction.

Professor Whyte argued: "You cannot change technologies in production without changing business and procurement models. We have known that for a while."

She added: "There is a need for a fundamental research base as we move to more digital fabrication techniques."..."There are opportunities around technologies like AI and robotics as we move forward that I think is important that we have a research base to support. We also need a skills base to support advanced manufacturing techniques."

How the risk profile is different in offsite vs traditional construction is currently being studied by Zheng Guo, a fourth year MEng student at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, supervised by Professor Jennifer Whyte. Please contribute to this , which is based on her review of the literature (and identification of risks in this literature). Contact us at csei@imperial.ac.uk if you have any questions about this work.

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Watch the extract from Parliamentlive.tv below:

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