The Design for Manufacture Competition was launched to challenge the housebuilding industry to build more cost effectively.
Through a very tight competition brief, developers were asked to look at the way in which they produced their homes, building relationships with their design teams and supply chains to reduce both material waste and downtime, to look at improving the quality of the finished product through management processes and to carefully address the issue of replicability and future adaptation of the homes they built.
An initial invitation to the competition raised a great deal of interest from housebuilders. A selection process was developed which facilitated sifting through the interest parties, and then identifying a shortlist to be invited to bid for specific sites across the country.
These 10 Design for Manufacture sites were identified by HCA regional teams as being suitable for inclusion in the competition, and the same regional teams then took control of the disposal process. The shortlisted bidders expressed interest in the sites most complimentary to their business case and the selection process then continued in a traditional manner.
The corporate team worked with regional teams on the more efficiency specific issues and to smooth a path for speedy delivery. The team also collected some of the key messages from this early stage of the competition and incorporated them into a lessons learnt publication which has been widely disseminated.
As the homes in the Competition move towards completion – and indeed many homes are now occupied – the lessons learned from the process are numerous and in particular the benefits of supply chain relationships have been identified as a key step forward in delivering cost efficiencies and quality production. The impact of these lessons on the mainstream HCA programme is significant enabling greater certainty of cost, quality and replicability and they have been captured in a second lessons learnt publication.
Last updated: 15 February 2011