Building product choice has historically been based on the following drivers:
1. Familiarity – products people know, know how to use and have the appropriate skill sets to use.
2. Cost – ultimately affecting the builders return on the land.
3. Speed – again affecting the builders return on land.
4. Government policy – changes in Building Regulations, initiatives and incentives that may affect working practices, performance levels, or how projects are funded.
Examples of this last driver, which have come (and often gone again) in the past seven years have been the Code for Sustainable Homes, the SuperE and Passivhaus building initiatives, the whole modern methods of constrution (MMC)/offsite construction movement, and more recently building information modelling (BIM) (on which the jury is out). All of these have presented an opportunity for timber frame to "strut its stuff" and gain market share – but they did not ultimately prove decisive in capturing market share for two reasons:
1. They were a little too far reaching for the building industry to assimilate.
2. Their implementation will have incurred added cost – very tough in the recession.
The cumulative effect of all these initiatives did however leave a positive legacy in educating the building community about some of the key critical elements which affect the performance of buildings, and have undoubtedly therefore given timber frame a leg-up in pursuit of greater market share.
Despite the aspirational goals for zero carbon, the ‘cash is king’ mantra still rules our sector, and, ironically, it was the rapid acceleration out of recession in 2013, aided by the government’s ‘Help to Buy Scheme’, which resulted in masonry supply chain shortages, that prompted builders to review their build methods and put Plan B strategies in place against the real risk of non-supply of their traditional building medium.
The big five builders (which account for up to one-third of the total market) are, if anything, likely to get bigger in future years. That may well drive a move toward the big getting bigger within our own industry. To mitigate their throughput risks, these building giants increasingly insist on sourcing from single factory suppliers.
This top five may also seek to procure more products from existing tried and tested suppliers, encouraging the latter to broaden their product offer in exchange for more allencompassing supply chain agreements.
This may, in turn, prompt consolidation within our industry, as the big get bigger in order to measure up to the qualification criteria of the larger builders, and the small stay niche or supply local markets. This presents a dilemma for the many medium sized companies in our sector. Do they get bigger in order to continue to supply the big construction businesses, get smaller and niche for greater margin with less turnover, or get bought/consolidated into bigger organisations?
To borrow a phrase coined by Ed Miliband, we may be entering a period where we have a squeezed middle; a cohort of medium sized companies caught between increased competition from group deals done by bigger players selling a broader range of products, and smaller businesses offering a localised service within their patch.
Suppliers will also need to seek faster and more efficient ways to deliver their products, resulting in enhanced hybrid closed panel wall systems (external and internal), with M&E installed, more sophisticated floor supply packages, including provision for pre-planned service runs, and then of course panellised roof systems/cassettes, which will surely make greater inroads into the roof market in future. All of these will involve doing more for the same price or less – and will therefore demand efficiency savings as a pre-requisite.
So looking forward, we will most likely see a continuing and steady move toward the use of off-site manufactured building system components – a more realistic approach to banging the drum for full offsite building systems.
History has taught us that we will fallshort once again on the grand-plans for full off-site manufacture or zero carbon buildings in the foreseeable future, but what will take their place in the interim will be "baby steps" toward these ends, resulting in lower carbon buildings using semi-offsite construction. Pragmatism will once more triumph over idealism, but opportunity will still very much be present for those ready to evolve their products further by integrating additional technologies, at zero or little extra cost, and then delivering them in a form which is quick to install on site and ensures they perform as designed and reliably in practice
