By James Richards
Director at Edmond Shipway, leading hotel projects delivery
From rising labour and material costs to challenging working conditions, the construction sector faces numerous obstacles in creating the new hotels the market needs. Could modular building techniques be the answer?
WITH the UK’s hospitality sector contributing an annual £93 billion to the economy, and demand for hotel rooms continuing to grow, the construction sector is poised to embrace a raft of new opportunities.
Among them is the growing interest in building hotels using modern methods of construction (MMC), such as modular techniques and prefabrication. They are an attractive option that can speed up building work, reduce carbon outputs and provide a more consistent quality that helps to reduce maintenance costs.
This new way of building includes creating panelled units in factories that can be quickly assembled, then transferred and installed directly on the building site. They have proved popular in sectors like education and healthcare and we’re also seeing more interest in the method as the government aims to hit its housebuilding targets, particularly in social and more affordable housing.
Modular methods produce homes faster, use less energy and embody less carbon, while bypassing on-site labour shortages, according to a report in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. And modular manufacturing can be up to 40 per cent more productive than traditional house building, says Make UK.
We’ve worked on modular buildings for many years, including creating McDonald’s drive-through restaurants that were effectively zipped together to create a sturdy and long-lasting building that reduced production costs.
The most common way that we’ve used MMC for hotel clients is in creating bathroom ‘pods’. This is a modular shell of the room complete with the floor finishes, tiling, light fittings and sanitaryware already installed – the pod is simply transported to the site and plumbed in.
We’re finding that bathroom pods are becoming the norm on large-scale residential schemes, such as in student accommodation and hotels.
Advantages of modular buildings
We took the modular process a step further at an airport hotel we worked on, creating the whole bedroom using shipping containers. This included all floor, wall and ceiling finishes including all the fixtures and fittings down to beds, lighting, artwork and chairs. It felt as though we were taking the concept to the extreme but it was an interesting project that inspired us to continue to work with the developing technology.
We find that the off-site method provides a better quality product as it is created under factory conditions with proper task lighting and a thorough quality assessment process. The materials are all readily available before the construction begins, which helps to avoid delays.
That contrasts with working on-site with temporary lighting, cold conditions, on-site waste and potential disruptions. There’s also the issue of having several tradespeople climbing over each other in a small space as they try to complete their individual jobs. A factory will have a phased process of one trade finishing its work before moving on to the next bathroom or room.
Dropping a bathroom pod into a building to complete a room, other than the cabling needed, makes a huge difference to the time spent on-site and to the quality of the finished product.
We’ve also worked with pre-constructed concrete panels that are extremely effective – they go up like a house of cards, allowing us to fit the bathroom pod in before putting the lid on the next bedroom or the next floor, which helps prevent delays.
Dealing with higher costs
There are huge benefits in adopting modular methods but it is generally accepted that they cost slightly more.
However, we’ve found that clients often look at the longer term, understanding that the result is a quality finish and, if the whole hotel is modular, in theory it should be ready to open quicker. That generates revenues from occupancy sooner, potentially recovering some of those costs.
Switching more construction in a factory environment could result in labour cost savings for businesses, as they can monitor the production process more closely.
It’s also far more effective in planning workflows. For example, in a traditional hotel build, there might be consideration much further down the line on the type of minibar being used and the ventilation it needs. As part of a factory-based modular build, those decisions have to be made much earlier in the process.
Long-term aims
All these factors are feeding into the increase in modular building that we’re seeing – it’s exciting that the construction sector is exploring different approaches to challenges and how modular methods can be adopted.
We’re working on a residential scheme of more than 700 apartments in Cardiff that not only has modular bathrooms but also modular utility pods. It’s an impressive advancement – it contains a boiler and a distribution board panel so that everything is wired up and the pod can be dropped into place.
The same client is also considering using modular pre-made kitchens at another site – it’s a sort of ‘plug in and play’ method that helps to reduce the intensity of labour on site.
I think there is some reticence in embracing the modular method due to a fear of the unknown – installing an entire ready-made bedroom as we did at the airport is a huge step. Design and construction teams will need to prepare more work in advance and learn to adapt to new processes.
With margins increasingly under pressure in the highly competitive construction sector, the advantages are potentially huge – committing to working differently will undoubtedly be worth it.