The Construction Innovation Hub: P-DfMA & the Roadmap to 2030

Comparison embodied carbon targets from RIBA, LETI and GLA.

The facility generously houses five theatres, thirty inpatient and twenty day case beds, fifteen consulting rooms and an extensive rehabilitation department.Describing the process of layout design for the hospital, Wood notes that the more Bryden Wood understood about the hospital and its patients, the more they were able to ‘codify their operations, their adjacencies and their spaces…’ He discusses the fact that Bryden Wood were able to benefit from a considerable amount of consultation and direct input from the professionals who were actually going to be using the facility.

The Construction Innovation Hub: P-DfMA & the Roadmap to 2030

All of that knowledge was then enshrined into a three dimensional design tool, he says, which became like a ‘vocabulary of spaces…’.Wood also describes how such a level of understanding about the function of the building, led logically to the next step of applying a level of systemization to its construction, in order to underpin it and make construction more efficient.‘We understood...the scale and the spans that the structure would require’ he says.

The Construction Innovation Hub: P-DfMA & the Roadmap to 2030

This enabled the development of a system which is ‘a hybrid, precast concrete and steel system specifically for Circle,’ one which follows the ‘grain’ and ‘functional requirements,’ of all the spaces to be contained within the building.‘This made the delivery of the building faster,’ says Wood.

The Construction Innovation Hub: P-DfMA & the Roadmap to 2030

‘It made the quality of the building higher and the accuracy of the building higher, and it made this efficiency repeatable on future projects with relative ease.’ Notably, he says, the process also enabled ‘an understanding of the potential scale and efficiency of the building much earlier than normally possible.’.

Maswiken recognises that the building’s sense of spaciousness comes from the fact that the hospital benefits from such a ‘well thought out design.’ ‘We’re very lucky with our building and the set up,’ he says.Jaimie Johnston MBE.

in 2017 to define and inform the thinking around the development of a platforms design (P-DfMA) approach to construction.It focuses on the opportunity, and benefits, of applying the platform design approach to the scale and scope of the UK Government's construction portfolio..

It was a precursor to the reviews and policies that followed, including;.Transforming Infrastructure Performance.