Attitudes Towards Prefabricated Housing: Breaking Away From The Past

The Latham Report (1995) identified a need for greater teamwork within the UK construction industry. The Egan Report (1998) took this principle further and in particular posed a series of challenging targets for the UK house building industry. These targets were focused around greater use of innovative techniques derived from manufacturing, and included the increased use of standardisation, prefabrication and “whole house thinking”. In response to these challenges a number of Housing Associations examined the way they procured their new social housing and identified large panel, factory based timber prefabrication as one possible means of addressing the challenges posed by Latham and Egan. However, in proposing this solution the Housing Associations were acutely aware of the history associated with the use of prefabricated timber housing systems in the UK and in particular the long-term maintenance and refurbishment issues. This paper reports the initial findings from a research programme, funded by the Housing Corporation, which aimed to establish current attitudes towards prefabricated housing systems and identify gaps in knowledge that could undermine their effective maintenance. The paper concludes that attitudes have changed over the past 15 years with all the stakeholders exhibiting a more positive attitude than had been reported previously. In addition the paper identifies key areas of knowledge and skill required within the UK workforce if modern prefabricated systems are not to fall victim to the mistakes of the past.