You could say that we have learned similarly in the building of batteries; replicating and combining small cells works much better than trying to create large cells.

However, regardless of the country, there are a few elements needed to make the shift to industrialised construction work: purpose, government support, academia, the involvement of young people, training, and complementary parts of the ecosystem - including industry and finance.. Education is a hugely important factor and Amy Marks has now written an eight-week course curriculum for Columbia University.It covers not only prefab but other industrialised construction topics such as how to look at MEP assemblies, manufacturing, automation, robotics, machine learning, AI, and construction platforms.

It’s unlike any other course in the world, and that’s the problem, Marks says.There isn’t anywhere for people to go to learn these things, so we can’t expect them to finish their education and be ready to enter the space.That’s why our team at Autodesk is creating a knowledge centre - to pass on what they know through the software, through the technology..

Leading the change.According to Amy Marks, we need strong leadership figures in the industry who are going to take risks and be thought leaders.. “Every CEO that comes to me, I'm like, get ready, this is gonna take a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort, you're not going to get there on one project.”.

She cautions against trying small, single aspects of industrialised construction on one project at a time, as the projects take years to complete and so the learnings are too few and take much too long to achieve.

She says there’s a need for more people like herself and Jaimie Johnston to challenge what doesn’t make sense and stick their necks on the line.. “It's not easy to be the Queen of Prefab!” she says, adding, “Mike Tyson says, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.So, the operatives need only match the colour with the type of interface.

Platforms also simplify installation down into a series of simple, repeatable, highly productive, activities, which make the sequence of work entirely predictable, the quality assured and the speed of assembly vastly increased.. Key insight.Consider the lifecycle of builds beyond completion: handing over all the information required to preserve the integrity of the build.

Industry challenge.Information handover at completion has traditionally been protracted, incomplete, and ‘file based’.