Five years ago, that simply wasn’t the case for most consultancies.
Beams are made using a standard rolled metal profile (metal coils are passed through a highly efficient, automated rolling process with virtually no waste, no double handling etc.)as a permanent shutter for concrete.
As much ‘intelligence’ as possible is then placed in the interfaces (e.g.bracketry which is self locating to control tolerances and is colour coded to ensure correct application etc.)The ‘intelligent’ components are small, manually handleable and accurately mass produced..
The level of bespoke production is thus focussed on far less tonnage than designs for e.g.traditional steel composite or flat slab solutions.. Repeatable, standard elements such as the brackets and temporary works are designed to be robotically fabricated directly from the digital library.
On The Forge, SME Easi-Space worked with BSI to develop the standard for robotic welding of structural components:.
Digital files from the model can be sent directly to the fabricator.Both of these mean that traditional approaches to hospital design and construction come with obsolescence as standard.. Our intelligent design, on the other hand, had future-proofing and flexibility built in.
We had an early opportunity to prove the value of this, when Circle Health decided to expand vertically and double the size of the hospital during the construction phase.We achieved this with very little disruption.. Design to Value means rigorously assessing every part of a project using a wide variety of value criteria, which come from the client and from the sector more broadly.
Our Platforms approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA) bakes value into the process by bringing the benefits of manufacturing to the design and construction process.This combined approach can be applied to any building type, but we have seen huge benefits when the buildings we design are particularly complex, or house particularly complex systems and processes..
(Editor: Adjustable Tripods)