Industrialised Construction: unlocking new opportunities for progress

In Discussion with Saint-Gobain UK Client Director for Healthcare, Richard Haworth we discuss the key insights from a Roundtable discussion with Experts held at UK REiiF 2026.

Industrialised construction has been a recurring talking point for many years now. Few dispute the benefits, from greater certainty to better quality. Yet for all the enthusiasm, delivery has remained patchy. While some sectors have made tangible progress, others wrestle with the same old problems.

But what may be changing is the context around it. Cost pressures, skills shortages, tightening regulation, and digital advances are creating a rare alignment of opportunities that’s making industrialisation hard to ignore.

At a recent roundtable discussion hosted by Richard Haworth, Client Director – Healthcare for Saint-Gobain at UKREiiF 2026, voices from across the supply chain came together to discuss these opportunities and tackle the remaining barriers.

Involving contractors, manufacturers, architects, engineers, and public sector programme leaders, the conversation ranged from healthcare to education, and from manufacturing to on-site installation, but a consistent thread emerged: most challenges stem from how projects are conceived and coordinated, and not from technical obstacles.

Participants repeatedly challenged familiar assumptions. Industrialisation isn’t just a matter of embracing techniques like modular construction, nor does standardisation mean identical buildings. Instead, getting it right depends on viewing entire projects through the lens of industrialisation, with the supply chain involved early enough to shape key decisions.

Let’s take a deeper look at the themes explored during the discussion.

Industrialisation is a mindset, not a product choice “It’s not a procurement strategy, but a design philosophy.”

According to the experts around the table, industrialisation is often misunderstood. Too frequently, it’s treated as a product choice, whether it’s pods, panels, or volumetric systems, when it’s better viewed as an entire operating model.

Paul Ruddick, Chairman of Reds10, explained, “Once you have that mindset, then it’s thousands of improvements every day. There’s not one magic bullet.” In Paul’s view, industrialisation is less a dramatic leap and more an accumulation of better decisions over time. “It’s taken 20 years to get to where we are, and we’re probably about halfway there,” he admitted, emphasising that the best results come from perseverance and continuous learning.

Ayna Azhigali, Director at HKR Architects, proposed that industrialisation should be understood as “not a procurement strategy, but a design philosophy”. That means thinking earlier about repetition, sequencing, and buildability instead of attempting to retrofit industrial approaches into conventional designs.

Participants described procurement that too often prioritises lowest-cost competition, fragmented packages, and late specialist involvement.

Ironically, this undermines the very outcomes clients say they want: lower risk, higher quality, and more predictable delivery. While disjointed decision-making hampers complex projects, early collaboration and viewing the building as a whole leads to better outcomes.

Terry Muckian, Executive Vice President at Skanska UK, stressed the urgency of embracing industrialisation in terms of cost and productivity. “The cost of construction in the UK compared to the rest of Europe… is just getting out of hand,” he said. This, alongside the worsening UK skills crisis, meant the industry needed to “get more repeatability within what we build.”

For Ayna Azhigali, industrialisation not only cuts the costs of building projects, but it provides developers with cost certainty that’s hard to achieve within traditional construction.

As part of traditional construction constraints, particularly the scarcity of skills and labour, which is a more acute challenge in remote regions outside major cities, as highlighted in Wave 1 of the New Hospital Programme. Rob Woolcock from Willmott Dixon noted that less traditional construction routes can help address these pressures by being less resource-intensive on site.

Early Engagement is critical - We’re engaged too far down the line, when a lot of the key decisions have been made

Throughout the discussion, there was clear frustration about specialists entering projects too late. Both contractors and manufacturers described a pattern where key decisions fix layouts and narrow service routes, only for industrialised approaches to be introduced once there’s no longer room for manoeuvre.

Paul Gandy, President of the CIOB, was blunt about the consequences: “You can’t retrofit this very effectively. You truly need to set out [at the start of the project] that you want to maximise industrialisation.”

Terry Muckian reinforced this message from a contractor’s perspective, explaining, “The challenge we have is being able to influence early enough in the process. We’re generally engaged too far down the line, when a lot of the key decisions have been made. Then we’re trying to shoehorn industrialised products into a building which has already been designed.”

Despite this, Jonathan Lock, Co-Founder and CCO at Design 4 Structures, was able to share proof of the success of early coordination between tiers: “US construction firms have a policy that we don’t start construction until design is 100% signed off. It allows the main contractor to be fully integrated early on in the process, so you’re working alongside the designers and architects… before you start construction [and] before you start spending any real money. Nobody else really does it. And we’ve certainly seen it make a difference in terms of everybody committed to getting the right product, the right design, the right solution.”

Paul Ruddick also offered a refreshing insight into his own pioneering approach as an offsite manufacturer: “I’ve got all the specialist designers in the room with the architects and structural engineers, the M&E… got the furniture person and then the doors person at the same stage, and they’re all designed into a platform.”

Abbie Romano, Head of Industrialisation at the New Hospital Programme, emphasised that supply chain working groups have also played a vital role in validating and refining product information ahead of deployment, providing practical feedback from the manufacturers, suppliers, and installers who will ultimately deliver solutions.

But early engagement goes beyond the construction industry. Abbie Romano described how early input from clinicians and estates teams helps uncover operational problems before they become expensive site issues. While a room may work perfectly on paper, it could fail drastically when in use, making this a vital part of the process.

Standardisation without sameness - “Standardise what we care about, not what we don’t.”

Standardisation still triggers hesitation within parts of the construction industry, with some arguing it means sacrificing quality and creativity in pursuit of efficiency. Yet participants repeatedly challenged that assumption.

Ayna Azhigali suggested that even highly bespoke and varied projects could be largely made up of repeatable elements without limiting visual variation. The challenge is knowing where consistency adds value and where difference matters.

In healthcare, education, and commercial projects alike, participants pointed to large amounts of hidden repetition. Service zones, room layouts, wall systems, penetrations, and coordination rules often repeat even when façades, floorplates, or public spaces differ significantly. Standardisation, in this sense, sits beneath the surface rather than dictating aesthetics.

The hidden battleground: interfaces, MEP, and buildability -  “One of the key aspects we focus on is MEP interfaces.”

Participants fervently agreed that industrialisation is won or lost at the interfaces between systems.

The greatest problems emerge in relation to penetrations, MEP routes, fire stopping, access requirements, and sequencing between trades. And in complex buildings, these connections become the difference between smooth delivery and months of redesign.

Healthcare is heavily affected here because of its dense service requirements and strict compliance demands. Abbie Romano described how standard service zones and clearer rule sets can help teams coordinate interfaces earlier, reducing the surprises that so often emerge late in delivery. She explained, “One of the key aspects we focus on is MEP interfaces,” adding, “if we’re standardising interfaces between rooms and corridors,… we have to get it right and it has to be buildable.”

At the same time, Terry Muckian highlighted how building safety requirements and tested fire solutions can quickly expose weak coordination. A seemingly minor change in a wall detail or service route can suddenly leave no room for doors, access points, or structural supports, creating knock-on effects that ripple through programmes.

The issue, participants suggested, is not a shortage of technical expertise, but fragmented ways of working. Too often, systems are designed in isolation and joined together later, when the cost of change has risen sharply.

That’s where collaboration across disciplines offers dramatic benefits, and industrialisation depends on architects, MEP teams, contractors, manufacturers, and specialists understanding how systems interact before projects reach site. Technology, including BIM and rule-based checks, increasingly helps teams identify problems earlier, but it can’t solve poor coordination.

Testing ideas before scaling them “Industrialisation can magnify mistakes just as efficiently as it scales success.”

It was striking how often participants spoke about industrialisation as an ongoing experiment. As industrialised construction can magnify mistakes just as efficiently as it scales success, solutions must be thoroughly tested.

Contributors stressed the importance of learning loops, involving prototyping, testing, refining, and finally repeating new systems. While perfection isn’t realistic during a first attempt, approaches have to be able to perform under real-world conditions before they’re rolled out at scale.

Again, healthcare offers a clear example of this. Abbie Romano explained that the Hospital 2.0 design process involved extensive technical engagement and stakeholder input, de-risking the solution as far as possible before progressing to the critical validation phase through prototyping. Drawings and digital models may demonstrate technical compliance and coordination, but physical testing can reveal installation challenges, maintenance constraints, and interface issues that might otherwise be hard to identify.

However, prototyping requires time and patience, neither of which construction is typically known for. Clients demand certainty and contractors want programmes to move quickly, while funding cycles favour immediate outputs over experimentation.

Yet these must be weighed against the risk of prototyping designs live on site, where the costs of getting it wrong are significantly higher.

At the same time, learning becomes easier when programmes are continuous rather than project- based. In stop-start delivery models, lessons are too often lost between projects or procurement cycles, while continuity allows improvements to compound. Over time, a better penetration detail here or a smarter room layout there has a significant impact on delivery.

The economics of delivery “Consistency of demand is the single biggest thing you need.”

 Participants spoke openly about the uncomfortable mismatch between the industry’s ambitions and the commercial reality underpinning them.

Paul Gandy described the challenge plainly: “Construction contractors are negative capital employed. We live on everyone else’s cash… and to do proper industrialised construction, you need investment.”

Investment enables everything from manufacturing capability to specialist expertise, and none of this is cheap. Crucially, participants argued, businesses will only invest when there’s confidence that demand will continue long enough to justify the risk.

Contributors pointed to unstable pipelines, including the stop-start nature of public programmes, as a major blocker. Schools, prisons, healthcare, and housing have all seen periods of momentum followed by pauses due to shifting priorities or uncertain funding.

While programmes such as the New Hospital Programme create opportunities for repeatability, industrial capability cannot be switched on and off like a tap. This is because industrialisation rewards scale, while interruptions drain away capability.

Paul Gandy framed the problem starkly: if the industry reaches the end of one funding wave without confidence in the next, years of learning risk being lost. Supply chains shrink and factories pivot their focus elsewhere, meaning future opportunities for industrialisation are lost. In his opinion, “Consistency of demand is the single biggest thing you need.”

Yet one participant argued there is already sufficient opportunity in sectors such as education, healthcare, and defence to justify greater industrial ambition from contractors, and the issue is a lack of dedication to this route.

Technology as an enabler rather than a silver bullet - “What we were able to do two years ago is nothing like what we can do now.”

Today, few construction conversations overlook the impact of AI, BIM, and other evolving technologies, and this roundtable was no exception. Participants agreed that new technology is already beginning to enhance opportunities for industrialisation, with uncertainty around what else the future will bring.

Ayna Azhigali explained, “I believe the ongoing evolution of tools like Revit and BIM, paired with the rapid emergence of AI-driven modelling, will significantly accelerate this shift toward industrialised design across the construction industry. As a practice, we've made it a priority to stay at the forefront of these tools, using AI extensively throughout our design process. The capabilities we have today are a world away from what was possible just two years ago."

In healthcare, Abbie Romano described the value of an industrialisation platform featuring a digital toolkit that helps communicate requirements to trusts, support the supply chain, and embed manufactured solutions into designs from the outset. It can also help protect service voids and critical interfaces by flagging clashes far earlier in design. Rather than discovering problems once construction has begun, teams can test assumptions and adjust plans early on.

Contributors also discussed how digital workflows are increasingly helping teams manage tested solutions around penetrations, fire stopping, and compliance requirements. Instead of relying on fragmented detail libraries or site interpretation, projects can begin to create clearer, more repeatable systems.

At the same time, it was clear that technology cannot rescue poor or late decision-making.

A beautifully coordinated model will not fix a fundamentally flawed brief, nor will AI compensate for disconnected teams.

While digital tools are increasingly capable, construction still relies heavily on relationships, human judgement, and practical experience. Technology supports industrialisation best when it makes good decisions easier rather than attempting to replace them.

By the end of the discussion, the most striking conclusion was how little of it felt like a revelation.

The capability already exists in many parts of the industry, but what gets in the way are habits like late engagement, stop-start pipelines, and a tendency to reinvent the wheel.

There was also a strong sense of realism from most participants. Industrialisation is not a cure- all, nor does it remove the need for judgement or flexibility. Buildings will always respond to context, clients, and users. And they’ll always depend on specialist expertise. But where repeatable systems are applied thoughtfully, the gains in certainty and quality are difficult to ignore.

For all the breadth of the discussion, it boiled down to a practical set of lessons for making industrialisation work in the long term:

• Treat industrialisation as a design philosophy, not a procurement choice, using it to guide decisions from the outset.
• Engage the supply chain earlier: contractors, specialists, manufacturers, and even end users are most valuable before key decisions have been made.
• Standardise selectively: repeat what improves quality and certainty, while preserving flexibility where it serves a purpose.
• Focus on interfaces and buildability: delivery problems emerge where systems and trades meet.
• Prototype and learn before scaling: test assumptions early and refine them in practice to avoid repeating mistakes at scale.
• Create confidence through consistency: stable demand is essential for encouraging investment in industrialised construction capabilities.
• Use technology to enable better decisions, not replace them: BIM, AI, and other digital tools support industrialisation best when paired with stronger collaboration and clearer thinking.

Ultimately, industrialisation is unlikely to arrive in a single breakthrough moment. Instead, it will take shape over time, through better decisions that involve the right people at an early stage. But its success should be measured by more than the buildings it delivers. Consistent pipelines, long- term investment, and closer collaboration across the supply chain create the conditions for skilled jobs and manufacturing capability to take root and grow. In turn, this will create a legacy of stronger local economies as well as spaces that support better outcomes for the people who use them.