Project Overview:

The DfMA Toolkit is a digital application enabling housebuilders and their design teams to store portfolios of off-site manufactured products – from bathroom pods to house  types – to source materials, capture in use data and inform decision making for future projects.

COLAB is an interdisciplinary consortium of forward-thinking organisations at the cutting edge of innovation in the construction industry. Led by L&Q, alongside partners Virtual Viewing, HTA Design, and HawkinsBrown, the consortium was awarded funding by Government’s Innovate UK under the ‘Transforming UK construction round 2: MMC, digital and whole-life performance’ competition to develop a digital solution addressing the key issues facing the construction industry: the DfMA Toolkit. We know that DfMA and MMC approaches can help us speed up construction times whilst enabling the delivery of consistently high-quality homes.

Our toolkit demonstrates how these methods can be used in practice to achieve tangible results. Features include a DfMA Design Guide to upskill the industry, an MMC Product Portfolio to store and manage offsite products, a mapping tool to identify and locate MMC suppliers and a Business Intelligence platform for metrics and analytics that advance DfMA and offsite adoption. Key to this is moving away from traditional project specific solutions to building homes, and towards a portfolio and product-based approach – adopting a manufacturing mentality. As construction increasingly looks to technology for solutions that create efficiencies, the DfMA Toolkit can give stakeholders in our sector a better-informed understanding of MMC and DfMA to enable them to take the right strategic decisions enabling change, transformation and innovation. Launched in December 2021, we see the toolkit as a game changer within our industry.