The McAvoy Group, one of the UK’s leading offsite construction specialists, has announced its expansion into the residential sector with the launch of a new modular solution for all housing tenures — affordable homes, market sale, build-to-rent, student accommodation, and emergency housing.
Following extensive product development and collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast, McAvoy has developed a steel-framed offsite housing solution for multi-storey apartments, detached, semi-detached and terraced family homes. An entire house can be assembled in a single day — and from foundations to occupation in just seven days. Pictured above the image shows an example of the terraced housing concept.
According to a report published by Shelter, we need to build 250,000 new homes a year in the UK to keep up with demand — and yet only 163,000 new homes were delivered in 2017. There is a severe shortage of affordable homes and homelessness continues to increase year on year. There is a lack of skilled labour in construction, compounded by Brexit, and the building industry has a poor delivery record. In response, the Government has set a target to build 300,000 new homes annually by the mid 2020s and has pledged its support to increase the use of offsite construction.
McAvoy say its approach to housing will reduce programme times by at least 50% compared to site-based construction. This will allow earlier occupation for public sector housing providers and generate a faster return on investment for private developers. It will use highly efficient and proven factory processes to deliver greater certainty of completion on time, on budget and to higher quality standards.
According to Eugene Lynch, Managing Director of The McAvoy Group: “We have a proven track record, strong project management expertise and highly transferrable skills in the successful delivery of offsite solutions across a range of other sectors. These factors combined with our financial stability and pioneering work in digital construction technology, mean we are well placed to become a significant player in the provision of high quality family housing manufactured offsite.”
“We are an established principal contractor offering a single source procurement solution which integrates the manufacture of homes in a quality-controlled factory environment, for the delivery of new housing to shorter programmes and to higher standards.”
“We have ambitious plans for growth in the residential sector and have capacity already in place to meet demand using our highly skilled labour and flexible production facilities. We are also advancing plans to further expand capacity to meet the anticipated growth in demand.”
Features of the new offsite housing solution engineered by McAvoy include:
- An innovative floor construction created using highly sustainable recycled material — an alternative to energy-intensive concrete — and offering excellent thermal performance and acoustic properties
- A highly flexible building system with a wide range of façade treatments, roof options and module configurations
- A roof module pre-tiled in the factory, which is safer, faster and avoids work at height and in poor weather conditions
- Bespoke housing designs can be developed and there is a library of standardised layouts to reduce design time for planning and cost
- BOPAS accreditation for reduced risk, and the assurance of durability for a 60-year design life to ensure mortgageability.
McAvoy will work as principal contractor on its housing projects — taking responsibility for design, manufacture, fitting out, installation and external works. This will mean easier procurement, fewer management resources, greater cost efficiency, and improved quality control for developers and housing providers.
