How We Build: The Modular Construction Process from Brief to Handover

The modular construction process here runs in six stages: your brief, a scheme against your plot, drawings, the quotation, manufacture, and assembly on your ground. Each settles something before the next starts.

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A01 · Abstract title-block sheet

The page · 01

Stage one, the brief, which is mostly about your ground

The first conversation is about the plot rather than the building. Where it is, how a lorry reaches it, what falls across it, which way the view and the weather run, what services already come to the boundary and what has to be brought. Then the use: who occupies the building, how many of them, all year or in a season, and the date it has to open.

Out of that comes a shortlist, usually of two or three published designs, and a plain statement of which parts of your brief none of them answers. That second half is the useful one. A studio that says everything is possible at this stage has not read the plot, and the client finds out later, when finding out is expensive.

The page · 02

Stage two, the scheme, drawn on your plot rather than a notional one

The chosen design is set out on your survey: orientation, levels, access, the working area a delivery needs, the distance between buildings where there is more than one, and the phase boundaries if you intend to open in stages. Where the design has to move to suit the ground, it moves here, on paper, while moving it still costs nothing.

This is also where the decisions particular to that building are settled with you: which side the service route runs, where the screen gives way to a solid return, how many of a repeated building open first. Each product page sets those out as decisions rather than options, because each of them changes an elevation somebody will look at every day.

The page · 03

Stage three, the drawings, and what exists to be read

Of the twenty-six, six carry sheets now, and each of the others is drawn when its design closes. Where the design you are considering is one of the six, its published set is issued to you to read: the building set out and dimensioned, its faces, a cut through it, and the schedules fixing each opening and each finish. If it is not among the six, its set is drawn next.

Every sheet carries a grid running through plan, elevation and section in the same positions, a stated and drawn scale, a north point on every plan, and levels marked from a finished floor datum. Hand it to your own architect. Ten seconds of it tell him whether the people who drew it have issued a set before, which is exactly what it is for.

The page · 04

Stage four, a quotation written against your plot and nothing else

There is no figure on this website and none in a brochure, because a number quoted before the ground has been seen is worth nothing to either side. The quotation is written against the design as it now stands on your survey, and it states in two columns what is included and what is not. Buyers trust a company that prints its exclusions, and the exclusions are the honest half.

Sixty to ninety days on site is the manufacturing group’s record and is qualified per project in that quotation. It covers assembly. The stages in front of it — brief, scheme, drawings, approvals on your side, manufacture — have their own durations, and your programme is the sum of all of them rather than the last one.

The page · 05

Stage five, the components are made, and none of them is a room

The steelwork is fabricated to the drawing. Panels for wall and roof, the cladding, the glazing units, the screens, the fins and everything the interior needs are made and then loaded as material, banded and labelled in the order they will be wanted, so that the first item off the flat-bed is the first item required.

While that happens, your side prepares the ground: the approach, the working area, services run to the boundary and a base built to your engineer’s design. Those are the only items on the critical path that are not ours, and they are named early precisely so that none of them becomes a surprise on the day a load arrives.

The page · 06

Stage six, assembly on your ground, and what follows handover

Setting out comes first, because every dimension after it is measured from the base. Then the steel goes up, then the walls are closed, then the roof, the glass and the screens, and the interior last of all. There is a day, once the steel is standing and nothing has yet been closed in, when a consultant can walk the whole building and read it against the drawing.

A project that proceeds to construction is redrawn as a construction set by a licensed professional, working from this design intent. That is not a disclaimer bolted onto a website; it is how the work is routed, without exception. The line saying so is on every sheet, and it is never removed, never softened and never negotiated away for a client who says he does not need it.

Questions

Questions to settle around a release-led path from brief to handover.

How long does the whole thing take, honestly?

Longer than the number this market advertises, because that number covers assembly and nothing else. Sixty to ninety days on site is the manufacturing group’s record. Ahead of it lie every stage above: the first conversation, the scheme, the sheets, the approvals you have to obtain and the making of the components. Your realistic total arrives with the quotation.

What do I have to do before delivery day?

Three things, all named back to you at the scheme stage: a road a loaded flat-bed can use, a clear working area alongside the footprint, and a finished base with the services already run to it. They are the only items on the programme that are not ours, which is why they are written down as early as they are.

Can I stop after the drawings?

Yes. The set is issued to be read and judged, by your own architect if you would rather not judge it yourself, and there is nothing further to sign before that happens. A reader who gets to the end of the sheets and decides against the building has learned something worth knowing, which is what issuing them is for.

Do you build it, or do I appoint a contractor?

The components are manufactured and delivered, and the assembly is carried out to the drawn sequence. What sits outside that scope — foundations, the ground under them, services beyond the boundary and anything a licensed signature is required for — is set out in the quotation and handled by the consultants you appoint for it.

What happens if the design has to change once work starts?

The intention is that it does not, which is what the scheme stage on your own survey exists to prevent. Where a change is unavoidable, it is drawn first and priced against the drawing, and the sheets are reissued with a revision letter. A change agreed verbally on site is the most expensive kind, and it is not how this works.

What am I given at handover?

The building, the design set at its final revision, the finishes and openings schedules, and the terms of the twenty-five-year warranty as they apply to your project. That warranty is the manufacturing group’s, qualified per building, and it does not reach structural design, foundations, services or any figure of performance.

Start at the plot, not the picture

Send the location, the approach road and what the building is for, and the first conversation will be about your ground rather than about our designs.

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