In his Modernise or Die sector review, Mark Farmer set a challenge to the construction industry to change the way it worked or face paying a heavy price.

That was four years ago and, unfortunately, it has taken a pandemic to make our sector move forward at any sort of pace.

Modern methods of construction (MMC) and, more specifically, modular construction techniques, have been vital in the delivery of hospitals when they were urgently required earlier this year. The numbers speak for themselves: we managed to shave 25 per cent off the cost and reduce the delivery schedule by a similar amount for buildings that would otherwise have taken much longer to construct.

So it is highly unlikely that the client – in this case, the NHS – seeing the resulting metrics from these projects will, in the future, be approaching suppliers with requests to go back to the old way of working.