A global pharmaceutical client needed manufacturing capacity in emerging markets, where construction safety norms were poor, local supply chains immature and logistics difficult. Building a conventional factory in each location meant long programmes, high risk and variable quality.
The answer was to stop designing buildings and start configuring products: a catalogue of components, authored once as content, configured into each facility, made in factories, shipped as standard freight and installed by a small multi-skilled team. A full-size prototype was built to prove the system.
Each component is created once as a piece of content: its geometry and interfaces, performance, cost and carbon, where it is made, how it is installed, and the labour and training it needs. The catalogue, not any one building, is the asset.
A facility is configured from catalogue content using rules for interfaces, clearances and regulation. The same configuration produces the layout, quantities, cost, procurement schedule and work packages at once.
Structure, panels, services and clean-room modules are made off site by specialist manufacturers, each to its catalogue specification.
Components are kitted into standard containers in the order they will be installed, and move by sea and road like any other freight. On arrival the container is the site store.
One small team, trained across structure, envelope and services, installs the whole kit using the methods written into the catalogue. The training is catalogue content too, so the team moves from site to site and gets better each time.
As-built data, defects, lessons and improvements go back into the catalogue under version control, so each deployment starts from a better product than the last.
Most DfMA case studies report only the wins. This one also reports the premium. Against the same pharmaceutical-grade facility built conventionally, the estimate was about 30% cheaper. Against a standard local building it cost about 15% more. Both are true, and which one matters depends on what the alternative really is.
| Measure | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost against the same facility built conventionally | About 30% lower (estimate) | gain |
| Cost against a standard local building | About 15% higher | cost |
| Time on site | 12 weeks to four | gain |
| Safety and quality | Zero incidents, zero defects | gain |
| Dependence on local skills and supply chain | Low: a small multi-skilled team, parts made elsewhere | gain |
| Up-front content and set-up | Higher: the catalogue and its content must exist, and be maintained | cost |
The factory in containers is one application of a wider idea: content authored once, configured many times, made in factories, installed by teams trained on it, and improved with each use.
Research on Heathrow Terminal 5 found that much of a megaproject’s production is made up of discrete, routine and repetitive processes that can be progressively standardised and replicated, and that performance improves when proven processes are recombined and replicated rather than reinvented[1].
In the water sector, Anglian Water replaced bespoke, site-built pumping stations with a configurable product platform: project teams select and adapt a standard design for the pumping capacity they need, and it is manufactured off site. Its manufacturing partner reports costs over 35% below traditional build and no accidents [2].
A pharmaceutical plant, an airport terminal and a network of water assets look nothing alike. The delivery system underneath them can be the same: a catalogue, the rules to configure it, a supply chain that makes to it, and multi-skilled teams that install it.
We help clients decide where off-site and assembly-led delivery pays, and then design the product, supply chain and logistics to make it work. Discuss a delivery systems review →