The design and procurement stages that follow can then also be compressed through focusing time and effort only on the bespoke elements of the largely standardised design.

Reducing the boiler size from a 15kw electric boiler to a 3kw boiler would reduce carbon by 1.69 kgCO2/m2.Reducing the number of radiators from 10 to just one would reduce carbon by 10.7 kgCO2/m2.

Reducing the size of the photovoltaic array from 24 to 12 units would reduce carbon by 12 kgCO2/m2.All the above items added up together would mean just a reduction of around 4.7 kgCO2/m2, mainly due to the simplification of the heating and photovoltaic systems.Compared to a residential LETI 2020 (Band C) target building (A-C) with a total embodied carbon of 675 kgCO2/m2, that is equivalent to just 0.7% reduction in carbon..

Comparison of embodied carbon (A-C) between a baseline residential building based on LETI Band C and same building with Passivhaus characteristics.The adoption of the above Passivhaus standard does not have a substantial impact on the embodied carbon compared to a standard residential building.

The adoption of Passivhaus does not prevent the incorporation of additional strategies to reduce embodied carbon and all designs retain the potential to achieve low embodied carbon performance if it is part of the design intent.. Further potential benefits from Passivhaus arise from the compact shape and the use of timber, although full life cycle analysis is required to quantify this.

The compact shape is predicted to reduce the absolute quantity of materials whilst timber is a material with low embodied carbon which can be ultra-low depending on its end-of-life treatment..The problems found in modular construction are only compounded by inefficient factory working.

The cost of any prefabricated component (indeed, any component of any building) can be divided into materials and labour.If we ignore the cost of the labour that has gone into making the component, we only have material costs left, resulting in limited opportunities to add value.

Manufacturers have understood this for decades and spent a great deal of effort developing highly productive assembly routines that enabled the mass production, automation and commoditisation that fuelled the consumer age.. Too often factories are treated as ‘construction sites in a shed' producing bespoke, custom components with overlapping trades and poor works sequencing, causing reduced value and the same inefficiencies that are often found on construction sites.We want the factories that produce components for the construction industry to be more like the best factories making consumer goods; highly efficient, controlled and focused on achieving the highest throughput for the lowest cost, without compromising on quality..