Pre-Manufactured Value, or PMV, is becoming an increasingly important metric for construction project owners, as explored in the following PBC Today article: https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/mmc-news/pre-manufactured-value/97905/ In fact, that article goes so far as to describe PMV as “essential to the future of public sector home building”, particularly in the UK – it remains to be see what the Irish approach will be. It seems likely that, with the bold new housing delivery targets set out under Ireland’s Housing for All programme (312,000 new homes by 2030), and the resourcing of the Government-appointed Construction Sector Group (CSG) to action innovation and digital adoption across the industry in Ireland, there will be a increasing reliance on offsite and other modern methods of construction. In this context, PMV or some version of it will inevitably become a key measurement metric for projects.
What is Pre-Manufactured-Value (PMV)?
At its simplest, PMV is a method of calculating what proportion of a building’s overall construction takes place offsite, using any category of MMC, and defining that proportion as a percentage of the total build. According to the PBC Today article above, volumetric and panelised systems offer the highest PMV, meaning they account for the majority of the structure being constructed off site.
The UK government has introduced this PMV metric for the delivery of its Affordable Homes Programme and a minimum of 25 percent of all funded projects must be delivered using MMC. Significantly, a project will only be deemed as “using MMC” if it can demonstrate a PMV of 55 percent.
The article above features a UK-based case study to show how PMV works in practice. It is certainly interesting to understand this metric, not just for calculation purposes, but for an insight into government thinking and policy approach for the preferred future of homebuilding. However, the growing bias towards MMC is not about ticking yet another box for public projects, it is about extracting value from as many steps of the construction process as possible. As regularly featured on this website, the quantifiable benefits of offsite construction include speed, consistently high quality, sustainability, reduced waste and increased certainty of programme – which are all particularly welcome after the past 18-months of the pandemic. But there are other, less quantifiable, social benefits of the use of MMC in housing delivery, including earlier access to homes for people who need them, greater comfort levels within those homes, lower heating bills and superb energy performance. These advantages are not insignificant.
About Horizon Offsite
Horizon Offsite Ltd is one of Europe’s leading players in Offsite Construction and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), providing a fully accredited structural light gauge steel system to the residential, industrial, commercial, healthcare and educational sectors. Contact the Horizon Offsite team at https://www.horizonoffsite.ie