M&S is trialing off-site construction methods to explore potential cost benefits and help maintain its goal of zero waste from construction. Off-site construction involves prefabricating building elements or entire structures at a factory. M&S believes off-site methods could be used for most of its store fit-outs, including walls, bakeries, cafes, and more. The potential benefits include reduced costs, faster completion, less waste, and improved quality. M&S will learn through trials if off-site construction can deliver on its promise of these benefits.

1. Can off-site construction
deliver on its promise?
Paul Glinn
Marks & Spencer plc
13 Feb 2015
M&S is trialing off-site methodologies as part of its
Plan A commitments, to explore potential cost
benefits and how it could help maintain its goal of
zero waste to landfill from construction.
Zero waste to landfill was achieved in the construction of the M&S Cheshire
Oaks store. Could off-site manufacturing help maintain this goal on other
projects?

2. If you have ever watched a time-lapse video of a fast-food
restaurant built from scratch in just 24 hours, or bathroom
pods being craned into place like giant Lego on a block of
flats, then you will already have seen off-site construction
in action.
Off-site methodologies – where elements, or even whole
buildings arrive prefabricated from the factory – are ideal
for design schemes that involve significant repetition of
units. But, what about fit-out and interiors projects, where
the building itself is already in place, whether an existing
store up for refurbishment, or a pristine newly-developed
shell unit? Could off-site construction work well for a
national retailer shop-fitting a wide portfolio of properties?
This is what we at M&S are about to find out.
Looking ahead, though, we think most of the
fit-out of our stores could actually be
undertaken using off-site methods.
We are working ahead of schedule on our Plan A
commitment to begin trials of off-site methodologies for
stores and shop-fit by 2016, and make recommendations
for future use. The timeframe of this commitment to
innovation is an indicator of our eagerness to quantify the
potential cost-efficiency benefits of off-site, plus
understand fully how it could help maintain our
environmental commitment to send no waste to landfill
from our construction activities.
Of course, in some respects off-site is not a new thing for
us at all: ‘backstage’, coldrooms and plant facilities have
been built this way for 30 years. Looking ahead, though,
we think most of the fit-out of our stores could actually be
undertaken using off-site methods – everything from wall

3. systems, with integrated doors and pre-plumbed services,
to bakeries, delis, cafés, toilets, high-level services and
packaged plant.
We already understand the many advantages for whole-
building schemes and some are definitely transferable, to
a degree, to fit-out work. Off-site construction can cut build
time, saving on site and labour costs, plus bring forward
completion and operation dates, securing significant
business benefit. Further efficiencies can be achieved via
reduced need for premium-rate night-time and weekend
working (outside store opening hours). Less call for
storage and cutting of materials on site also helps with
waste minimisation, health & safety, economy of delivery,
logistics and quality control – leading to better energy-
efficiency performance on the project, reduced carbon
emissions and less snagging.
We know build quality can definitely be improved via off-
site, so there is a potential for better-constructed kitchen
areas in our store cafés, for example. The fibreglass
moulded tile panels utilised in lieu of traditional ceramics
and grout have an antimicrobial finish, which gives a
hygiene benefit to food-preparation areas.
Other elements of our building work, like corporate
signage and the components that go to make up our
display windows, certainly may benefit. In a trading
environment, where we have put in things like new
bakeries, using off-site has meant that sales are being
made after a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks
– clearly a strong commercial gain. The same could also
work in-store for things like fitting rooms, cafés and
Customer Service areas.
So, are off-site solutions really the future for construction?

4. Well, at M&S, for off-site to become a strategic method
first it must be seen to be commercially viable. It might not
be viable on a one-off project basis, but we are exploring
the likely financial benefits for larger programmes, such as
our rolling Simply Foods Programme.
In this aim, we are confident that more of our contractors
coming ‘on message’ will undoubtedly help us. The
benefits also increase significantly when joined up using
Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean
programming. In our view, unless Lean, or fully
collaborative planning is employed – taking significant
time out of the overall project duration – the real benefits
of off-site will not materialise.
For M&S, then, off-site is full of promise. What we will
learn – starting with recent trial projects such as the new
Great Yarmouth Simply Food store – is whether it can
deliver on that promise.
This blog originally appeared on the M&S blog.
Paul Glinn
Head of Architecture
Marks & Spencer plc