Pipe Center’s Modular Engineering has won the award for Best Product or System in the Offsite Construction Awards 2009.
The award recognised the ability of Pipe Center’s approach to reduce costs, save waste, protect the environment, cut accidents and deliver an assured level of quality on time and to budget.
Bob Hughes, General Manager of Modular Engineering, said: “We are obviously delighted to win the award. It is recognition of the huge benefits offered by off-site modular engineering for multi-service pipework for buildings.”
He added: “Given the ever tighter time and cost pressures in the construction industry, I have no doubt that use of the modular engineering approach will increase in the future.”
In the conventional approach, often complex building services pipework and electrical systems required for a building – including air conditioning, M&E services, refrigeration, water and fire – are installed individually on-site. This requires the involvement of several different trades, working in building site conditions, with the inevitable pressures and limitations this entails.
The new approach, developed by Bob Hughes and colleagues at Pipe Center, overcomes the need for such difficult and inefficient on-site working. It is based on the off-site assembly of multi-service pipe modules, containing all the piped and electrical building services required – even for the most complex buildings, such as major hospitals.
“The savings in cost, time, manpower and materials are enormous. It also has huge benefits for the environment – as materials and components are precisely specified, resulting in dramatically reduced wastage,” he says.
“It also means a big reduction in vehicle miles travelled, as the modules are delivered to site in a single drop as complete units, rather than as hundreds or even thousands of individual components, on multiple vehicle deliveries.”
The award was one of the most hard-fought categories in the Offsite Construction Awards, where Modular Engineering was one of ten finalists.