This US-based ‘manufacturing on demand’ company links customers wanting components (including BMW, General Electric, NASA, Dell and Bosch), to a network of 5,000 suppliers across the USA, Europe and Asia.

In 2005, she bought a 76-year-old company that built steel and concrete volumetric modular, as well as some assemblies.They worked on a huge variety of projects: telecommunications, data centres, schools, hospitals, generator enclosures, and embassies for the government.

Marks notes that people tend to think standardised design is something new, but it isn’t.It’s just an idea that’s coming back, growing in scale, and becoming more mainstream.. Another issue we have in the construction industry, she explains, is that when we talk about this type of industrialised construction work, we tend to focus on the projects we consider to be the sexy, quirky ones.We talk about the asterisk, which will never be done again..

In actuality, her volumetric modular company had built hundreds of schools for New York City.It was a case of lots of buildings and big applications.

She says these are the industrialised construction projects we need to be talking about - the ones that everyone needs to do.. Kit-of-parts architecture and the benefits of standardisation.

Jaimie Johnston MBE, Head of Global Systems at Bryden Wood and Design Lead for the Construction Innovation Hub, is equally enthusiastic about the changes taking place within the industry.I think as an engineer it presents a greater challenge.

I think this company challenges the architects to push the envelope a bit more.We don’t just go with the standard tried and true designs.

We have to be stretched to prove something will work, which obviously makes it more challenging.But in the end, we are potentially the only people that can deliver that kind of solution because we do have a whole multidisciplinary approach to things.