Adam Harkin (AH):

“You need to look at it from a few different angles. As an offsite engineer, early involvement presents greater flexibility to innovate and develop unique solutions. I can bounce ideas off the design team before anything’s even built, which means we can break things down and figure out what we could improve or what’s already working well.

Then, if we look at it from a construction point of view, especially with offsite building, the health and safety benefits are huge. Doing work in a controlled factory environment is much safer than a lot of the tasks you’d have to handle on-site.

And finally, from an environmental and carbon standpoint, factory construction actually tends to have a smaller carbon footprint than traditional on-site work. It’s not just about the materials or reducing waste. It also relates to fewer workers travelling to the site and a reduction in deliveries. When you put it all together, you start to see a bigger picture of the savings achieved beyond the materials used.”

Matt Baker (MB):

“From a site perspective, one of the big benefits is the cost and speed of site activities. The time spent on-site putting up the building is much less when you use offsite methods. This not only helps with costs but can also be crucial for tight schedules. And when everything’s coordinated properly and fabricated offsite, the chances of unforeseen clashes on-site are much lower. There’s less that can go wrong when you get to the site.”

Matt Baker (MB):

“With SPST, there was definitely a big learning curve [for modelling], especially when it came to understanding their product. There are a lot of additional considerations, particularly around their manufacturing process, which is unlike anything I’ve worked with before. I had to get up to speed on how to model it correctly to make sure it aligned with their process and that their factory was happy with what I’d done.

For SPS, and really for any offsite modular work, lifting considerations are also crucial. Typically, you’re working with much larger pieces than traditional beams and columns, so you really have to think through the lifting strategy—how are we going to crane it in, and where are the lift points? It’s an added layer of detail I keep in mind when I’m detailing things.

I’ll then work closely with SPST to make sure everything’s lined up. They’ll review and approve what I’ve put together, so it’s a collaborative process. Most of the time, it’s pretty straightforward with standard details, but there are the occasional unique pieces where I think, ‘I’ve never seen this before, how are we going to lift it?’ So, we work together on those cases, and it’s a really good collaborative effort. We don’t just hand it off and say, ‘It’s not my problem.’ We keep those considerations in mind the whole way through.”

Matt Baker (MB):

“Trimble Connect has been a game-changer for us and how we can engage our clients throughout the process. We can now showcase the entire model to our clients, and SPST has real-time access to it, which is fantastic. They can view and interact with the model as it gets updated, making the design process much more collaborative.

Instead of a traditional approach where we set a fixed timeline to issue the model and drawings, we’ve shifted to a more dynamic, ongoing process. Clients can review the model, provide feedback, and highlight any issues as they arise. This iterative approach allows us to continuously refine the design day-to-day and really keep the workflow moving forward, rather than waiting for a set approval stage. They always have the information at their fingertips whenever they need it.”