In Brief

The Challenge

The ongoing housing crisis in Ireland has significant social and economic impacts. At the same time, embodied carbon from the construction industry contributes to a substantial amount of Ireland’s annual emissions and this is only set to rise with increasing housing delivery if traditional construction materials and processes prevail.  

The challenge therefore requires an urgent solution that uses innovation and digitalisation in the construction sector to achieve speed-of-build and cost-effective decarbonisation of the construction industry, allowing housing targets to be met efficiently, economically, and sustainably.  

Modern methods of construction (MMC) use offsite streamlined digital manufacturing technologies and construction processes and provide a unique opportunity to resolve many of these issues, yet uptake in Ireland is low due to several barriers to entry. These include the lack of knowledge of MMC categories and their influence on project constraints, as well as the lack of an appropriate quantification of the “total value added” from MMC use. 

The Solution

This project develops a decision-support tool, Platform for choices in MMC (Platform4MMC), which enables, for the first time, an impartial assessment of the viability of MMC categories for a considered project and their total sustainability value (social, economic, and environmental). Platform4MMC fosters faster and well-informed decision-making by both public and private bodies in the bid to alleviate the housing crisis, whilst meeting sustainability requirements. The challenge is transdisciplinary in nature (spanning engineering, social sciences, environment, economy, policy), thus the solution entails continuous engagement with a wide range of stakeholders and research groups to build and integrate the database, localise it to Ireland, and pilot, adapt, host, and maintain the platform within project budget and timelines. 

The Team

  • Team Lead: Dr Samar Raffoul, University College Dublin 
  • Team Co-Lead: Dr Oliver Kinnane, University College Dublin 

Societal Impact Champion

  • Eadaoin Ní Fhearghail