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鈥淭his is going to do for housing what Ikea did for furniture,鈥� says James Pickard, partner at Cartwright Pickard Architects. 鈥淢y dream is that in three years鈥� time we will be exporting flatpack houses to Sweden. I want to export houses the other way round 鈥� that鈥檚 my holy grail.鈥� Pickard is clearly optimistic about the launch of his off-site housing system, Optima.

Architects, including Cartwright Pickard, may be used to incorporating off-site manufacturing into their designs, but this is the first time a practice has been so involved in designing the housing system itself. Cartwright Pickard partnered with timber-frame maker the Pace Group to develop Optima, seeing it as the logical next step in a long run of innovative projects involving prefabrication, such as the Peabody Trust鈥檚 Murray Grove housing development. 鈥淲e felt it was about time to put our money where our mouth was,鈥� says Pickard.

But has Cartwright Pickard made the system different and special enough to compete with well-established foreign imports? Darren Richards, the operations director of off-site manufacturing consultant Mtech, was involved in the development of Optima and thinks so. 鈥淭his is one of the few credible UK closed-panel systems,鈥� he says. Closed panel systems incorporate insulation, windows and doors; the panels are slotted together to build a home. 鈥淯nfortunately to get what clients want we have had to go abroad,鈥� says Richards. But Optima has an edge over its foreign competitors. 鈥淭he collaboration [with Cartwright Pickard] is novel and that will set it apart,鈥� Richards says. 鈥淭he architect has ensured the system can be applied to a wide range of designs, and it also integrates services and there is more consideration for follow-on trades.鈥� (See 鈥淗ow Optima is built鈥�, page 54).

Optima鈥檚 key selling point is flexibility. All internal walls are non-load bearing, meaning that the client has complete freedom to arrange the interior layout to suit its needs, and clients have a wide choice of design routes. Optima is offering the system in the form of three packages: basic, standard and enhanced. With the basic package, the clients design their own scheme; standard consists of 15 Housing Corporation-approved, off-the-shelf designs by Cartwright Pickard; and the enhanced option gives clients a bespoke Cartwright Pickard design. Although the standard designs are pre-planned, Pickard is not precious changing the designs. 鈥淭he standard designs can be tweaked, they are a starting point for customers to say 'this is interesting' and work from that,鈥� says Pickard. The idea is that housing associations will use Optima鈥檚 flexibility to work out styles that can be replicated.

Optima also scores points for arriving on site as a near-complete package, reducing the amount of work done on site. One time-saving trick of the standard designs is the inclusion of a service riser in each home and pre-installed conduit for wiring. 鈥淐lients will have to think about M&E much earlier. We will be working with them to work out the M&E, something I see as a great advantage,鈥� says Phil Key, managing director of the Pace Group. He hopes in the future to be able to offer prefabricated homes with preinstalled services.

Another factor that makes the system unique is that it arrives on site with ready-fitted drylined walls. Pace Group already has a specialist drylining division and has used its expertise in this area to remove this job from site, and make it cost effective. 鈥淲e have already proved we can dryline more cheaply in the factory than on site, and it is factory-controlled as well,鈥� says Key. Workers tape and joint the plasterboard as the house is erected on site ready for decorating. 鈥淭here will be very little left for the contractor to do,鈥� laughs Pickard.

Contractors will not have to fit out kitchens and bathrooms either. The system is designed to incorporate fully fitted bathroom and kitchen pods 鈥� these go next to the service riser for simple connection to services. Pickard is already considering how the pod concept could be developed in the future. 鈥淎n aspiration for the future would be to pull out the kitchen and bathroom pods and replace them as they only last 10 years,鈥� he says. 鈥淩ipping out kitchens and bathrooms is a very big issue for social landlords as it is very expensive.鈥�

So will all the time-saving features of the system appeal to housebuilders? Social housing contractor Willmott Dixon is already using Pace Group鈥檚 timber frames for the homes it builds and thinks there is potential for Optima. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a good system they have come up with,鈥� says Brendan Ritchie, Willmott Dixon鈥檚 innovations director. 鈥淭here's a lot in the package that one supplier can give us: the closed frame with insulation, the ready-fitted plasterboard, provision for easy installation of services and the pods. Putting all that in one package with one supplier is a plus.鈥� He says it鈥檚 too early to tell how Optima will affect the company financially. 鈥淥ne of the most difficult views to come to is what time savings it will offer on site. It will cost more. The question is, will the increased capital cost offset the time savings on site. It鈥檚 not an exact science, you do it a few times and get a sense of what it is going to save you.鈥� He says when the right client with the right type of project comes along the company will try the system out.

Key has no doubts about the likely success of the system. 鈥淭here is a lot of interest form RSLs and contractors in significant numbers. It sounds a bit strange, but we may have to push people back,鈥� he says. Pace Group, which has exclusive rights over Optima in the UK, has invested considerable sums of money in a new factory to make the system and has high hopes for the future. 鈥淎s we grow I can see Optima taking over from our standard timber frame business in two to three years,鈥� says Key.

Cartwright Pickard has joint intellectual property rights over the system and will receive a royalty for each unit sold. Pickard says he wants to plough the profits into further research and development to stay ahead of the market. 鈥淭his will sustain more R&D work as the system will be constantly evolving based on customer feedback, changes within the industry and changes in materials and technology,鈥� explains Pickard. Optima is currently developing the system so it can be used for apartment blocks. In the future there could be solutions for other sectors such as schools and hospitals, and it could be marketed overseas. Perhaps, as Pickard dreams, Optima will even be built in the birthplace of flatpack design.