The Property Voice

Series 4 PropTech: Construction Technology Part 2 – Matt Gough from Mace Group

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Joining me on this week’s show is Matt Gough, Director of Innovation from Mace Group. I picked up a phrase from a developer several years ago, which was ‘follow the money’. In his case, he was monitoring where the smart, institutional investors were doing and following their lead. Today is an opportunity to be a little like that therefore, as Matt represents a £2Bn international consultancy and construction company for us to listen in to. Raising my own awareness of a 25% skills leakage over the next 10 years and a Government drive towards improving productivity, including the ‘manufacturing of construction’ were just a couple of nuggets that he shared. Let’s listen in to hear the rest…

Resources mentioned:

Mace Group Website, Matt Gough Twitter @Matteverything or his Linked In profile, Link to the new Deal Tips Service

Join me in-person on Wednesday 21st February 2018 at my Mastermind Dinner, details HERE

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Transcription of the show

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Property Voice podcast. My name is Richard Brown and it’s a pleasure to have you join me on the show again today.

Joining me on this week’s show is Matt Gough, Director of Innovation from Mace Group. I picked up a phrase from a developer several years ago, which was ‘follow the money’. In his case, he was monitoring where the smart, institutional investors were doing and following their lead. Today is an opportunity to be a little like that therefore, as Matt represents a £2Bn international consultancy and construction company for us to listen in to. Raising my own awareness of a 25% skills leakage over the next 10 years and a Government drive towards improving productivity, including the ‘manufacturing of construction’ were just a couple of nuggets that he shared.

Let’s listen in to hear the rest…

Property Chatter

Interview with Matt Gough, Director of Innovation, Mace Group

Summary and Key Takeaways

Matt struck me as someone with his ear to the ground, but with his eyes fixed on the horizon in terms of his awareness of the here and now and upcoming trends that he sees from his vantage point in one of the UK’s top ten contractors.

Here are some of the key themes from our discussion

  1. Big Brother is Watching! – the Government is interested in increasing productivity, which means that not only is R&D money available, but policy changes will also start to take place to encourage greater adoption of technology. Besides matched-funding being available for SMEs, or small developers in our case, the ‘manufacturing of construction’ agenda will no doubt encourage wider adoption of new building technologies than we have seen in the past couple of decades.
  2. Not just quantity but style – not only do we have a housing shortage as we continue to build around half, or less of the approximate 250,000 new homes we need each year, but 75% of the public don’t really want the type of homes that we are building either. This suggests that not only do we need to ustilise new technologies like factory-built pre-fabricated and modular building technologies, but we also need to allow a greater degree of customisation along with it.
  3. From supply push to client pull – in the past, we have bought and lived in the homes that the large developers have chosen to build for us. In the future, we are starting to see more influence on the type of homes we will see built. For example, Government bodies are now specifying how they would like to see homes constructed not just how many units they build, and some of the developers have set up factories to capitalise on the manufacturing of construction or pre-fabrication trend.
  4. Skillsets and suppliers in the construction industry are starting to shift – As mentioned, we will see a 25% loss of the existing skilled workforce over the next 10 years, but at the same time we will also see a shift from bricky, chippy and sparky towards technician, programmer and engineer. Then, consider the fact that Google, Microsoft and Facebook are now not only building houses but small communities, plus with advances in ‘last mile deliveries’ from Amazon that will change the way materials can get to site, we can expect to see greater use of technology in the building and construction industry from less familiar sources.
  5. Future-ready and ‘here and now’ – larger developers and contractors are not only looking for the trends, but they are starting to deploy them too. Consider what Matt said about developers already deploying some of the newer technologies. For example, building factories for pre-fabricated units, looking at modular design techniques for how to improve wiring and cabling installation and the adoption of 3D and digital design, along with augmented and virtual reality to improve not only design but end-to-end communication and planning in the construction process. However, some technologies might have a way to go yet, such as onsite robots laying bricks. In terms of building materials, bio-science advances has led to some interesting new materials such as graphene, which won’t ne deployed overnight. However, advances in ‘self-healing concrete’ perhaps offer more of an evolution of an existing material that could be adopted more readily.
  6. Small developers could be more agile – small can mean less bureaucracy and delay in the adoption of new technologies, so there is a chance for ‘first-mover advantage’ as Matt mentioned. However, some of these technologies are still first or second generation and so we will likely see improvements and cost-reduction in some respects that could remove some of the advantages of getting to market first at the same time. However, it does appear that some smaller developers could learn a thing or two from what the ‘smart money’ is doing and pre-fabrication or modular certainly seems to be one of them.
  7. Design & build trends – more ‘build to rent’ for the private sector, more use of of high-speed data connections in housing, especially the student market, which is a sub-set of the Millennial generation and greater development of assisted living or co-living schemes were all signposted towards the end of our discussion too.
  8. If you want to get in touch with Matt, perhaps to ask him about the 12 technological innovations or to hear more about the Mace Group and their projects, you can connect at macegroup.com, Twitter @Matteverything or his Linked In profile, all of which are set out in the show notes.

    9. Why not join me at my next ‘working-social’ property mastermind dinner in London on Wednesday 21st February from 6pm. Event details available here

    As usual, the show notes can be found over at www.thepropertyvoice.net or if you want to talk about anything from today’s show, receive an intro into one of my guests or just talk property investing, email me at [email protected], I would be happy to hear from you!

    But for now, all I want to say is thank you very much for listening once again this week and until next time on The Property Voice Podcast…it’s ciao-ciao.

    The post Series 4 PropTech: Construction Technology Part 2 – Matt Gough from Mace Group appeared first on The Property Voice.

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    The Property VoiceBy Richard W J Brown from www.thepropertyvoice.net