I have experience of a large construction project in which the contractor used DfMA. I notice in your post you mention Laing O'Rourke and similarly my involvement was on one of their projects also. DfMA was an expression coined by them to represent their off site manufacturing process. Just about every contractor currently promotes off site manufacturing for the benefits of quality control, speed to install, reduction of on-site labour etc. However, with LOR their DfMA took it to levels which we hadn’t used before. The vast majority of the building structure, as well as the building services was manufactured off site and delivered to the construction site. We design the Electrical, Mechanical and Public Health building services. It meant that our basic design had to be modified to allow the various components to be mounted on modules (skids). These were then delivered to site in up to 14m lengths, lifted onto the floor plate and fixed into the ceiling void. It required detailed drawings of the modules but prevented clashes on site as any issues had previously been resolved. The target was 70% of the services values delivered via DfMA, providing a 60% reduction in on-site labour and a 30% saving in programme.
Whether there is much of a difference between terminology or just how different companies apply it I'm not so sure. Certainly, the level of “off site" that we were involved with in this project was unprecedented from our previous experience.
Having been through the learning curve it would be something that we can see the benefit of and would be willing to work with again.
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