Published: 4 December 2018

Financing Modular Construction:- Mace & ACE Modular Construction Event 30/11/18  

ACE Modular Construction with Mace Group facilitated together a unique high profile event Friday 30th November 2018 at Mace HQ in London, which delved deep in to the details of financing Off-Site Construction:- development finance & mortgage-ability challenges & opportunities. Following our first event together back in July, what came from this was the serious necessity to address what is very much a complex situation in the UK. Having seen the possibilities of both Design & Delivery we considered major barriers to entry and adoption of the Modular Construction techniques. Victoria at Mace Group and ACE identified two main hurdles: first being finance & mortgage-ability & the second one being quality assurance, insurance and certification. We invited a panel of expert speakers to shed some light on how can we address these challenges including ACE Modular Construction ‘finance partner’ Martin Simons, a finance specialist from Wealthcare (& MSR Corporate) who gave examples of successful finance of Modular Construction projects – from Debt, Mezzanine & Equity finance including coverage on mortgage-ability of the modular homes, a relevant topic to most of the property developers who build projects for sale.

Then followed swiftly by Professor Nick Whitehouse a senior research fellow and visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University gave an introduction to Buildoffsite & BOPAS together with an overview as to why offsite construction is so important to the future of housing in the UK. Up next was Terry Mundy, who was instrumental in establishing the Buildoffsite registration scheme & development of BOPAS. Terry spoke about the factory accreditation process undertaken by Lloyds Register. Jeff Maxted joined the presentation focusing on the durability assessment process & an update on BOPAS registrations, the type of systems we are seeing going through the registration process.

65 guests filled the room consisting of property developers, architects, financiers, project managers and Baltic Off-Site Manufacturers with ACE Modular Construction UK Delivery Partners. With very special thanks to Victoria Popova, Associate Director at Mace and her team, all our speakers including Bobby Barr at Modularesi for his support.