Staging Deliveries Across A Large Project

A single dwelling is installed in a day. A project of twenty is a sequence, and the sequence is worth as much as the design.

Get it right and the crane moves through the site once, early dwellings are finished while later ones are still arriving, and the first revenue or occupation comes forward by months. Get it wrong and the crane returns to areas it has already left, finished work is damaged by continuing site traffic, and nothing can be occupied until everything is complete.

The crane decides the order

A crane has a position, a radius and a capacity that falls off with distance. From any one position it can reach a defined area, and relocating it takes time and costs money.

Which means the sequence is built backwards from the crane: group the modules that can be placed from one set-up, place them, then move once to the next position.

The error is to sequence by dwelling number or by contract order. A plan that requires the crane to lift dwelling one, then dwelling fourteen, then dwelling two carries a relocation between each, and the relocations become a significant part of the install cost. The constraints that set this up are in [crane selection and lift planning](/blog/crane-selection-and-lift-planning).

Work from the far end back

The general principle on a constrained site.

Install the modules furthest from the access point first and work back toward the entry, so a completed dwelling never sits between the crane and the next module.

The reverse order means driving oversize loads past finished work, which risks damage and frequently is not physically possible once a dwelling and its external works are in place.

Foundations run ahead of delivery

Modules arrive to a prepared foundation, and the preparation has to be complete and cured for the dwellings in the current stage before the trucks arrive.

Which means groundworks are themselves staged, running one stage ahead of installation rather than being completed across the whole site before anything is delivered. That overlap is where a large part of the programme saving comes from, and it is the same concurrency described in [why modular programmes run shorter](/blog/why-modular-programmes-run-shorter).

The practical constraint is that a stage cannot be delivered into until its foundations have reached strength, so the concrete pour dates set the delivery dates rather than the other way round. The groundwork requirements are in [groundworks and foundations for modular](/blog/groundworks-and-foundations-for-modular).

Services and the order they go in

Site services have to reach each stage before its dwellings can be completed, which usually means the main runs are installed early along the full route rather than stage by stage.

Digging a service trench across a completed stage to reach a later one is the avoidable mistake, and it is avoided by installing the spine early and spurring off it. The authority side of that is in [utility connections and authority approvals](/blog/utility-connections-and-authority-approvals).

Staging toward early occupation

Where the project permits it, this is the largest single benefit available.

A stage with its own access, its own completed external works and a defined boundary can be certified and occupied while later stages are still under construction. On a social or affordable housing project that means tenants housed months earlier. On a student accommodation project it can mean a cohort accommodated in the current academic year rather than the next.

What it requires is planning at design stage: separation between the occupied area and the construction area, a safe access route that does not cross the site, and the external works for that stage completed rather than deferred. Those are design decisions, not site decisions, and they cannot be retrofitted once the layout is set.

The parallel delivery logic is the same as [student accommodation parallel delivery](/blog/student-accommodation-parallel-delivery).

Repetition within stages

Group identical dwellings into the same stage where the layout allows.

A stage of eight identical units installs faster per unit than eight different ones, because the crew repeats the same sequence, the same rigging and the same connection detail. That is the installation side of [multi-dwelling projects and the value of repetition](/blog/multi-dwelling-projects-and-the-value-of-repetition).

What has to be settled before stage one arrives

The whole sequence, in writing, with dates.

Crane positions for every stage. Foundation pour dates. Delivery windows and the route. Where modules can be temporarily set down if a delivery arrives ahead of its lift. Laydown and storage areas. Site access and traffic management for each stage. Where the construction boundary sits in each stage if early occupation is planned.

That is the substance of [site establishment before modules arrive](/blog/site-establishment-before-modules-arrive), and on a large project it is the document the whole programme runs on.

What we deliver.

MADEmodular / MADEbetter.