The Housing Disruptors
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There’s a shortage of affordable and social housing in most large urban centres around the world. But the construction sector is blighted by inefficiency and low productivity, and many say it’s ripe for disruption. Could modular or factory-built homes be the answer? We visit the factories and hear from two UK house-building ‘disruptors’; Rosie Toogood CEO of Legal and General Modular Homes and Nigel Banks at Ilke Homes. Mark Farmer of Cast Consultancy explains what’s been holding back innovation and Richard Threlfall, Partner and Global Head of Infrastructure at consultants KPMG gives us his take on the prospects for factory-built homes globally. Plus Rudy van Gurp from Dutch construction company Van Wijnen on why this may just be the cusp of big changes about to take over the construction industry.
Picture description: A crane taking modular home segments and stacking them on one on top of the other to make a new duplex. Picture Credit: Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:09.5 | Coming up, the disruptors trying to change the way we build. |
| 0:13.7 | We're still building houses the way in which the Victorians did |
| 0:16.5 | and it just feels ripe that we take the lessons, you know, |
| 0:21.1 | learned over the last 100 plus years from modern manufacturing businesses |
| 0:24.7 | and apply those to traditional construction. |
| 0:27.8 | The future of construction coming up in this Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:36.1 | Look at any major city around the world, and they all have one thing in common, a shortage of affordable housing. |
| 0:43.8 | It's a big problem. This week in England, Shelter, a leading housing charity, said the country needs 3 million new social homes over the next 20 years. |
| 0:53.9 | It means houses need to be built faster and more efficiently |
| 0:57.7 | because, as many industry experts point out, |
| 1:01.2 | the way we build hasn't changed in hundreds of years. |
| 1:04.7 | Enter the disruptors. |
| 1:06.5 | I went to meet one in the north of England. |
| 1:11.9 | Okay. |
| 1:13.2 | So this is a massive hangar, essentially. |
| 1:17.3 | The kind of place where you would store aeroplanes. |
| 1:19.8 | You know, it's a 550,000 square foot facility. |
| 1:24.2 | That's seven Wembley-sized football pictures. |
| 1:26.9 | Okay, that translates easier. It is absolutely huge. |
| 1:32.2 | This factory on an industrial site between York and Leeds is enormous |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.