An official for the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) has admitted there is some uncertainty about whether modules on a modular construction site fall under the responsibility of the product regulator.
As reported by Construction News (CN), the comments were made during an industry event attended by Duncan Johnson, the Deputy Director for Construction Products Regulation at OPSS.
Speaking about the OPSS’s role in regulating construction products, Johnson stated it was an “open question” whether modules used on a construction site could be classed as construction products, or whether modular housing would instead fall under the remit of the Building Safety Regulator.
“We can only regulate those products for which there’s a designated standard and that’s clearly defined,” he said.
This ambiguity around regulating modern methods of construction (MMC) was touched upon by Paul Morrell OBE and Anneliese Day KC in their Independent Review of the Construction Product Testing Regime report published in April 2023.
In the independent review, Morrell and Day stated that as modern methods of construction (MMC) were “increasingly adopted”, new issues would be raised for the “regulators for both building safety and construction products”.
“In essence, construction work involves the assembly of products into assemblies, and assemblies into a building, wherever that might be conducted; but there are particular issues arising in the context of the Building Safety Act which Government will need to consider:
(1) Whether, by virtue of being assembled under the directions of a single manufacturer, everything so fabricated becomes a “kit” and therefore potentially a product for the purposes of the Construction Products Regulations (subject to the development of designated standards), and what the implications of that might be.
(2) Whether any regulations or standards are uniquely required because of differences in design or construction arising from the use of MMC (specifically offsite prefabrication - and most particularly modular construction).”
As part of their recommendations for strengthening the understanding and application of testing products assembled into systems, Morrell and Day said the government and industry should address the special requirements of MMC in terms of “standards, conformity assessment, regulation and regulatory oversight”.
You can access the full report here.
As reported by CN, Johnson said that the OPSS was “certainly open to the idea that if a module is constructed in a factory, it becomes a product and it should be regulated as a product rather than as a building”, but added that “wherever you draw the line, there are challenges”.
“I think this is still an open question. This is something that further views are being sought on and will be sought on, but it’s a really important dimension of any future regime,” he said.