STELLAR

"The UK faces an unprecedented housing shortage; 3.9 million new homes must be built just to meet current demand. Despite this, just half the homes needed are being built and the shortfall continues to increase.

Modern methods of construction, such as off-site manufacturing of houses in factories, promise lower-cost, higher-quality homes constructed in days instead of months. This is particularly beneficial to suppliers of social housing (e.g. housing associations, local authorities), who are facing ever greater challenges in delivering quality affordable homes. However, housing associations often need small volumes of customised properties to suit infill and brownfield sites, which does not match with the needs of factory owners to sell high volumes of near-identical properties. Concentrating manufacturing in a handful of large, centralized factories also increases transportation and impacts the local workforce.

STELLAR offers social housing developers and owners the tools and business models they desperately need to provide affordable homes across the UK in line with demand. Our model centralises complex and high-cost design, frame manufacturing and warranty tools within a central virtual 'hub', supporting SME-operated 'spoke' factories near to the point of need.

To achieve this, we will combine and enhance the UK's best available tools and knowledge, delivering:

1. **3D 'digital twin' factory planning tool** to ensure fit to need and support capital investment
2. **Parametric Modelling tool for SMEs**, enabling them to optimise house design and ringfence production slots
3. **A UK first, open-access 'Should-Cost' Model** driven by parametric design to generate accurate build costs
4. **A Modular Build Design App**, directly informing production, enabling HAs to specify homes that meet their needs.
5. **Demonstration home(s)** -- Homes designed and produced through the hub-and-spoke model and STELLAR toolkit will be installed in client specified configurations. They will come complete with a suite of unobtrusive miniature IoT enabled environmental and usage sensors to enable energy and operational performance data to be monitored and analysed. A period of occupation will then be completed prior to future-casting to confirm environmental performance, whole-life cost and longevity, and provide a strong return on investment.

The committed and highly innovative STELLAR consortium includes modular steel frame specialists, home builders and highly respected academics. We form a complete value chain that will last beyond this project. The team has attracted positive attention from organisations including National Housing Associations and the House of Lords, who recently sought Totally Modular's input to upcoming national strategies."