The Forge: The world's first P-DfMA commercial office building opens in London

Maswiken also talks about the benefits of the lighting flexibility, with the ability to dim the lights or increase lumination, which he says provides options depending on the type of surgery being conducted.

This direct client contact has given us the opportunity to create a distinct identity as a team, and a distinct position within the industry.It also required us to develop skills that internal-facing teams don’t need.

Having our own clients presents us with a range of questions that we have to answer, and it requires a particular set of capabilities.We create solutions and give them to clients – for them to use.That means our product has to work independently of us – it has to achieve a level of external usability and stability..

Working in this way has also given us a lot of scope in terms of choosing what sort of team we want to be, to evolve sometimes according to the individuals who join the team, and to decide our own overall development path – but we’ve always been tethered strongly to the core intellectual drive of the company.. What is your position on AI/generative design/automation in construction/robotics in construction?.AI relies on large data sets.

These aren’t typically available in our sector so the use of AI in construction has been somewhat limited by that.

Examples of AI are often narrowly defined and only really touch a very specific part of the overall process; the part for which large data sets do exist.. ‘Generative design’ means many things, but generally it’s an approach used in the industry to solve complicated problems; you use generative design to create loads of possible solutions or scenarios, from which you choose the best..Things are scaled up and down from the size of a human.

Houses and buildings are sized to wrap around humans and floor heights set to allow humans to walk upright.The first factories were simply extensions on houses and the machines and equipment were generally sized to fit into slightly large rooms.

Of course, technology has pushed these boundaries to some degree and there are now large process plants like refineries or mega-factories..The railway system of the world is scaled around the size of a horse and cart as that was the predominant transport technology when they came into existence.. Moving down in scale, we scale craft and industrial laboratory equipment so that humans can interact with it using their hands.. Evolution is an excellent process to improve and adapt size and function to meet the demands of survival.