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INTRODUCTION

The aim of this guide is to provide surveyors with an insight into how to differentiate between houses built using modern methods of construction (MMC) and those built using more ‘traditional' site-based techniques such as brick and block cavity construction. There is, though, no precise definition of what constitutes a modern method of construction. A simple definition might be:

‘dwellings whose structural units are wholly or in part manufactured off site, or on site by contemporary methods other than ‘traditional' methods such as brick and block cavity masonry'.

The definition also needs to include some reference to date; only recent systems (eg from the mid 1990s) are regarded as ‘modern methods'. Earlier manufactured systems are normally referred to as ‘non-traditional'. More is said in Box 1 about the difficulty of defining modern methods of construction.

Many of the so-called non-traditional systems produced housing that looks markedly different from masonry construction: this immediately alerts the surveyor to the fact that the dwelling is not of masonry construction (Figure 1). However, many of the modern systems are designed to look like ‘traditional' houses and thus, from the street, do not appear to be anything other than conventional houses