How to Automate Building Design: Relative Bespokeness with Kit-of-Parts
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
Earlier work in a large, multi-stakeholder AEC environment explored how complex building design decisions can be codified and automated for MMC and kit-of-parts delivery. The industry insights shared here are drawn from that experience, and they continue to shape how Exelsiv approaches innovation today.
Read Part 1: How to Automate Building Design: A Case Study
Read Part 2: How to Automate Building Design: Product-Informed Digitization
Read Part 3: How to Automate Building Design: Adapting to Local Codes
The Problem
Even when it’s well-intentioned, bespoke commercial delivery can introduce delays and cost pressure, because more interfaces are resolved project-by-project and changes cascade into rework.
Early attempts at MMC tried to over-correct this into rigid standardisation, leaving architects and developers boxed in by systems that couldn't respond to site constraints or tenant requirements. The industry needed meaningful customisation without abandoning efficiency.
The Approach
Newer approaches treat MMC as a configurable product platform. A kit-of-parts approach can deliver relative bespokeness by standardising the platform (i.e. interfaces, constraints, approved variants, and underlying data), while allowing controlled variation where it actually creates value.
The core mechanism is simple: platform + variation. The intent is not to standardise the building; it is to standardise the rules. Interfaces stay constant, manufacturing processes remain repeatable, and installation sequencing is predictable. What changes is how you arrange approved components to suit different site geometries and tenant specifications.
Where Customisation Actually Happens
Relative bespokeness comes from configuration within a governed solution space, enabled by clear rules, approved variants, and constraints that prevent invalid options up front. In practice, it shows up through three levers that stay inside defined boundaries:
Combinatorial layouts: Repeatable bays, cores, and service zones are recombined to suit different sites and tenancy mixes while keeping panel interfaces consistent.
Parameter choices inside approved bounds: Pre-engineered ranges (e.g., spans, façades panels, and opening positions) are selected so outcomes remain valid by design, because “what can change” is already codified and approved.
Bespoke at the edges: Visual identity and local responses (façade treatments, ground-floor retail conditions, internal finishes) are tailored while the underlying structural and services logic stays largely standardised.
This avoids the classic trap where “efficiency” implies identical buildings: a platform approach is specifically intended to standardise interfaces and rules while still allowing different assemblies and outcomes.
Constraints-First Configuration
The key to making kit-of-parts genuinely scalable is designing the variation into the system from the start, rather than discovering it late through exceptions and site modifications. A constraints-first configurator prevents invalid combinations up front by embedding manufacturability, install sequencing, clash detection, and cost logic into the same decision workflow.
In practical terms, when a designer selects a façade pattern or structural grid, the configurator immediately filters options based on compatibility with the selected panel types, core locations, and services strategy, so dead ends and rework are avoided early. This matters in commercial delivery because tenancy, fire-engineering inputs, and services coordination often evolve late; a robust base-building platform can absorb those changes through governed configuration rather than repeated interface re-engineering, protecting programme certainty while still responding to market needs.
Productising Decisions, Not Just Components
The real value is not limited to repeatable physical components; it comes from productising decisions. That is, codifying what can change, what must remain fixed, and how choices cascade through engineering, manufacturability, and installation constraints. This is enabled by structured product catalogues and encoded parametric rules and approved variants, so delivery teams operate inside a governed solution space rather than relying on case-by-case exceptions.
When decision logic is linked to design automation and real product data, interface coordination and tolerances are not re-derived from first principles on every commercial project; teams configure within pre-validated options aligned to actual product constraints and performance. Over time, the platform can evolve through feedback loops (updated data, refined parameter ranges, and improved rules) while keeping core interface logic stable enough to preserve repeatability and predictability.
The Outcome
This approach supports faster project cycles without forcing every commercial building into identical architecture, because variation is managed through approved options, data, and constraints rather than late exceptions and rework. Developers gain flexibility while maintaining cost and programme certainty, manufacturers get repeatability without losing project diversity, and architects retain meaningful input within a governed solution space that stays buildable.
So what?
The property sector needs MMC solutions that adapt to market conditions without giving up speed, quality, and predictability, which is why configuration-enabled platforms are increasingly positioned as a path to scalable, repeatable delivery. When variation is designed into the platform through clear rules, constraints, and approved variants, project teams can move faster while avoiding the downstream unravelling that happens when “standardised” systems lack built-in flexibility.
Exelsiv Insight
The lessons from this work continue to inform how Exelsiv helps organisations today. We apply the same principles:
Codifying rules and approved variants so teams can configure with confidence;
Embedding constraints and buildability checks early so decisions stay manufacturable and installable; and
Connecting design logic to real product data so automation produces outcomes that hold up in delivery.
The result is the same ambition: scalable MMC and kit-of-parts delivery that preserves speed and certainty without sacrificing meaningful project-level variation.
If your organisation is exploring how to make panelised MMC and kit-of-parts configuration part of its future, Exelsiv can help chart the path forward. Get in touch with us today.
