How Laing O’Rourke is redefining possibility  

At Laing O’Rourke, we are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. This is driven by a relentless curiosity to challenge convention and a deep-rooted commitment to improving the lives of the communities we serve. Guided by our founder’s vision, we have always refused to accept the limits of traditional construction.

This thinking has seen us grow to become a global engineering and manufacturing-led construction leader with a culture built on passion, purpose, and a legacy of excellence stretching back over 150 years. As our business has expanded, we have diversified into new markets, recognising opportunities where our capabilities can deliver value across a range of sectors. This has resulted in a portfolio that includes some of the world’s most iconic infrastructure, like the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, Sydney’s Central Station Metro, and Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.  

From our earliest days, we have consistently challenged ourselves to simplify complex challenges and raise the bar. As a pioneer of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and early adopter of purposeful technologies, we deliver projects faster, safer, greener, and to a higher standard. 

Delivering Certainty Through Innovation

While adoption of MMC is becoming more common across the industry, it is not a new concept to us. We have been a pioneer of MMC, including offsite manufacturing, globally for over 15 years.

At the heart of our pioneering approach is our Centre of Excellence for Modern Construction in the UK. Here, we harness offsite manufacturing to improve safety and product quality, reduce waste, enhance sustainability outcomes, and attract a broader cross-section of people to our business. 

This transformative approach is built on an aspiration for 70% of construction to be taken off site, to achieve a 60% improvement in resourcing efficiency and a 30% reduction in project schedule. It also focuses on finding the right balance between efficiency and productivity, helping us to reshape the future of construction by creating a more resilient, diverse, and digitally skilled workforce.

Our industry is faced with major capacity and skills shortage challenges, compounded by the fact that the workforce is ageing, and that there are still limited opportunities for marginalised demographics to participate due to the prevailing conditions in our industry.

An offsite factory provides opportunities for automation, which means safer and less intensive work, more flexible working patterns and more consistent hours. This approach is better for our people, and means we can make safer, more effective use of resources. Instead of having four people bending, lifting, and fixing a single bar of reinforced steel in high-risk construction environments, we have a single person operating a robotic arm in a factory setting, moving multiple bars at a time.

We are also changing the assumption you need to be physically strong to work in our industry, by creating new opportunities for a broader cross-section of the labour market. Using robotic technology to assist in heavy lifting is an example of how we can open opportunities for people who would not traditionally deliver this type of work. 

Beyond the wellbeing of our people, offsite factory construction methodology creates more reliable and consistent outcomes for our clients and enables us to produce better quality products and greater reliability in meeting program requirements. We have brought this to life on several major projects in the UK, including the Grange Hospital, Manchester Airport Transformation Programme, Everton Stadium and Hinkley Point C.

On the Everton Stadium, our Explore Manufacturing facility manufactured 564 twin walls, 651 columns, and 3,844 lattice planks off-site, delivering each component to site at the precise moment required for installation into position. As a result, we saved time against schedule and provided certainty of outcome to our client Everton Football Club. 

Similarly, in Australia, on one of our most iconic projects, Sydney’s Central Station Metro, we transformed the station’s Northern Concourse using an MMC approach to construct the roof canopy. The roof was built three times: once virtually, a second time offsite at a precast facility at Kurri- Kurri in the Hunter Valley, and for the final time at Central Station. This approach led to the final installation being streamlined – it was completed in just three weekend possessions of 48-hour periods and short night work sessions of 3-hour periods.

Designing in sustainability 

There are also major sustainability benefits that can be realised using MMC. Less on-site activity means reduced pollution and noise risks, and shorter construction periods reduce environmental disruption and energy consumption on-site. Controlled factory environments optimise energy use and reduce emissions from transport and machinery, and a digitally led approach enables sustainable outcomes to be more easily designed in. An example of this is the use of low carbon concrete. Across our UK operations, we have been able to mandate the use of low carbon concrete, resulting in a 15.5% reduction in emissions from concrete.

Innovation is in our DNA

Our bold ambition to be a force for positive change in construction and to continually push the boundaries of what’s possible, spans beyond MMC. We embrace purposeful technologies that help keep our people safe and improve work practices across the industry.

Our Technology & Innovation Groups in each of our operating regions use an open innovation approach, collaborating with suppliers, universities, and industry groups to adapt and scale new solutions. In Australia, this has led to strategic partnerships with SiteHive for real-time environmental monitoring, the rollout of Blindsight (Toolbox Spotter’s next evolution), and BuiltView, our in-house digital site capture tool. These tools have been readily adopted by industry and are already contributing to shifts in accepted ways of working.

Our industry may be one of the last to face radical disruption by technology, but the shift is already underway, particularly with the acceleration in the use of AI. AI is no longer just a buzzword; it is fundamentally reshaping how we operate, driving rapid transformation and unlocking new levels of efficiency across our projects. Importantly, Laing O’Rourke recognises that AI is best used when it is harnessed by the knowledge and experience of our people. 

One of our most exciting developments in this space is Akordi, an AI-powered decision intelligence service. Akordi empowers project leaders to tackle complex decisions on capital projects. It combines deep construction expertise with proprietary AI to deliver predictive analytics, risk and opportunity intelligence, schedule optimisation, and enhanced constructability. It is already revolutionising how we navigate complexity, improving speed and certainty, while bringing clarity and confidence to every stage of delivery.

At Laing O’Rourke we aren’t just building structures; we are transforming the way infrastructure is engineered and delivered, continuing to redefine what’s possible in construction.