THE [PREFAB] HOME FRONT
WHILE LOW-RISE PREFABRICATED HOMES HAVE EXPERIENCED SLOWER UPTAKE THAN OTHER SECTORS OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTRUCTION MARKET, ACADEMIC RESEARCH AND THE WORK OF A NUMBER OF BOLD TRAIL-BLAZERS SUGGEST DOMESTIC PREFAB LOOKS SET TO GAIN SIGNIFICANT GROUND UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS. BELINDA SMART REPORTS.
To date, the low-rise housing sector in Australia has been a relatively late adopter of prefab methodologies compared to more developed overseas housing markets, such as Germany for example, and to Australia’s own mid- and high-rise construction sectors.
Yet with housing demand continuing to rise, labour costs burgeoning and other issues such as sustainability and the need for waste reduction continuing to influence the construction market, it seems pertinent, if not pressing, to ask why.
A Queensland University of Technology paper titled ‘What’s driving the uptake of prefabricated housing in Australia?’ authored in 2013 by Dale Steinhardt, Karen Manley, and Wendy Miller, makes serious strides towards answering this question.
The paper presents the qualitative element of a wider project investigating the barriers and drivers to the uptake of prefabrication in the Australian house-building industry, and provides an interesting snapshot of industry and consumer responses to prefabricated homes.
Significantly, it opens its investigation by noting that prefabrication has been promoted in the Australian Construction Vision 2020 as one of the eight key ‘visions’ to improving the efficiency and performance of the Australian construction sector.
Clearly housing should play a role in that vision, so what are the factors that have slowed its progress?
The paper’s findings are too complex to cover in depth here, but highlights paint a picture. From geographic location (at the time of the paper’s publication, the market in WA noted a strong bias towards brick homes, representing a very localised challenge to the idea of prefab) to perceptions of prefab as being “cheap” and hard to maintain, to the challenges faced by small start-up companies in selling their offerings to the wider market, numerous reasons for prefab homes’ relatively slow market penetration were outlined. Importantly, lack of a strong demand and preference from consumers was a key finding. Clearly perception is everything; among other things, a strong historical link between ‘transportable houses’ and their use as low cost, temporary accommodation has swayed end-users’ emotional response to prefab housing in some quarters. Offsetting these arguments, the paper also pointed to prefab’s many advantages, from the higher insulation and energy performance of most prefabricated products, to the efficiencies and speed of using factory-based construction methods.
Talking to businesses that have entered the prefab housing fray, it seems many are successfully managing to leverage those advantages, while also using lessons learned to refine their prefab strategies. One such business is Sekisui House. The NSW based company has a long history, dating back to 1960s Japan, an era marked by massive demand for volume housing that also required high tolerances to severe seasonal weather conditions and natural disasters. As a result Sekisui House offers a range of propriety and relatively fail-safe systems, ranging from light and heavy gauge steel to a unique laminated timber and metal joint system known as Shawood. The company recently developed the infrastructure to deliver Shawood in Australia, in NSW, where The Hermitage, a master planned community in Gledswood Hills, NSW, is arguably this country’s most compelling showcase of the company’s offering. Craig D’Costa, General Manager for Shawood and The Hermitage, confirms that Shawood in Australia has been fine-tuned to respond to local market requirements. Key advantages to customers include structural frame components that are prefabricated in a strict quality controlled environment, delivering production tolerances of only 0.5mm and 3mm on-site. Shawood also features nano-hydrophilic main exterior walls that repel dirt, grime and heat. Inside, interiors are uniquely designed, many with vaulted and dual height ceilings, capitalising on the Shawood’s ability to span over six metres without the need for expensive steel beams and structural posts.
“With albeit a boutique volume delivered to date, Sekisui House is very excited by the feedback received thus far and are well on track to doubling its production of Shawood homes to over 100 in 2017,” D’Costa confirms.
He believes the future of prefab housing is promising. “The clear benefits of quality control, logistics, duration of construction and so many other attributes of prefabrication will naturally open up areas where normal construction methodology would not be commercially viable.”
WA based company Express Two Storey Living, agrees that pre-fab offers unique opportunities for residential projects. The company, which specialises in price attainable two storey homes, has reaped the benefits of pre-fab elements, namely the Tecbeam Cassette Flooring System, to deliver homes more cost effectively and sustainably.
This is a moot commercial point in the WA market, where a traditional bias towards brick homes with suspended concrete floors has meant new housing in WA is among Australia’s most expensive. Express is reaping the rewards of using what it says is the sturdiest timber structural system in the market, Tecbeam joists, and then saving construction costs further by building with prefabricated cassettes. Tecbeam is a composite I-beam made up of LVL flanges fastened to a sheet metal web. It’s lighter than reinforced concrete, allowing mobile cranes the ability to erect the structure, which results in a faster build process and design flexibility. The system also offers the feel of a concrete floor in terms of stiffness, rigidity and strength. Express Construction Manager Steve Martin comments: “In addition by using pre-fabricated flooring elements that are made offsite under factory conditions, we can be confident in a high level of quality and consistency. Using this product also means we’re more sustainable as there’s less waste on site and the time taken building each home is greatly reduced as there’s no need to wait long periods for concrete flooring to cure.”
“The clear benefits of quality control, logistics, duration of construction and so many other attributes of prefabrication will naturally open up areas where normal construction methodology would not be commercially viable, for example remote locations, confined or constrained building sites and demand for scalable volume.” Craig D’Costa – Sekisui House
“We like to be able to deliver our homes to clients with minimal wait times. Every day a house is sitting under construction is costing the client money, so the faster we can deliver each home the better. Products like Tecbeam enable us to do that.”
Finding this kind of ‘sweet spot’ in terms of the right prefab product has led some companies to create proprietary materials. David Haller is National Operations Manager – Masterplanned Communities for developer Mirvac and confirms Mirvac’s commitment to operational efficiency has led the Masterplanned Communities division into creating its own prefabricated construction methodology.
“Utilising an existing relationship with CSR, we developed a concept called Velocity, the offsite manufacturing and prefabrication of engineered wall and floor elements using traditional building materials like timber frame, plasterboard and masonry product Hebel as an external cladding, all assembled off site and delivered to site for installation.” Mirvac recently completed over 80 homes at its Brighton Lakes Project in Moorebank in Sydney with what Haller describes as impressive results. The company is currently working on a further 200 homes to be built with this methodology in the next 12 months.
As with any new direction, Mirvac has learned from its experience. One learning in particular relates design with cost viability. In other words, a prefabricated methodology is most viable with a simple design.
“Our recently completed stage at the Brighton Lakes project contained fairly complex designs with multiple façade treatments, multiple materials and on a site that was fairly undulating in topography,” Haller explains. “Unfortunately this did not provide the optimum cost viability. Our next opportunity to utilise prefabrication for housing will be far more suitable as we have spent considerable time on the designs, ensuring they are more suitable for prefabrication based on our lessons learnt.”
For larger lot master planned communities, it will take some time for the cost viability to make prefabrication suitable, he says. “However, I feel that with an increase to higher density projects being required due to population growth, local government re-zoning and a change to the timber code [restrictions on wooden buildings were lifted on 1 May when the National Construction Code introduced an approval regime for timber buildings up to eight storeys high, as long as they meet certain requirements], prefabrication will continue to become a highly sought after opportunity for delivery of homes in Australia.” Shane Strong is Business Development Manager at NSW based company Strongbuild, whose offering encompasses classic Australian style homes, custom homes in any architectural style and community building for developers and retirement village operators. He says there’s a strong appetite for prefab products in the residential sector as more and more clients are looking to leverage off the benefits they provide for their projects and the certainty that can be delivered.
A key current focus for Strongbuild in the residential market is on 9.5 star houses for high end builders. Around 18 months ago Strongbuild built a pilot home, which it believes is a NSW first 9.5 Star Energy rated home. “For us, this was about testing different products and systems to rate their effectiveness before offering them to our clients.”
Strongbuild is also working on creating price accessible prefab products. Strong notes marked growth of prefab or modular companies in the market currently but adds that many of their products are more expensive than conventional construction methods. Instead, these companies are offering savings to their clients through reduced holding costs resulting from prefab’s faster building process.
With a view to reducing the cost of products themselves, Strongbuild is currently converting a Bunnings Warehouse into a production line for wall panels with integrated windows.
“We like to be able to deliver our homes to clients with minimal wait times. Every day a house is sitting under construction is costing the client money, so the faster we can deliver each home the better.” Steve Martin Express Two Storey Living
“We will be panelising building elements in our new state of the art, highly automated, 8,000 sqm streamlined building facility. Floors, walls, roofs, modules and joinery components are manufactured and pre-finished in the factory, then transported to site for streamlined construction. Panelising product in a controlled environment gives the company more control over price, quality and timing, with the entire design and build process completed in-house.”
In another project, the company is also working with Bunnings to help potentially deliver floor cassettes, using the Pryda system. “Our Streamlined Building systems incorporate floor cassettes that are built in our factory. There are different methods and products that can be used to achieve this and we are currently working through the most efficient and effective way of delivering these for upcoming projects.”
Strongbuild also has an exclusive partnership with Austrian company Binderholz, a leading global producer of Glulam and CLT, through which Strongbuild is able to provide CLT structures to the market.
From the architect’s perspective, Caroline Pidcock of Sydney based practice Pidcock Architecture is a strong advocate of offsite thinking. “While Australia has lagged many parts of the world in this area, we are in rapid catch up mode now.”
Pidcock is so committed to prefab and to removing some of these hurdles that she has spent the last 10 years collaborating with her uncle, a builder, on the development of a proprietary flatpack system called &U, which is currently a work in progress.
“We’re also currently pursuing a design approach for affordable housing in the west of Sydney that includes CLT as the base building material.”
“We are looking at options for cladding the CLT in a cost and time effective way. [CLT specialist] XLam is providing great advice and assistance in this, with an aim to grow the market for CLT in Australia. The ability to use sustainably grown and harvested timber in such an effective way is very exciting.”
Pidcock says she’s “incredibly optimistic” about the sector’s future.
“Factors such as the changing nature of the workforce and accessibility issues for much of Australia provide a perfect ecosystem for such an approach to building. Additionally, I think some of the most innovative and interesting people in the industry are actively involved in the area and will collectively help solve the problems currently being encountered. It is a truly exciting place to be.”
Philip Alviano is Sustainable Building Advisor at the Master Builders Association Of Victoria. He concurs with this view, while adding that change is necessary.
“For example, the type of person and qualifications required by the prefabricated construction industry is someone with a blend of manufacturing and construction skill sets. This will require existing workers in manufacturing to increase their knowledge of construction processes and skills while those in construction would benefit from greater familiarity with manufacturing skills and processes.”
“The growth opportunity for the prefab sector is increasing substantially and new initiatives from companies such as CSR and Xlam indicate a growing demand from the larger industry.”■
