Procure building faster, better and cheaper
Michael Worth
Delivering value by improving business sustainability. Born at 320ppm CO2
In the prior post we dealt with imaginary limits to funding. In this one we’ll deal with perceived limits to the number of houses we can build.
The way we build now is too large, too bespoke and too slow. Residential building in New Zealand is literally a cottage industry. Despite the ads on TV, group home builders are a small section of the market. Most are built, one or a few at a time, by an army of builders using techniques and methods that people from several centuries ago would recognise. Sure, we have a few lasers for levels and some nifty CAD, but as McKinsey pointed out in a great report a couple of years ago, construction around the world is a “sector of two halves”. Prime contractors and the like have massively invested in high tech systems but rely on an army of people in vans who haven’t.
We want a way to build faster, better and cheaper? We want methods proven at scale in other countries over the last few decades. We want a selection of suppliers who have automation and solutions you can buy off the shelf. We could have plug and play production of buildings, building components and sub-assemblies at scale within months.
NZ has done this twice before – in the 1930s and 1950s.
What if we built the capacity here in NZ, using NZ materials to build components, sub-assemblies and houses at pace? We’d need some forestry, perhaps lightweight steel (NZ has at least one world leader in this technology), modern wood technology like X-Lam. These could be sited around the country for speed and resiliency and provide local employment. We’d probably need some larger assembly locations to bring the pieces together efficiently, and a series of local workforces to assemble the pieces at the site. The good news is we have most of these things and can rapidly build the rest.
The production capacity would not just be limited to the use of the government agencies currently building accommodation at rates that are already well above what they have done before, but still well short of what we need. No, I am talking about producing enough components, assemblies and houses for all of the government sector, community housing providers, cooperatives, iwi organisations and the existing private suppliers. There are a number of innovative ways where we can match components with labour, collectivism with industrial production. Things like, full spectrum offsite construction at scale (modular, cartridge, cassette, flat panel, pod, custom, complete etc), combined with community innovation such as baugruppen and half-house.
So, we’ve done it before, there’s plenty of solutions, we have most of the bits, there are case studies and people that could come here and rapidly help us put in the rest of the capability.
OK, so we have the funds, methods and knowhow, but what about the people to do all this? I am glad you asked that, we’ll get to it in the next article...
References
Google search “prefabrication NZ” and see how many suppliers we have already in NZ
Search up prefab Japan or Sweden
Value Chain
4 年Just read the series Michael, interesting, well researched and thought provoking read, thanks!