Opening our minds to modular

Once a cheap construction method, modular is evolving to meet the needs of tight schedules, constrained sites and planning uncertainties, says the Property Council’s executive director Sally Capp.

Capp, who leads the Property Council’s team in Victoria, is heading up an industry leaders panel at the prefabAUS 2017 conference in Melbourne today.

She says it’s “staggering” that modular construction accounts for a fraction of the market.

“In an industry looking to improve efficiencies, maintain quality, accelerate timelines and cut costs, not to mention reduce our resource consumption, modular construction just makes sense.”

A range of disparate drivers are beginning to converge, Capp says, including population growth, housing affordability, sustainability imperatives and technological disruption.

“As we tackle these issues, we’ll have to reframe the way we think about modular.”

Australia’s modular story stretches back to the Corio Villa in Geelong, a cast-iron building fabricated in Glasgow, shipped across oceans and assembled in Australia in the 18s.

Where once it was considered a low-cost solution, modular has evolved considerably in recent years, culminating in Lendlease’s recent foray into prefabrication with the world’s tallest timber high rise residential building, Forté in Melbourne, and its commercial counterpart, International House in Sydney.

“Timber projects like Forté and International House have really made people look at modular construction in a new way. At the same time, technological disruptions like building information modelling are enabling precision engineering and quality mass-customisation,” Capp adds.

 

An emerging export story

The University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Tuan Ngo says prefabricated construction creates advanced manufacturing opportunities in Australia that would be competitive on a global scale.

A research director with the ARC Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing, Ngo says prefabrication is “strategically important” to Australia’s economy.

“Prefabricated construction requires new thinking, new ideas and new technology thereby creating fertile ground for new intellectual property,” Ngo says.

The centre, which has attracted funding of $6 million over four years, is focused on several research projects that examine advanced building systems and assembly, innovative materials and the end user-experience in modular buildings, as well as supply chain and financing barriers.

“At present, prefabricated construction has a stigma attached to it that is associated with cheap building solutions such as temporary classrooms in schools,” Ngo says.

“Modern prefabricated construction is vastly different in that it transforms construction into a high-quality premium product fabricated in a controlled environment.”

Ngo says prefabrication has the potential to create a pathway for employment, absorbing workers from declining sectors, such as manufacturing, while also contributing to Australia’s exports.

While Australia’s construction industry has been relatively slow to embrace modular construction, Ngo says the economy “can no longer sustain the high-cost, low-productivity model of conventional construction”.

“If the Australian construction industry does not service the demand for more affordable and high-quality housing through advanced manufacturing, then the demand will be serviced through imports from the global market.”

The change in mindset required to move to modular requires some radical rethinks to design and the use of materials, as well as appropriate factory facilities, new models for finance and supply chain management.

Encouraging the uptake of prefabricated construction demands a “multi-faceted” approach, Ngo says, including “extensive collaboration, innovation and education”.

 

Modular marvels

Christiana Colquhoun is the general manager of Prebuilt, a Melbourne-based company delivering architecturally-designed prefabricated residential and commercial buildings around Australia. She wants the industry to move away from seeing modular as a low-cost option.

“Modular was once seen as choosing a cheap solution. It’s not that anymore. It’s about choosing a resolved solution,” she says.

“In Prebuilt’s case, we aren’t trying to compete on price. We are about delivering the level of quality that comes from a highly-controlled environment. And we’re about efficiency, safety and minimising disruption.”

Much of Prebuilt’s work in the commercial space is focused on projects with compressed schedules. Her team has a growing list of schools on its books, for example.

“Modular construction is not new to the playground, and most Australians have some memory of learning their lessons in a ‘demountable’ classroom. These classrooms have traditionally been very poor-quality accommodation, but the driver behind them was making sure that building doesn’t disrupt the playground,” Colquhoun says.

The two-storey learning centre for Caulfield Grammar, designed by Hayball, took four months to construct in the factory, and just six weeks to erect on site.

“Building in a factory means no weather constraints, so you can build a lot faster, and the conditions are a lot safer – both for the construction team and the people who live, work or learn near the site,” she says.

Prebuilt has constructed eight railway stations as part of the Victorian Government’s rail infrastructure investment. Modular construction was used to meet a fast-tracked timeline while minimising disruption.

“We can prepare the railway station in advance and have it craned in literally overnight,” Colquhoun says.

Similarly, Prebuilt constructed 11 McDonalds restaurants while planning approval was still being obtained.

“As soon as they got the green light, the buildings went in.”

Prebuilt also delivers display suites, and Colquhoun points to one designed for Lendlease at Toorak Park in Melbourne.

“After the project had finished, it came back to our factory, was refitted and then moved to Waterbank in Perth. And no doubt it will have another life after Waterbank.”

Colquhoun says the two biggest challenges to the widespread adoption of prefabrication are perception and financing.

“Some stuff coming out of China has been dreadful. That hasn’t helped people get their heads around modular.

“And the banks need to get their heads around it too. They don’t like to finance anything until the work is happening on site, which doesn’t work well when most of the work occurs in a factory.”

While there are undeniably barriers, Sally Capp says the industry is well positioned to seize the advantages.

“And as our cities grow, we need to embrace construction methods that are efficient, high quality and minimise disruption, while building skills and export opportunities.

“In a world where automation and robotics will drive new levels of efficiencies, Australia has an opportunity to be a world leader in prefabrication, and to export our skills and resources globally. This is an opportunity too big to ignore.”