At yesterday’s National Housing Solutions Summit, key industry leaders tackled the pressing issue of productivity in housing, with a particular focus on the role of prefabrication in addressing labour shortages, cost efficiency and innovation challenges.
Prefabrication, while not a silver bullet, has become a major focus in the effort to improve efficiency in the industry.
Stuart Penklis CEO, Development – Residential, Commercial & Mixed Use Mirvac emphasised the need to streamline housing designs.
“We are very focused on standardising and optimising, and we have been on a journey for a long time around prefabrication.”
He also discussed the increasing shift toward volumetric prefabrication, which involves constructing entire sections of buildings off-site.
“What we’ve now moved towards is volumetric prefabs, and we’re running that on pilot projects, both through local production, but also via offshore production.
“I do think it does come down to the right designs. Standardising as much as we can, while still providing the customer with opportunity to customise. But ultimately, I think the opportunity for us starts in the middle ring.”
Mr Penklis noted that regulatory barriers remain an obstacle for the sector, noting the National Construction Code will need to evolve to allow this type of housing.
Woods Bagot CEO Sarah Kay underscored the financial and time-saving benefits of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA), a construction approach that minimises on-site variations and optimises prefabrication.
“The average variation increase in the cost of the project is 28 per cent built in the traditional methodology, but two per cent when built through DFMA,” she explained.
Ms Kay also pointed out the inefficiencies of traditional construction sequencing.
“There’s a lot of decisions that are being made on the site that should be made before you get to site. And so DFMA is the ultimate [solution to] getting those variations right down, and it’s much faster.”
She advocated for increased collaboration between builders and architects from the outset.
“If we just drew more, we would then be better at building. We should also build earlier. So if we were going to stop this sequential process that we do in construction, and actually overlapped things a little bit more, had more builders helping architects to draw and architects drawing more, that’s a big step towards off-site manufacturing and actually building more efficiently and productively on-site.”
Ms Kay also noted that Australian housing tends to be over-amenitized, making it less affordable.
“[Housing products] tend to be over-amenitized when compared to overseas products, and so there’s sort of this race to the top, as opposed to finding the most affordable way that you can produce housing.”
Professor Mathew Aitchison CEO of Building 4.0 CRC highlighted how delays in construction create a domino effect, ultimately leading to higher costs.
“So one delay sets off another delay sets up another delay, and that can obviously be offset by planning.”
From an innovation perspective, Prof Aitchison sees cost as the primary barrier preventing projects from getting off the ground.
“Projects are not stacking up. That’s why they’re not getting out of the ground. And to me, that kind of represents the Russian doll of issues. We’ve got this supply problem that’s actually a cost problem. I think, as Danielle Wood and her team have appropriately pointed out, that’s actually a productivity problem.
“And then I will go a little step further: right inside the middle of that little Russian doll is an innovation problem.”
Prof Aitchison further emphasised the need for structural changes in the industry to foster innovation.
“We’re really not good at innovating in this industry. I think we need a structural change to address that type of innovation.”
Looking at international examples, Prof Aitchison pointed out the success of prefabrication in other markets.
“A really fun fact is that manufactured housing now contributes 80 per cent of the USA’s affordable housing. So that’s a really big number when you take the size of the market in the US. In fact, around 80 to 85 per cent of detached housing in Sweden is made in a factory in a highly controlled setup.”
We would like to express our appreciation to our valued event partners, with a special acknowledgment to our Principal Sponsor, nbn, for their support of the Housing Summit. nbn’s commitment to connecting communities across the nation remains unparalleled, and their leadership plays a pivotal role in advancing the housing and infrastructure sectors.
We also extend our gratitude to our Major Sponsors: Harwood Andrews, Housing Choices Australia, Investa, Mirvac, Peddle Thorp, Stockland, and Urbis. Their generous contributions were instrumental in making this event a success. The continued support of these sponsors is vital to the ongoing development and transformation of the sector, and we thank them for their dedication and partnership in shaping the future of housing in Australia