When it comes to the housing crisis in Australia, much has been said about the potential for modular and prefab housing to assist.
Prefab and modular building involves constructing parts or entire structures off-site, typically in a factory. It is also sometimes called modern methods of construction or industrialised building or construction.
These components, ranging from walls and beams to larger modules like pods, are then transported to the construction site. Even entire buildings, such as tiny houses, can be delivered in one piece.
And it is a process that is piquing the interest of governments.
In March this year, Building Ministers across the country agreed to work together to cut red tape and enable further expansion and growth in Australia’s prefabricated and modular construction industry.
As a result, The Australian Building Codes Board, which writes Australia’s National Construction Code, will now work with industry bodies and jurisdictions to reduce barriers to adopting prefabricated and modular construction.
Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said prefab and modular housing can build more quality homes quickly.
“We need to pull every lever to help use advanced manufacturing to support the rollout of these homes.”
In its Budget last month, the Queensland Government committed funding to support up to 600 new modular homes.
QLD Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said to build more homes, faster “we’re utilising our public builder QBuild and Queensland businesses to deliver hundreds more modular homes”.
In WA, the government is planning on using prefabricated tiny homes to boost WA’s social housing stock in a $1 million pilot project.
“Our Government is utilising a number of alternative construction methods to deliver more social housing across the State, including our modular build program, timber frame, prefabrication and steel frame construction,” WA Housing Minister John Carey said.
The NSW Government has also recently invested $10 million in a Modular Housing Trial to deliver faster quality social housing. Victoria also has a $10.1 million project to build more social housing modular homes as part of the government’s Big Housing Build.
Professor Mathew Aitchison, who serves as the CEO of Building 4.0 CRC, a research initiative co-funded by the Australian Government aimed at discovering improved and more sustainable construction methods, said the concept of modular or prefabricated housing is not new.
“Australia has been doing prefab on and off since the mid-19th century,” he said. “It crops up cyclically, because it solves particular needs at particular time.
“But somehow, the knowledge and memory falls away.
“Knowledge and memory of what happened in the past is definitely one of the barriers [to wider adoption], because if you don’t have knowledge and memory of what happened last time, you are probably more inclined to make some of the same mistakes that were previously made.”
The lack of data into the field can also mystify the impact the industry has.
“We need to start capturing more data to understand this part of the industry better,” Professor Aitchison said.
“We actually don’t know how much of this constitutes the current industry. There’s guesses out there, which are between three and five cent of building in Australia.”
Professor Aitchison acknowledged the increasing interest in modular housing from governments, industry bodies and the public but cautioned against viewing it as a panacea for the housing crisis.
“It is another tool in the tool bag… It can play a role, and governments are right to explore it. But it is by no means a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” he emphasised.
“It should be part of the mix. It’s very appropriate for certain uses, it’s perhaps less appropriate for others.”
Property Council Chief Executive Mike Zorbas said prefab and modular housing should form a larger part of our housing mix.
“Amidst rising taxes and construction, land, planning and capital costs, we are starting to see some of the stronger Planning Ministers improve their planning systems and argue for a government bias towards greater project investment and greater use of modular and prefabricated housing.
“Although challenging and requiring large-scale production, green shoots of industrialised construction can be seen around the country.
“We need to invest in innovation and establish secure demand pipelines to scale up industrialised construction.”
To ensure the sector’s success Professor Aitchison said time and investment were paramount.
“This stuff doesn’t happen quickly… it takes time to develop them. So what happens is, we reach for that prefab lever, but to really get that cranking, it takes time, can take anywhere between five and 10 years,” he explained.
“We really need to be investing consistently in this over the last five years for it to be providing the benefit that that we want to see today.”
Building 4.0 CRC recently hosted an Innovation Showcase which featured innovations from 24 exhibitors including a bricklaying robot, a prefab demonstrator pod, a modular retrofit facade to reduce energy consumption and a two-bedroom rapid deployment home installed at the Monash University Caulfield Campus.
“One of the main things we were at pains to show in that in that showcase was that it’s really important to build things in our industry if we’re trying to innovate,” Professor Aitchison said.
“It was a great day… and I think a lot of people went away hatching new ideas about what they could work on next.”
