A Perth site laid out for 16 homes can take 20 once the houses are designed for a factory rather than a bricklayer, and OFFSITE makes them that way at Welshpool. That is according to Norm Roberts, the prefabricator’s executive chairman, who will make that case on the affordable housing panel at WoodSolutions Built Evolution at Crown Perth on 16 September.
“Developers don’t buy square metres of framing; they buy project outcomes,” Roberts said, with OFFSITE’s designers and engineers working the block alongside the developer from the first drawing rather than fitting a factory frame to a finished plan. He argues that “if a site that traditionally delivers 16 dwellings can be redesigned to support 20 dwellings while simultaneously reducing programme risk and shortening delivery timeframes, the economics change dramatically”.
The extra lots pay for the change before the speed does, he says, because a developer paying interest on the land every month gets four more homes to sell, a shorter programme, and a frame that is not waiting on rain, a missing subcontractor, or a tight site. “Many developers are no longer asking whether offsite construction works. They’re asking how quickly they can incorporate it into their projects,” he said.
OFFSITE moved out of Kewdale and into 11,000 square metres at Welshpool in April last year, less than two years after Roberts and Clarinda Ho, its chief strategy and operating officer, assembled a consortium of Western Australian shareholders to buy a business that had made concrete formwork since 2009.
Two HOMAG Weinmann lines bought from a Geelong operation joined the 2014 line the company had shipped out of Russia, a Hundegger Speed Cut 480 saw followed from Germany, and OFFSITE now rates the $30 million plant at more than 2,500 dwellings a year.
OFFSITE holds 15 standard house, townhouse, and medium-density designs in its library, drawn for the lots most common across Western Australia, so a developer can start with one already engineered for the factory and the truck and change what the block or the council needs, rather than paying for a new design each time. “Speed doesn’t start on the factory floor. It starts at the design stage,” Roberts said.
Roberts also addresses the objection that timber-framed homes invite condensation inside the walls, and argues that the problem stems from poor design, detailing, or installation, not the timber, and that vapour control layers, ventilation, thermal breaks, and airtightness address it. “Good building performance isn’t determined by the material. It’s determined by design, detailing and execution,” he said.
Roberts counts Perth 75,000 homes short of demand, a gap its trades cannot close on their own, and his answer is a factory that does not wait on them: OFFSITE stood 17 two-storey townhouses on one site in 45 days, two a week, before the builder moved in to finish them. “The housing shortage won’t be solved simply by asking trades to work harder. It will be solved by making housing delivery more productive,” he said.
Housing Minister John Carey opens the day at Crown Perth
Timber Insight chief executive Craig Oatway moderates the panel after Carey’s opening address, with Roberts sitting alongside the Housing Industry Association’s Michael McGowan, Keystart’s Liam Loan-Lack, and the Australian Apartment Advocacy’s Sam Reece on the role of modern methods of construction in affordable housing. Oatway described Roberts as “representing the pointy end of delivery” when the line-up was announced last month.
“The question is no longer whether housing construction will industrialise. The question is who is prepared to take advantage of the opportunity first,” Roberts said.
- Please note: WoodSolutions Built Evolution runs Wednesday 16 September at Crown Perth; tickets are available here.
