‘Start with ambition’: Why this housing exec thinks the time is right for factory-made homes

Years ago, I was involved in a construction project for a multi-unit residential building where wall and floor/ceiling panels were made in a factory and brought to the site to be assembled. Very similar to the article's picture where you see a whole room being lowered into place on a boom, except it was done face-by-face.

It was a major fiasco because of an error made by the architect regarding building code. Normally such an error would have been correctable without too much drama, but because of all the panels being made up it was really difficult to fix, and a lot of money way lost. The job went way long, into winter, which further lost money.

So my single experience, which may not be at all representative, is that these projects are intolerant to failure, error, deviation etc. If you could guarantee everyone will go perfectly, exactly the same each time, and no changes to plan then I think it's viable.

Never heard of such a project in any realm but they might invent it soon.

3 comments

I did a quick search on Peter Gilgan (CEO of Mattamy) to see if he's one of Drug Fraud's 'close friends' and can't find anything.
Hopefully this works out and doesn't turn into a Fraud fiasco.
- CEOs gotta CEO. I don't necessarily trust the solution just by virtue of the source type. Anyone with some real world knowledge have an analysis of the validity of the solution?
Years ago, I was involved in a construction project for a multi-unit residential building where wall and floor/ceiling panels were made in a factory and brought to the site to be assembled. Very similar to the article's picture where you see a whole room being lowered into place on a boom, except it was done face-by-face.
It was a major fiasco because of an error made by the architect regarding building code. Normally such an error would have been correctable without too much drama, but because of all the panels being made up it was really difficult to fix, and a lot of money way lost. The job went way long, into winter, which further lost money.
So my single experience, which may not be at all representative, is that these projects are intolerant to failure, error, deviation etc. If you could guarantee everyone will go perfectly, exactly the same each time, and no changes to plan then I think it's viable.
Never heard of such a project in any realm but they might invent it soon.