We could address the staff shortage through factory built housing

Rather than spend €4 billion bribing developers should we spend €1 billion building a factory that can churn out high quality, high efficiency, environmentally friendly homes? We could start supplying them to local authorities and using State owned land. We could then take orders from the existing building companies for their needs.
Getting the supply-chain set up would be the biggest challenge but the non-construction related private sector is really good at that stuff.
If we don't want it to be a semi-State then provide the VC funding for one of the big American or Mainland players to set up here.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
We should be looking at attracting a modular house factory to Ireland rather than even more IT companies.

Brendan
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The problem is getting the supply-chain in place. It's a massive undertaking. I'm sure people like Kingspan could supply large elements of the wall units but given the fat, inefficient and dysfunctional nature of the construction sector I think it would be a major challenge. That doesn't mean it's aa bad idea but there's a considerable investment required.

We could approach some of the big US and Mainland EU suppliers and ask them to quote for 20,000 units a year for the next 10 years. I think we'd get a good price.
 
Purple said:
The problem is getting the supply-chain in place. It's a massive undertaking. I'm sure people like Kingspan could supply large elements of the wall units but given the fat, inefficient and dysfunctional nature of the construction sector I think it would be a major challenge. That doesn't mean it's aa bad idea but there's a considerable investment required.

We could approach some of the big US and Mainland EU suppliers and ask them to quote for 20,000 units a year for the next 10 years. I think we'd get a good price.
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Buying it in makes more sense to me than trying to build factories. Keep it simple. There are plenty of other manufacturing sectors that Ireland is 'good at'.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
A good article here

www.build-review.com

Are Modular Homes the Answer to the UK’s Housing Crisis? - BUILD Magazine

Did you know that the current housing shortage means that the UK needs to be building 240,000 – 300,000 homes annually until 2025? Despite this, the
www.build-review.com www.build-review.com

Why Modular Housing Could be the Answer

But modular housing could be the perfect solution to the housing crisis for four reasons:

  1. Modular homes are more affordable as they take less time to build, and therefore making it easier to produce more in the same time as a more traditional built. For example, a modular home can be built in 2 days whereas the average traditional build takes 32 weeks.
  2. Unskilled workers can also be hired – As modular homes are manufactured on a production line, it’s easier to train staff which will help overcome the current declining workforce in construction.
  3. Poor weather can’t hamper construction – Again, because modular homes are manufactured in factories, the number of days that construction can’t take place will be reduced.
  4. They’re cheaper than traditional builds – Prices start at £25,000 which is 11% of the cost of the UK’s average house price.
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I'm always wary when an article doesn't discuss any downsides. What, if any, are the downsides when comparing modular homes to traditional block built homes?
 
Purple said:
The problem is getting the supply-chain in place. It's a massive undertaking. I'm sure people like Kingspan could supply large elements of the wall units but given the fat, inefficient and dysfunctional nature of the construction sector I think it would be a major challenge.
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Isn't that why it has been done before because it's a "massive undertaking" you would need a monster factory, probably a quarry and a cement factory on site. Then the issue of roads not being wide enough to transport these large components. In the US there are wide straight roads and its a huge country with a large market. It's a very big risk for anyone in Ireland by the time you would have it all in place you would just be in time for the next recession. Remember our whole construction industry collapsed in 2008, one of the worst construction recessions in the world.
The high tech companies like Apple or Amazon wouldn't touch it with a barge pole , sure they even baulked at manufacturing electric cars because it too high risk , and not profitable enough for the risk.
 
Buying them in does make more sense.

But it could be worth looking at a manufacturing unit in Ireland in the long-term.

One of the problems in Ireland is boom and bust. We train lots of construction workers for the boom and they end up unemployed and emigrating for the busts. A factory could remove some of that volatility. It's easier to ramp up or turn down productions as required.

But we are running before we are walking. The first step would be to get the idea of modular housing acceptable to government and the planning authorities.

Brendan
 
joe sod said:
Isn't that why it has been done before because it's a "massive undertaking" you would need a monster factory, probably a quarry and a cement factory on site. Then the issue of roads not being wide enough to transport these large components. In the US there are wide straight roads and its a huge country with a large market. It's a very big risk for anyone in Ireland by the time you would have it all in place you would just be in time for the next recession. Remember our whole construction industry collapsed in 2008, one of the worst construction recessions in the world.
The high tech companies like Apple or Amazon wouldn't touch it with a barge pole , sure they even baulked at manufacturing electric cars because it too high risk , and not profitable enough for the risk.
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Yep, but the domestic house building industry here hasn't changed since the Second World War. Construction is by far the biggest industry in the world and it is staggeringly inefficient. It's also the biggest polluter. Apple or Amazon mightn't touch it but someone like Tesla might.

gives a good overview of the issues the sector faces.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I forgot about the Rohfab houses

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They seem to require a fair bit of work now.

Brendan
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I grew up in one of those. They were no worse than the hollow block walled houses that were common at the time, just cheaper. Full cavity walls appeared here first in the mid-'60s, with partial fill cavities starting in the late '70s
 
Brendan Burgess said:
One of the problems in Ireland is boom and bust. We train lots of construction workers for the boom and they end up unemployed and emigrating for the busts. A factory could remove some of that volatility. It's easier to ramp up or turn down productions as required.
Click to expand...
But is that not the precise reason why nobody would bother setting up a house factory ? the massive initial capital investment, therefore you need a constant demand, you cannot afford to turn down production during a bust. A building contractor can afford to turn everything back down again or move to another country, it's easy move a few machines and tools not a whole factory.
All of our big construction companies were set up decades ago, Murphy, Sisk, Paul etc more disappeared in the 2008 recession. In fact I would say there is much less innovation and capital investment now in Irish construction than ever. Maybe we need to look at our dependence on foreign direct investment and the relatively easy money to be made facilitating those rather than the risk and work involved in setting up a new construction company or "house factory"
 
all these examples seemed to be aimed at dropping a one-off dwelling into an empty site.
We need estates and apartment buildings that require a lot of underlying infrastructure - anyone have an example of this being done with modular construction?
 
joe sod said:
All of our big construction companies were set up decades ago, Murphy, Sisk, Paul etc more disappeared in the 2008 recession. In fact I would say there is much less innovation and capital investment now in Irish construction than ever.
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I agree with you. We are in a far worse position to address our housing needs than we were 20 years ago.
 
shweeney said:
all these examples seemed to be aimed at dropping a one-off dwelling into an empty site.
We need estates and apartment buildings that require a lot of underlying infrastructure - anyone have an example of this being done with modular construction?
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No, they are best suited to mass production of a small number of base models which are easily customised.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
But we are running before we are walking. The first step would be to get the idea of modular housing acceptable to government and the planning authorities.
Click to expand...

shweeney said:
all these examples seemed to be aimed at dropping a one-off dwelling into an empty site.
We need estates and apartment buildings that require a lot of underlying infrastructure - anyone have an example of this being done with modular construction?
Click to expand...

There are already modular houses being built in Ireland, both one-off houses and housing estates. Here's one manufacturer, who even built social housing: https://mhi.ie/case-studies/

They appear to have capacity to build 500 per year.

Changes in building regulations are required before some of these methods can be used for Apartments here, although timber framed construction is used throughout Europe.
 
RedOnion said:
There are already modular houses being built in Ireland, both one-off houses and housing estates. Here's one manufacturer, who even built social housing: https://mhi.ie/case-studies/
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Beautiful houses and a really nice website. That is exactly what is needed. More please.
50% faster construction time with only 4 weeks needed on-site. How do we scale up that side of the sector?
 
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