The pick-and-mix home that could cut costs and get built faster

Home builders would be able to pick and choose pre-fabricated elements for a new property under a system to be rolled out across the country aimed at improving a construction industry that is building half as many homes as it did 30 years ago.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil will on Thursday reveal the states and territories will share in $40 million to trial so-called “kit of parts” construction systems that supporters believe will reduce onsite delays and speed up the time it takes to erect a new home.

Unlike some company-specific pre-fab and modular homes, the underlying intellectual property for such key elements of a home, such as walls, kitchens and bathrooms, would be open source, allowing any manufacturer to use them.

The government is tens of thousands of properties behind its promise to build 1.2 million homes between mid-2024 and mid-2029. Apart from its proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, this month’s budget contained $2 billion to help states and territories put in place infrastructure necessary for up to 65,000 new homes.

In a speech to the National Press Club, O’Neil will argue that simplifying construction systems would not only get homes built faster but also bring down overall costs.

“Most homes use the same basic components – walls, windows, roofs, bathrooms, kitchens. So instead of designing everything from scratch every single time, we can standardise some parts of the process and make construction more efficient,” she will say.

“That means building homes faster, reducing waste, lowering costs, and getting more people into homes sooner.

“When parts are designed to work together efficiently, you can build things faster, cheaper and more reliably.”

Ground-breaking research by the Productivity Commission last year revealed building a house in Australia takes almost twice as long as a decade ago as building firms fail to adopt new construction techniques.

It found the country is building half as many homes per hour worked as it did in 1995, noting that productivity had deteriorated in the sector while improving in most other parts of the economy.

The NSW government has led the way with trialling elements of the “kit approach” to housing. It has also introduced “pattern” plans, architect-designed housing templates that can cost a prospective builder as little as $1 to download and use.

The head of the Building 4.0 Cooperative Research Centre, Mathew Aitchison, said the kit-of-parts system was about making home construction more efficient and consistent.

CEDA’s head of research Danika Adams said the program would be a central tool for boosting housing supply.

“We know these methods exist, we know they work, and this announcement is welcome in encouraging their use at scale to help build more homes, faster and at lower cost,” she said.

“Reducing regulatory and other barriers will be an important step in allowing modern methods of construction to be used at scale across the country, encouraging a system-wide response to a system-wide challenge.”

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