There was a time in recent history where prefabricated housing was the answer to a temporary problem, but then it quickly became a permanent solution.
After World War II in Britain, when the Luftwaffe destroyed so many homes in bombing raids, more than 156,000 prefab homes were built under the orders of Winston Churchill.
They are now making a modern day come back across Europe, with 23 percent of Germany’s housing stock made up of prefab houses.
UK construction company TopHat – backed by American investment bank Goldman Sachs - is expanding to open a mega factory next year, with the aim of producing one modular home an hour.
April 2020 Photo: James Newton
With housing and labour shortages expected to get worse, more people will be diverting to modular builds, says TopHat chief executive Jordan Rosenhaus.
“Over the last 30 years [in the UK], housing associations and councils haven't been building enough homes and the private developers haven't filled up that excess demand.
“The reason is mostly that you can't build homes on site as fast as you would want, and historically in the UK it's been a home ownership driven market, so absorption rates are slower in private sale purchase than they are in let's say build to rent or social housing.
“And so the main companies have focused more on private sale development and less on affordable housing.
“If you have a finite amount of labour and you can use it in one area, you would use it in a more profitable area, and so there just hasn't been a lot of housing association or council houses built for that reason.”
That’s why Rosenhaus believes prefabricated houses are the solution; they are more energy efficient, less expensive and less labour-intensive than on-site built houses.
“With the data that you can collect over time, there are certain things that you can design in and out to make them even better, which is why manufactured products usually get more efficient and better to produce over time versus what you usually see on the construction site, which is pretty stagnant.”
There’s also less waste involved, and their structural design means they have a longer life than a normal timber frame or masonry home, he says.
“So what we focus on is just all different areas of that chain and try to reduce wherever we can, so we use more energy efficient materials, we have less waste in the manufacturing process we have less, I guess, vehicle waste of people going back and forth to site and that's just in the build.
“Then when you go into operational usage, our homes are again more airtight. They are more energy efficient because they’re precision engineered so you cut down on carbon both in the build process itself, but then also in the use in life cycle of the home as people live in it overtime, so you get a double win there.”
A range of custom design options are available to fulfill the demands of various customers – from housing associations, councils, build to rent developers, private sale smaller developers, SMEs and large house builders.
“We don't want to limit what a modular home should look like or could look like. So design is at the forefront of what we do," Rosenhaus says.
“It's one of the reasons why in the past, modular hasn't really taken off the way the traditional construction has.
“But I think now with the new ways of designing things in a factory that people will get that choice and the great efficiency you get in manufacturing, so we'll get the best of both worlds.”
The advantages of cost will only increase over time, he says, "as we get the benefits of continuous improvement in manufacturing and builders on site continue to face inflationary pressure on wages and shortages".
About 300 homes a year are currently built by the company and with the opening of the new factory that could soar to 4000 a year, he says.
"We have over a million people on the housing waiting list for council housing and to be able to come up with a solution like this and provide a good social benefit is something that people are excited about.”
