Pre-Fab Housing Solution

The Federal Government is backing on prefabricated construction to help Australia meet its housing targets.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has announced the introduction of a certification program for prefabricated homes.

She says the Government has been investigating how prefabricated and modular construction is used overseas to deliver homes faster, more efficiently and at greater scale.

In countries such as Sweden, 80% of homes are built using some portion of prefabrication compared to about 5% in Australia.

It will commit $40 million to support the different states and territories to trial System 600 – an open-source prefabricated housing platform that standardises components such as wall panels, bathroom pods and facades, enabling them to be manufactured off-site and assembled on-site at speed.

Under this model, 80% of components are manufactured offsite using standardised processes and 20% is completed onsite.

The government will introduce a national voluntary certification scheme to simplify the approval of prefabricated housing under the National Construction Code.

Future Building Initiative director Duncan Maxwell says the announcement recognises that broader innovation is needed to deliver housing.

He says it has the potential to accelerate housing delivery, reduce costs, strengthen domestic manufacturing capability and facilitate scalable modern methods of construction.