More factory, less construction site
Series housing could be the future
04/16/2023 11:37 am
Almost every building in Germany is unique. In order to counteract the housing shortage, experts are calling for a less complex construction method. Standardized pre-production in the factory could therefore save time and money.
According to construction experts, residential buildings could be built much faster and at noticeably lower costs with a more industrialized construction method. According to a study by the strategy consultancy EY-Parthenon and the BayWa Group, the lever for this is series construction with prefabricated components and digital process optimization.
“The construction of the future must be much more digital, more standardized and therefore more cost-efficient,” says BayWa manager Steffen Mechter. “By planning and rebuilding every building from scratch as we have up until now, we are wasting existing resources.” Hardly any industry is subject to such strict legal requirements as the German construction industry. In addition, many players and trades are involved in a construction project and almost every building is an individual one-off.
According to the study, the most effective lever for more productivity is industrial prefabrication. If work steps were moved from the construction site to a factory and components were created there automatically, construction would become less dependent on the weather, easier and faster. This ranges from the use of pre-assembled assemblies to room modules that are fully equipped in advance, including technical equipment.
In an apartment building with 25 apartments, for example, 15 percent of the costs could be saved, said Björn Reineke, management consultant at EY-Parthenon. Relocating part of the added value to the factory building can reduce construction time by 30 percent. Subsequent plan adjustments often led to a new need for coordination between the trades, to delays and additional costs. Better planning with digital process optimization could speed up construction by several months and significantly reduce overall costs when building an apartment building.
The third lever is to build single or multi-family houses in series in a settlement. Individual deviations are only possible to a limited extent. The planning effort is lower, the purchase of large amounts of material is cheaper, said strategy consultant Reineke.