Building Offsite.
Offsite manufacturing for construction involves fabricating all or part of a building in a controlled environment before transporting to site for assembly. Materials are not subject to adverse weather conditions for extended periods of time as they would be in a conventional onsite construction workflow. Quality assurance can be carried out at any stage of the build process and results in a high-quality product. Time on site is reduced and the structure can be weathertight sooner.
Flexi House’s unitised panels are manufactured offsite to a high level of prefabrication, with framing, RAB, cavity, cladding and glazing all being installed offsite. Once the panels arrive onsite, it will only take a few days to assemble them and have a weathertight structure.
Before tackling the challenge of a full-scale build, we built a half-scale section of the Flexi chassis. This was a critical part of the development of the system, and affords Flexi the confidence to know it can be done! The biggest challenge Flexi House faces is translating DfMA principles common in manufacturing into processes for architecture and construction to achieve a housing product.
Standardised components that are repeatable and scalable can be built using manufacturing methods rather than traditional one-off construction methods. Flexi utilises a range of jigs to make the construction of similar panels easier and more efficient. During a conversation with Flexi in the factory mid-way through the project, build team lead Olly Townend said, “[Makers] have never done anything that has so many batch parts pre-cut.” Not only did our processes improve the ease of the build, but our rigorous documentation simplified planning and execution. Makers were stoked with the level of detail we’d gone to in our drawings, and framing a 2400 wall panel on the jig became an easy half-hour task.
During fabrication, Makers Fabrication kindly let us show stakeholders around the factory. It was great to show investors and supporters of Flexi House the progress we’d made at the end of May. James Lamb from Hutt City Council had a light-bulb moment as we explained how Flexi enables owners to swap out building panels to adapt their homes to suit their lifestyle. “[Flexi is] creating a whole new modular house-part trading economy for the future”, James believes.
Mid-June saw us showing Kāinga Ora’s innovation team around the factory and discussing the possibility of collaboration in the future. They were very impressed with what we had already achieved and keen to get down to Cromwell to check out the building once completed. It was refreshing to speak to representatives who are prioritising innovation and looking to support us in our development as a company alongside the development of our housing product. We look forward to working together in the future.
Recently we also had the pleasure of showing Scott Fisher, Offsite NZ CEO, around the factory after most of the panels were completed. Offsite NZ has the goal of all residential construction in New Zealand being weathertight in under two weeks onsite. With the system that Flexi has developed, we’re hoping to achieve a weathertight structure in just 2 days.
With the offsite construction component of the build coming to an end, we’d like to thank Makers Fabrication for all their hard work and dedication to standardisation with us. Their team have been very supportive and on board with our mission right from the very beginning. We’re challenging traditional construction processes together and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. We wouldn’t be redefining housing without them!
The Flexi House panels will be loaded onto three trucks on Friday the 8th of July and transported to Cromwell, where assembly will begin the following week.