Kāinga Ora where is developing new homes throughout NZ, using new methods like off-site manufacturing/modular construction. Video / Michael Craig
Pre-built bathrooms from Melbourne have been craned into a $9.8 million 18-unit Avondale state housing project.
Patrick Dougherty, Kāinga Ora's construction and innovation general manager, said the bathrooms came from Sync in Laverton.
The off-site manufactured units arrived completely built and ready to install, he said.
Painting was done, electricalfittings installed, grab rails fixed, curtain rails up, walls tiled and showers, toilets and vanity units were installed. Head contractor Miles Construction only had to connect each pod to electricity, water and drainage mains.
Each pod was $17,258 excluding GST but Dougherty said it was not purely price that drove buying decisions.
Thanks, cobbers: pre-made bathrooms from Melbourne. Photo / Michael Craig
Instead, longer-term benefits were expected from the pods and the Melbourne ones were a trial.
"We don't have an isolated cost of what it would be to build these bathrooms in a traditional way. The cost benefits are minor initially until we operate the model at scale," Dougherty said of plans to bring in more pre-made bathrooms.
Where five state homes once stood, the site at 56-64 Taramea St now has 18 units, 18 carparks, a playground and two blocks of apartments, all two-bedroom units, each around 72sq m.
One block has 12 units and another six. Each apartment cost $310,644 to build excluding GST, Dougherty said.
No lifts were installed. All places are walk-ups. Disabled-friendly homes are at ground level.
These kitchens are not pre-made but future ones might be. Photo / Michael Craig
Sync says its bathroom pods contain the work of 12 trades: painter, joiner, glazier, waterproofer, electrician, carpenter, plasterer, plumber, tiler, mechanical contractor, caulker and labourer.
Michael Brinkley, a lead project manager at Miles Construction which built the Avondale units, said the bathroom and laundry pods had saved about six weeks of work on-site.
But the pods actually cost around 20 per cent each more in materials compared to the costs of materials in traditionally-built bathrooms which averaged about $14,500 for ones like at Avondale, Brinkley said.
A site the size of Avondale costs about $10,000/week to run, he said, so significant workloads had been avoided by bringing in the pod units. The pods also offered more quality assurance. They had fewer defects than bathrooms and laundries built in the more traditional way, he said.
"This provides savings to the contractor and trades and the client benefits from that," Brinkley said.
Dougherty said Kāinga Ora was attempting to lead the way for other developers into the off-site manufacturing sector and the state-housing entity now deals with around 18 different off-site manufacturing business.
The Taramea St development has a Green Building Council 6 Homestar rating. All new Kāinga Ora homes are built to healthy homes standards, Dougherty said.
Sceptics in the sector are worried the state-funded builder is forging into relatively new territory with offsite manufacturing.
Patrick Dougherty, construction and innovation general manager at Kāinga Ora. Photo / Michael Craig
They are worried about risks.
Kāinga Ora had trouble at two other Auckland sites when an offsite-manufacturing business failed.
The Herald has reported how it will suffer a $2.5 million cost rise and a seven-month delay on a West Auckland apartment project, abandoned by a foreign modular housing business being liquidated.
Instead of it costing $8.3m to finish the off-site manufactured project by an Australian business at the 21-unit Kervil Ave, Te Atatu site, it will now cost $10.8m, an official says.
Instead of it being finished by last October, it now isn't expected to be done until May.
Kāinga Ora programme delivery director Nick Seymour disclosed that and described a number of problems at the unfinished multi-level development, delayed by seven months
The situation has left local industry experts astonished that the Government agency had ever chosen a foreign business over New Zealanders, questioning why it's going modular when around 97 per cent of homes here are not built like that, and saddened at the failure.
View from a balcony at the new Taramea St units. Photo / Michael Craig
Integrated also left a Northcote site on Toner Ave, with units partly finished.
All up, the failed Aussie builder won $20m of Government contracts before it went under.
But Dougherty said from the Avondale site that project was successful and residents were to begin shifting there on Tuesday. Despite the issues with Integrated, he had faith in offsite manufactured elements.
That would have a growing place in the state builder's workload, he said.
Cross-laminated timber from XLAM in Melbourne is in the Avondale project and many others.
Other developments where Kāinga Ora has used pre-built bathroom pods and cross-laminated timber from Melbourne are:
• Busby St, Blockhouse Bay, completed last March: 18 two-bedroom units in a three-level walkup, bathroom pods from Christchurch-based Concision.
• Canal Rd, Avondale completed last October: 18 two-bedroom units in a three-level walkup, bathroom pods from New South Wales-based Interpod.
• Woodward Rd, Mt Albert, under construction, due to be finished later this year: 12 two-bedroom units, three-level walk-up, bathroom pods from Concision.
Kāinga Ora is developing 600 new homes now and had 7150 built in the past five years. The 2020/21 year was its busiest: 2432 new residences were completed.
Dougherty said numbers of new homes under construction or contracted during the last four years had doubled. In 2017, just 1700 homes were delivered, he said.
"Of course, we're not just doing new builds. We're simultaneously upgrading thousands of our older homes to make them warmer, drier and healthier."
