Fletcher Living house built in a day at Hobsonville Point

Friday, 14 September 2018

Fletcher Living builds a house in Hobsonville Point in a single day.

One day is all it takes for Fletcher Living to raise the walls of a new home in Hobsonville Point and cap them with a roof.

The company has released time-lapse film showing the speed of the process, which the company believes is key to delivering Auckland with the large, and steady stream of new homes it needs each year to cope with rapid population growth.

'We've been working on this process for about two years,' said chief executive Steve Evans.

'How do you get to a stage where you maintain the Fletcher Building quality, and make sure you have got a speed advantage?'

A crane lifts the last section of roof into place.

* The high-density developer who loves green spaces**

Once the slab is cast, Fletcher Living can put up a house in a day; walls, internal walls, stairs, intermediate floor and the roof.

'After that you weatherproof, and you can spend the next six weeks or so fitting out the kitchens, and doing the carpets, and all those other things,' Evans said.

Much has been written in recent months about 'panelisation', or 'prefab', or 'factory-built' homes being the key to providing Auckland with the houses it needs, at prices people can afford.

But that has raised fears of dull, monochrome neighbourhoods, with cookie-cutter homes springing up on the outskirts of the city.

Evans said: 'The way we have structured the panelling is that you can put a whole variety of products on the outside.'

Steve Evans, chief executive of Fletcher Living, speaks of 'community building'.

'You are not left with a monotonous product.'

'You have the scope to have a whole variation of materials, so you end up with neighbourhoods much the same as you have in Hobsonville, where you have got different architectural styles, and different architectural finishes.'

'In the Auckland environment we have got be able to deliver homes at pace. We've also got to be able to minimise the interruption to neighbours when you build in among existing houses.'

The time to put up the frames and roofs of traditionally built homes took 11 weeks, he said.

'That frustrates and annoys your neighbours.'

Evans said Fletcher Living focused on 'community-building'.

Location's important, because access to jobs is essential to community building.

'We take an urban masterplan approach to any of the communities we try to generate. That starts with how we design the public realm, playgrounds, and places of recreation, and schooling, and retail. That's where you have to start the proper process of community building.'

There's a commercial benefit to that focus.

'If you provide great areas of public realm, then you don't as much private realm,' Evans said.

'You don't need 300sqm back yard, if you have a playground that's within 100m walk of your house. That allows your land size to go down, which is one of the key issues for affordability.'

Community-building involved providing homes of mixed sizes, from starter homes to three, four and five bedroom family homes.

Hobsonville Point waterfront, behind which a town is rising, with multiple developers building on sites governed by a single development masterplan.

'You need solutions for first home buyers up to last home buyers. That's how you build communities.'

Location remained important, because access to jobs was essential to community building.

'We like the industrial, and the commercial, and the retail around you, because it actually provides you with employment-generating use next to where your homes are.'

'Who wants to be sitting in a car going up the Southern motorway for an hour each day to get to work?'

The company is ramping up its home-building.

'Last year we built 700 homes. This year, we will build close to 1000 homes throughout both Auckland and Canterbury,' Evans said.

The company was hungry for land to build on.

'We don't have so much of a skills shortage in Auckland, particularly in the residential space,' Evans said. 'We actually have a land shortage in Auckland, and that's the problem we have to be able to address.'

'We would say to the government, make more land available. Bring it on. And we will get more of these houses built quicker.

Fletcher Living was building a factory to increase its panelised home manufacture.

'I signed the order in the last two weeks for the equipment coming out of Germany for it, that will arrive in February/March and we will be producing panels out of the new factory in Wiri by this time next year.'

That factory will build up to 1000 homes a year, but it will take time to ramp up, starting with around 250 homes a year.