Construkt’s Prefabrication Think Tank

Demand within the New Zealand building sector is currently constraining the delivery pipeline. The government and independent bodies, such as Infrastructure NZ, have noted that increased prefabrication in the construction industry is a key part of the solution for building at the scale required to meet current housing demands.

Prefabrication means manufacturing and assembling whole buildings or substantial parts of buildings in controlled conditions prior to installation at their final location. Prefabrication spans from small components, two-dimensional panels, three-dimensional volumes through to complete buildings, including hybrid mixtures of these types with traditional construction methods.

At Construkt we recognise the potential of prefabrication, and the importance of understanding prefabrication in a specific way in respect to our local manufacturing, supply, construction and regulatory environment, and in response Construkt has established an internal team to research available options for prefabrication and modular design in the New Zealand construction industry.

As a practice we have a range of past experience on projects using varying degrees of prefabrication, and believe that the increased specific research that we will be able to generate will lead to benefits for our clients in informing them of suitable products for consideration and designing to incorporate specific products and systems. Beyond these larger scale approaches to prefabrication, we are also meeting with and building up a list of suppliers of prefabricated building components.

We are excited about what we are learning and the impact it will have on our design work going forward.