The Fifth Estate popped in to visit Sydney Build at the Sydney International Convention Centre (ICC), to catch up with the vibe of the industry; on sustainability in particular.
It certainly is a huge affair.
There are thousands always expected through the doors, and a huge number of businesses displaying wares. Our guesstimate of how many is focused on sustainability is not encouraging, maybe 15 or 20 per cent at best, we say, and we are happy to stand corrected. But what was clear is that many of the speakers were right on the money with the sustainability industry. We counted 27 panels and workshops focused on sustainability from a total of 147, and more than 400 speakers in total.
Also noticeable is the huge number of Chinese businesses on the exhibition floors, from prefab homes and EVs to minute components such as drill bits and nails.
One session we did sit in on – for most of its duration, was the one on prefab
Sure, the system could be the building quicker, and the key to that is repetition, according to speaker Gabriel Solórzano Torres, executive director for commercial sustainability and infrastructure at Melbourne Polytechnic
“If our collective interest is to increase the supply of housing, the only way of doing that is by ensuring we find efficiencies in the process [and] repetition creates that.”
Solórzano Torres said the more the construction industry uses manufactured components as the full solution, the less risk and cost a build will have.
Brett Foster, national business development manager at Advanced Precast, was moderating the session. He said within the industry, the 80-20 movement was taking off, which involves 80 per cent repetition and 20 per cent unique and bespoke elements.
Solórzano Torres adds that while compliance was a big blocker, education had also been a big blocker to modern methods of construction (MMC). “I’m going to be provocative and blame the Department of Education in Australia.
“For those of you who had to study in a portable building in the 1940s with zero temperature control, I hope your experience has not damaged you significantly.”
Most people growing up in Australia often had bad experiences with modular buildings, but this was not the case anymore, and people should “give modular buildings another go.”
Another issue was the lack of women participating in active construction, which Tradeswomen Australia quotes as about 2 per cent of the workforce. We cannot have 1.2 million more houses in Australia when we only have 50 per cent of the population contributing to building them, Solórzano Torres said.
Udith Irosan, head of product engineering at Evissa, summarised what the sector needed. Building public awareness is critical to making Prefab and MMC more widely used, and so was standardising this type of construction with Australian standards. For the finance sector, creating different loan products based on the type of construction is needed.
“We encourage everyone, clients, owners, and builders to experience the new construction method, so you can reduce construction time and improve the quality of your build. It’s not about building quicker, it’s about building something much more comfortable [and] everyone deserves to live in a better quality house.”
Brett Foster wrapped up with “We all recognise prefab is not a silver bullet, but when applied properly…it improves certainty, improves quality, improves outcome, improves speed. The opportunity is real. The challenge now is alignment, capability, confidence, building a workforce that is engaging with prefab as an industry [and] as a component.”
Shout out to friends and fun people at Build
Shout out to the Energy Matters team, who proved to be a bundle of laughs and fun, and to Weathertex, which is one of our Green Listers. Sadly, the Vox Pops we thought we’d recorded didn’t take, but here are two that did. We’ll catch up with Weathertex later and if there were other Green Listers we missed, send us a note, we want to catch up with what your business is doing, how you see the bright green world in front of us!