Factory Housing. Making the Connections

The global shortage of quality housing, with governments pushing expansion of their house-building programmes, points to an opportunity for the development of factory housing systems and the effective use of prefabrication. In recent years, numerous construction companies have experimented with the use of off-site production for housing, most of them resulting no significant cost-savings. This paper proposes that the changes required are not trivial, requiring a total rethink of conventional practices in order to arrive at effective automated systems. The building systems themselves need to be reconsidered in terms of factory automation, but the implications involve all aspects of the construction process from customer input, choice of ma terials, transport, use of I.T. tools, through to the details of connections.