Australia and New Zealand have the highest proportions of steel-framed housing in the world and their expertise in steel prefabrication is unrivalled. In the last five years, their steel framed housing industries have been revolutionised by the introduction of a new generation of computer controlled roll-formers which automate most of the production process and simplify final frame assembly. The result is a faster, cheaper way of producing low-rise buildings, and it has now caught the attention of two UK businesses which have signed licences to exploit the new technologies here: Fleming Construction and Dorman Long CFS.
First out of the starting blocks was Irish housebuilder Fleming Construction which has struck a deal with Adelaide-based SBS International. John Fleming started his construction business in 1973, entered homebuilding in 1990 and now has a business that turns over I£60m and will complete 500 homes this year in South West Ireland. Such rapid expansion through Ireland's building boom has brought with it inevitable problems in finding and keeping skilled labour. In 1999 the company undertook a worldwide trawl of steel frame housebuilding which led it to Alan Weekes of SBS International who had developed a CAD/CAM system alongside the cutting edge roll-forming kit. Fleming has sole rights to use Weekes' technology in the UK and Ireland.
Expansion plans
"What has happened to steel to date is that steel frame has been a manufacturing led process. We are coming at it as housebuilders," says Fleming. "We are going to establish it here, first getting Agrement certification in Ireland and UK. From this base, we will be planning on building 200-300 steel-framed houses on our own sites next year." Fleming's plans extend well beyond his backyard; he is currently fitting out a 70 000 sq ft plant adjacent to Cork Harbour with a view to using the daily ferry service to Swansea to attack the UK market, branding his product as Fusion Homes. His existing plant is capable of producing 500 homes a year (similar to Surebuild's current output) but when the new plant is fully commissioned capacity will rise tenfold.
"You can't build a steel frame housebuilding business on the back of a boom in Irish housebuilding, therefore the UK is central to our objective of doing 5000 homes a year in three to four years." He hopes to achieve that by establishing relationships with perhaps as few as three UK companies.
So lean are the production methods that it only needs three people to operate the three roll formers and assemble the frames to produce 500 houses a year. Fleming has realised that this simply moves the production bottlenecks elsewhere. There is a shortage of skilled CAD operators in the UK and Ireland but the company plans to bypass the problem by working with SBS in Australia where not only are wage rates lower than Europe but they have the advantage of naturally working during Europe's night. Drawings can be emailed to Australia and returned as dimensioned cutting lists the following morning - ready to be fed into the roll-formers.
Fusion Homes will offer a full erection service throughout the British Isles. Fleming says: "Because we are housebuilders, we understand the problems and frustrations housebuilders feel when the supply line fails."
Smart set-up
One housebuilder who has seen Fusion's technology is Willmott Dixon's innovations director Brendan Ritchie. Ritchie's verdict? "The current production set up is very smart, particularly the CAD links back to the design office, and the components appear to lend themselves to a right-first-time assembly process. I was particularly impressed by how they are gearing up for significant volumes of production in the future."
Meanwhile, an even leaner manufacturing system is being launched by Dorman Long CFS, which is agent for Scottsdale Building Systems, a New Zealand steel framing company using similar CAD/CAM technology. While Fleming's system requires three roll-forming machines to produce three different steel channels, the Scottsdale system is designed so that there is only one roll-former producing one basic component, a 90 mm channel, which serves as the basis of walls, floor joists and roofing members. Rather than offering a design and build service, Dorman Long hopes to sell steel fabricators and even timber frame companies the system which costs as little as £50 000 for a unit capable of producing 250 homes a year with a crew of just three people.
First business to come on board is Lanarkshire-based Powerwall which has a contract to supply steel frame for London's Greenwich Millennium Village. Powerwall managing director, Dominic Tredeco says: "The roll-former is small enough for us to have been able to house it in a mobile trailer. The sides lift hydraulically to create a covered area for frame assembly. The CAD is carried out in-house in Scotland and we email cutting lists down to site. The roll-former is then controlled from a laptop."
Dorman Long CFS managing director Alan Rogan has worked in the steel industry and at Oxford Brookes University. His interest in setting up mobile roll-forming plants extends to India where he is negotiating with the government to supply plant to build 30 000 steel-framed homes in earthquake-devastated Gujurat. "It's a very good example of the adaptability of the technology," he says.
Rogan draws parallels with the car industry. "To date, steel frame housebuilding has used Henry Ford-style mass production with up to sixty people working on a line at any one time. The new technology changes all that, just as Toyota once did. It is fast, flexible and much easier to manage."
Source
Building Homes
