Hi Mel, good to see some WikiHousees in action albeit small tiny houses. We note also the NZ have made planning approval easier for them as well. We are encouraged here in Australia to adress the extreme housing crisis by the Fed Govt finally acknowledging that building construction productivity has fallen by 53% since the 1950's. While there many reasons for this, such as, houses are typically twice to three times bigger than the immediate post war houses and planning and other approvals, now required, have added complexity and time delay. Not to mention developèr ready land availability. There is however a Fed Govt push to encourage Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) such as prefabs, to address this falling productivity. But the real inhibitor for MMC is the traditional building financial contract with its bench mark progress payments claim points, which in the case of WikiHouse would mean that the builder would have to fund and project manage all the beares, piers CNC blocks and assembly of the chassis on site to be able to make the first progress claim and by our reckoning this could be 1/3 of the contract value. But the biggest bank in Australia,and the most profitable WW, the CBA Bank, is creating a new house building contract to allow for progress claims for components made off site so the builder does not have to fund all this. We see this a game changer so that WikiHouse can Make Building Great Again (MBGA)! Please use this in your future Weeknotes as this may encourage some in Australia to look at building a WikiHouse. Graham Osborne, Origen Architects
Hi Mel, good to see some WikiHousees in action albeit small tiny houses. We note also the NZ have made planning approval easier for them as well. We are encouraged here in Australia to adress the extreme housing crisis by the Fed Govt finally acknowledging that building construction productivity has fallen by 53% since the 1950's. While there many reasons for this, such as, houses are typically twice to three times bigger than the immediate post war houses and planning and other approvals, now required, have added complexity and time delay. Not to mention developèr ready land availability. There is however a Fed Govt push to encourage Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) such as prefabs, to address this falling productivity. But the real inhibitor for MMC is the traditional building financial contract with its bench mark progress payments claim points, which in the case of WikiHouse would mean that the builder would have to fund and project manage all the beares, piers CNC blocks and assembly of the chassis on site to be able to make the first progress claim and by our reckoning this could be 1/3 of the contract value. But the biggest bank in Australia,and the most profitable WW, the CBA Bank, is creating a new house building contract to allow for progress claims for components made off site so the builder does not have to fund all this. We see this a game changer so that WikiHouse can Make Building Great Again (MBGA)! Please use this in your future Weeknotes as this may encourage some in Australia to look at building a WikiHouse. Graham Osborne, Origen Architects