Canada as Leader in Housing

Build Smarter, Better, Faster: Proposal to Develop Canada as a World Leader in Housing Production through Design for Assembly/Manufacturing

Challenge:

Two of the biggest obstacles to reducing the cost of housing production are the availability of skilled labour and building practices. Current building practices, even with some focus on current prefabrication, simply require too much skilled labour.

Opportunity:

Canada has an opportunity to lower the cost of housing production and improve labour productivity by leveraging our expertise in Design for Assembly/Manufacturing (DFA/M) to improve quality, reduce costs and increase production volumes. DFA/M has reduced cost by 30%+ and improved quality in other industries.

Proposal:

That the Government of Canada expand the mandate of Build Canada Homes to include the development of a national housing industry with the goal of creating a low- cost housing production industry and positioning Canada as a world-leader in housing production. Lowering the cost of producing housing, using standard designs, leveraging the volume of housing required benefits all forms of housing; seniors, indigenous, students, young families, etc.

DFA/M typically requires significant investment. Developing new technologies, new production techniques, and automation, etc., is expensive. To fund and realize a reasonable ROI on the investment, a significant volume of production is necessary. Achieving that volume is possible if the role of Build Canada Homes includes the overall responsibility to develop a Canadian housing industry, incorporating DFM/A working with private industry in the Canadian housing industry. This could be modelled somewhat like Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, which led the efforts to create the CANDU reactor and an industry to produce it. Following the AECL model, Build Canada Homes establishes a consortium of private and public resources to implement the solution.