Modular Start-Up Signex Delivers First Project

A modular construction group has set a cracking pace for its debut Australian project, completing five townhouses in a Melbourne growth corridor in two months

Golden Age Group founder Jeff Xu is behind the newest entrant to the modular construction industry, Signex. 

The company has now completed its first Australian project, five homes at Mickleham, Victoria in partnership with Kincaid and Stockland. 

The architecturally designed homes used Signex’s proprietary prefabricated construction system and went from footings to completion in just two months. 

Signex construction director Jon Greaves said the housing solution would deliver homes faster, more efficiently and more sustainably than traditional builds. 

Greaves said Signex used hi-tech offshore manufacturing processes and that most of the construction was completed before onsite work began.

▲ The prefabricated modules drastically reduce the amount of time spent onsite.

He said it provided developers, builders and government partners with certainty on quality and cost outcomes when compared with conventional construction. 
 

“Our approach is about speed, precision, design integrity and sustainability at scale. Every build is engineered to minimise waste and optimise energy performance from the start,” Greaves said.

He said each module was designed to exacting tolerances, ensuring structural integrity and reducing material waste. 

“Our panels far exceed the structural integrity of a comparable stick-built product,” Greaves said.

“We embrace design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA) principles from the outset to ensure each panel can be handled and assembled without compromise to the structural integrity of the end product.” 

With ongoing construction cost escalation, the focus on cost and time savings has intensified for developers in the race to develop housing supply. 

Greaves said the Signex approach combined architectural design with volume scalability. 

He said the prefabricated construction system had been engineered for developers, institutional investors and government partners in the build-to-sell and build-to-rent asset classes, as well as consumer-ready house-and-land markets.