Pipeline Problem Looming Behind Australia’s Prefab Housing Push

Australia’s housing shortage is being compounded by a construction industry taking longer to deliver new homes. The National Housing Accord target to build 1.2 million homes over the five years to June 2029 has already been extended to December 2030, while research shows the time taken to build detached houses has almost doubled since the early 2000s. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) revealed in June that Australia has become slower at delivering houses over the decades. AHURI looked back to the 1980s in its report and found that despite population growth, larger scale construction businesses, improved technology and more sophisticated equipment, Australia hasn’t significantly increased the number of houses completed each year. According to AHURI, the average time from construction commencement to completion for detached housing almost doubled from 5.4 months in early 2000 to 10.8 months by early 2024. That construction productivity gap is where modern methods of construction (MMC) businesses are seeking to add capacity. Making onsite, offsite work as one One example is Green Timber Technology (GTT), which has been producing precision-engineered timber wall, floor and roof systems for housing projects since 2024, including several private-sector developers and a $24 million, 32-home project for Homes NSW across 16 sites in Western Sydney. GTT chief executive Pete Morrison says the time for prefab speculation is over. “Australia is talking about how prefab could work ... we are already manufacturing it, delivering it to multiple sites and learning what it takes to make offsite and onsite construction work as one co-ordinated system,” he says. ▲ Structural components are digitally designed and manufactured in GTT’s controlled factory environment at Orange. Structural components are digitally designed and manufactured in GTT’s controlled factory environment at Orange, NSW before being transported for sequenced onsite installation. Morrison says the automated production line releases a completed panel approximately every 25 minutes under repeatable production conditions. The wall, floor and roof panel systems required for a single-family home can move through manufacturing in about four hours. With up to 70 per cent of a building’s structural system manufactured offsite, Morrison says the wall, floor and roof system of a typical four-bedroom family home can be installed onsite in an average of three days. Speed without co-ordination just moves risk The ex-Electrolux vacuum cleaner factory can currently produce 500 homes a year out of a single shift. If a second were introduced, annual output could reach 1000 homes. “Speed is valuable, but speed without co-ordination simply moves risk from one part of the project to another,” Morrison says. “The factory, the builder and the site team need to work from the same resolved information. “Design, approvals, logistics, site readiness and installation sequencing must be planned together. That integration is what turns manufacturing capability into dependable housing delivery.” ▲ GTT boss Pete Morrison says speed is valuable, but speed without co-ordination simply moves risk from one part of the project to another. Prefab is by no means a new concept but, Morrison says, Australia’s problem hasn’t been inventing prefab systems; it’s been getting the economics, supply chain and pipeline to work efficiently. “Because we get up out of the ground so quickly, you’ve got your roof on and you’re weather-tight within two or three days,” he said. For builders, he says, the speed of prefab production can mean less time tying up labour, equipment and capital on individual building sites. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s State of the Housing System 2025 report reveals that labour shortages, high material and financing costs weighed heavily on housing supply. Not without commercial challenges Morrison says offsite construction is not without its own commercial challenges. Manufacturers such as GTT need a consistent pipeline of work and substantial upfront investment to achieve economies of scale. “Anyone can raise capital and set up a factory. The hard bit is actually building out a sustainable pipeline that pulls product out of these factories every day, day in, day out.” Despite an industry and population crying out for an uptick in housing production, prefabrication remains a niche part of Australia’s housing industry, accounting for about 5 per cent of new homes in 2025, according to the Productivity Commission. In the 2025-26 Budget, the Federal Government committed $54 million to accelerate modern construction methods, including prefabricated and modular housing. ▲ Green Timber Technology has been producing precision-engineered timber wall, floor and roof systems for housing projects since 2024. It’s for this reason, Morrison says, naysayers shouldn’t fear MMC, but see it as a complementary sector to a strained construction industry. “My position to people who see this as a threat, or something that they don’t want to see, is to say we’re about creating that extra capacity in the market,” he says. “And I think the existing builders who do lean into it really understand that. “We’ve got quite a few builders who love using our product because it means they can deliver twice, or three times, as many homes in a year. “If we’re 50,000 or 80,000 homes a year short as a nation, you can likely fill that with probably 10 or 15 factories like ours. “Suddenly that 80,000 is taken care of and the traditional guys are still full as they need to be. We’re not here to compete; we’re here to complement.”

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Kirsten Craze
Tue 22 Sep 26

Pipeline Problem Looming Behind Australia’s Prefab Housing Push