Mobile micro-factories for fast home building
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The small factories can produce new houses using a fraction of the skilled labour and cost
Spotted: There are many reasons for the housing shortage across countries like the UK and the US, with a major bottleneck being the growing shortage of skilled labour. A recent survey found that 88 per cent of US contractors had a hard time filling craft positions, and with 40 per cent of the existing US construction workforce set to retire over the next decade, the problem may only worsen. Enter Cuby.
Cuby has developed a system of Mobile Micro-Factories (MMF) that will allow more high-quality homes to be constructed with far fewer worker hours and at a much lower cost. Sent to wherever homes are planned to be built, each MMF is just 30,000 square feet in size and contains the necessary hardware and software to build various home components, from windows to kitchen cabinets, which are then packaged into kits of parts. When a component is needed, it’s sent from the nearby MMF to the construction area to be assembled on-site.
According to the company, the technology can output one home a day. In addition to efficiency, the MMFs also offer value for money. They can produce high-quality homes for around $100 per square foot (in the US, the base cost to build a mid-market home is about $200 per square foot) and fully assembled in 30 days with just four unskilled workers across two shifts. The homes are also customisable and can be designed to meet local zoning laws and housing regulations.
Looking ahead, Aleksandr Gampel, the co-founder and COO, told Springwise that, “After our first full-scale Mobile Micro-Factory (MMF) deployment on the West Coast, we plan to rapidly scale up to 275 MMFs across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. This is just the beginning. Through Phase I of our master plan, we will deliver 200,000 homes, create 100,000 direct jobs, eliminate 755,000 tons of construction waste, and reduce CO2 emissions by 2.2 million tons.”
Written By: Lisa Magloff