IBS Modular Homes

IBS Modular Building

IBS Gaining Ground

Source: News Straits Times, March 1st, 2008

It's still early days, but the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) is confident that usage of the Industrialised Building System (IBS) in construction will pick up momentum. "In the Klang Valley, we are noting an increased use of IBS in certain construction activities," said its chief executive officer Datuk Ir. Hamzah Hasan. "Before, many builders preferred to use cheap foreign workers to perform labour-intensive construction activities, but they are now recognising the advantages of IBS - speed, better quality and saving the environment. "We hope that with the promotions made by our IBS Centre, the system will become accepted as the normal way of construction. "

CIDB is aiming for an industrialised construction sector by the year 2010." UM Land Bhd operations director Zulkifly Garib said the prospect of IBS succeeding is good, but said its usage "depends on the type of project being undertaken". "It would be more feasible in the development of certain higher-end properties as the cost of engaging (IBS) isn't economically attractive enough ... at least not at the moment," he said. Zulkifly also said before it can be implemented full-scale, developers "have to ensure that the infrastructure and operational requisites are in place". National House Buyers Association secretary-general Chang Kim Loong, said there is a 2005 incentive that exempts developers from paying the CIDB construction levy of 0.125 per cent for projects that have at least 50 per cent IBS content. Except for projects costing less than RM500,000 as well as low-, low-medium- and medium-cost houses, all projects were previously imposed the levy. "

The system will improve productivity, reduce site wastages, give rise to better quality end products, make the industry less dependent on foreign workers and help the environment," Chang said. As much as 70 per cent of the waste created in the home-building process can be removed by adopting IBS. Among the developers that are using IBS are SP Setia Bhd, Bina Puri Holdings Bhd, IJM Building System Sdn Bhd, and MTD-ACPI Engineering Bhd. Buildings that have been built with the system include Kuala Lumpur Sentral, Petronas Twin Towers, Putrajaya and the KL International Airport. Coined in America in the late 80s, IBS involves making various components that go into a building's construction in a factory and thereafter transporting them to a worksite for assembly.

Toyota Homes - Live in your next Toyota

By the Associated Press

Cubicles that are bits of homes, tucked with stairways, built-in closets and pink bathtubs, roll off the assembly line at a bustling Toyota plant in central Japan -- not the usual rows of shiny cars. Kasugai Housing Works, a plant for prefabricated housing run by Toyota Motor Corp., prides itself on the same production methods that gave the Japanese auto maker a reputation for quality and efficiency around the world. The plant was shown to reporters on a rare tour recently.

A house in 6 hours

Housing makes up less than 1% of Toyota's $183 billion annual sales. But company officials say technology acquired from years of making cars is central to homebuilding Toyota style. A "smart key" similar to the car key you don't need to take out of your pocket to unlock your Toyota opens and closes the front door. A mechanism for reducing engine noise and tremors is installed under the floor to quiet upstairs shakes. Car paint-job skills deliver even scratch-resistant coating on walls.

Toyota homes are mass produced like Toyota cars. About 85% of the work on the metal-frame cubicles is finished at the plant. The prefabricated cubicles, made to order for the customer, are stacked like toy blocks with a huge crane and topped with a roof in just six hours. The cubicles, called units, vary in size, with the bigger ones measuring 20 feet long. An average Japanese home requires 12 units. A buyer chooses from several designs, ranging from sleek modern to standard fare with tiled roofing and balcony windows.

Individual homeowners visit "housing parks" in Japan, where Toyota and rival homebuilders have set up model homes. Customers place orders by mixing and matching layout, interiors and material to meet their needs.

Cars, not homes, still rule Toyota

Toyota, the world's second-biggest auto maker behind General Motors, entered the housing business in 1975 and is still a minor player in housing. One challenge is that apartments make up more than half of housing construction in Japan because of high land prices.

Even the nation's so-called "Big Five" builders in prefabricated homes control only about 14% of the housing market because Japanese tend to buy existing homes or hire neighborhood carpenters. But a recent scandal involving an architect suspected of designing buildings with faked earthquake-resistance data is boosting the attraction of brand names in housing.

Toyota made just 4,600 homes last year, and is planning 5,000 homes this year. But it's on a roll, recording 50 straight months of on-year sales growth. It's targeting 7,000 homes per year by 2010. Toyota Housing President Teiji Tachibana acknowledged Japanese homes suffer a bad image as tiny, shabby "rabbit hutches" compared to more spacious European and American homes. But Toyota homes, which cost about $227,000 each -- average for a middle-class Japanese home -- are built to endure earthquakes common in Japan and boast intelligent use of cramped space, a must for this island nation, according to Toyota.

"We may not be able to compete in space," Tachibana said. "But Toyota homes deliver top global quality." Akio Fukuda, researcher at Real Estate Economic Institute in Tokyo, believes Toyota Housing holds potential, although it faces tough competition from the Big Five. Toyota should be able to put up bigger numbers if it gets really serious about the housing business," he said in a telephone interview. "It has the powerful backbone of the Toyota name."

The Toyota plant -- where hammering on wood blends with the buzz of drills and robotic arms -- relies on the company's prized "just-in-time" method that manufactures to order and keeps track of stock through Toyota's paper memos called "kanban," which means "signs" in Japanese. Workers on the assembly line can at any time pull on a dangling cord to stop the assembly line -- another trademark of Toyota production.

"We pursue the Toyota Way not only in Japan, but globally, and we will pursue the same in housing," said Senta Morioka, Toyota managing officer.

Industrialised Building System - A Brief Background

Industrialised Construction System or Industrialised Building System is a system which use industrial production techniques either in the production of components or assembly of the building or both. (Farid Wardi 1997). Under this system, the industry operate more like a manufacturing sector where most parts of building is made up of manufactured components and installed on site.

The system can either be Open or Closed system.

Close Industrialised Building system

Is a system where all elements of industrial production of components to be used for specific designs for specific projects. The system does not allow for the interchangeability of components from different factories.

Open Industralised Building System

Is a system which allows the production of building components by various factories and to be compatible with each other to be used in any building project.

The successful implementation of open industrialisation building system requires a modular coordination.

Where Modular coordination :-

Is an international system of dimensional standardisation in building where buildings and components are sized in term of a basic unit or module.

The aims:-

1) To assist the building industry and its associated industries, through standardisation

2) To improve workmanship and reduce cost.

3) To facilitate coorporation between building designers, manufacturers, contractors and
authorities.

4) To enable buildings to be so dimensioned that they can be erected with standard components
without restriction on freedom of design.

5) To permit a flexible type of standardisation, which encourages the use of a limited number of
standardised building components for the construction of different types of building.

6) To optimise the number of standard sizes of building components

7) To encourage the interchangeability of component and

8) To simplify site operations.

Global initiatives on IBS

Throughout the world, there has been several initiatives to change the construction industry into a more productive and efficient industry. As can be seen in table 1, several countries in the world including Malaysia has been aggressively putting up programmes to further enhance the construction sector.

Among the global leaders in offsite construction are notably Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. This is due to the fact that in these countries, the construction season is short and therefore speed is critical in their construction industry.

Other developed countries such as United Kingdom and United States are fast catching up in the off-site construction. It is estimated that the modular market in the United Kingdom will grow by 60% to €4.6 billion by the year 2009 (source: Internet: http://www.offsiteconstruction.ie/). Meanwhile in the US, one in six new houses is a prefab, which is estimated to be about 400,000 units a year (source: Modular Muddle”. Internet: http://society.guardian.co.uk/ )

Modular Construction: Evolution of the Construction Industry

The major advantage of full industrialisation of the building industry is that quality architecture can be delivered to the vast majority of people. Industrialisation also means the aggregation of a pool of project or large market into fractions of works that can be divided among smaller productions and therefore simplifying the production and reducing the costs. The status quo of the industry is still on the first four degrees of the industrialisation that consists of prefabrication, mechanisation, automation and robotics. Whereas, industrialisation of the building industry covers the fifth degree, reproduction. Reproduction simply means to find innovative process that eventually will short-cut the repetitive linear operations of the traditional production line. Industrialised Building System are much more evolved from the traditional prefabrication or precast method and it requires a major overhaul of the current industry practise.

Below are a video showing modular construction in other parts of the world