Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing
Unlocking the potential growth of Australia’s prefabricated building industry.
The ARC Training Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing is the centrepiece for collaborative, eco-friendly, prefabricated housing research in Australia, striving to deliver breakthrough product and process innovations that will enable the Australian housing industry to compete on a global stage.
The centre aims to unlock the potential growth of Australia’s prefabricated building industry by creating a co-operative training system between industry and universities leading to local employment growth and increased exports of prefabricated products and services.
Administered by the University of Melbourne, with Prof Priyan Mendis from Department of Infrastructure Engineering as the Director, the Centre brings together a highly collaborative venture involving four universities and twelve industry partners.
This initiative has attracted funding of $6M over four years, including significant investment from the Australian Research Council. This is testament to the critical importance of this industry in Australia, and demonstrates the value that both industry and government place in collaborative, cross-disciplinary research.
To create a training pipeline that enables rapid growth of the emerging prefab manufacturing industry to deliver affordable and high-quality housing through innovation and streamlining of the supply chain.
To inspire and lead the transformation of societies through the provision of affordable and high-quality housing.
The ARC Training Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing acknowledges the generous support from the Australian Research Council through its Industrial Transformations Research Programme, which offers a suite of funding schemes attractive to both university-based researchers and industries.
The ARC Training Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing was awarded $4M in funding, under the Industrial Transformation Research scheme, which has the following objectives:
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PrefabAUS is the Peak Industry body for prefabrication in Australia. We are passionate about the role of prefabrication in transforming our built environment, such as decreasing construction time frames and construction waste while increasing quality, productivity and affordability. We believe there is an exciting future for Australia’s building prefabrication industry. Become a PrefabAUS member.
Prebuilt integrates efficient, economical, design-led architecture with Australian modular prefab construction. Whether we are creating a modest country weekender or a landmark home in an expensive street, each of our prefab homes is architect-designed, built undercover and transported in modules across Australia. Prebuilt will change your mind about prefabricated houses
Forest and Wood Products Australia Limited (FWPA) is a not-for-profit company that provides national, integrated research and development services to the Australian forest and wood products industry. FWPA supports research and development that promotes internationally competitive and environmentally sustainable practices.
Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA)
Habitech Systems is an Australian owned venture established in 2008, with headquarters in Melbourne. The company has invested in extensive research, development and testing of the Habitech modular building system, for the Australian market. Our innovative building design technology is driven by sustainability, taking advantage of environmentally-friendly materials and processes.
EnviroSIP — the strong, light-weight, fire resistant panels that deliver exceptional value and are available in sizes to meet almost any need. Designed and manufactured to the exacting demands of the Building Code of Australia, EnviroSIP products stand the test of time and look good too.
Timber Building Systems (TBS) is a unique and revolutionary post tensioned pre-manufactured building system. The technology provides our clients with a sustainable solution, fast turnaround, exceptional architectural design flexibility, high quality, unparalleled customer service, and lower overall costs. TBS’s patented building assembly system provides wood-based integrated flat pack panels that include structural as well as plumbing and electrical service elements.
The Australian Reinforcing Company (ARC) is one of Australia’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of steel reinforcing and fencing products and services. Our history virtually mirrors the growth of Australia since 1920, when The Australian Reinforced Concrete Engineering Company (ARC) was formed in Sunshine, Victoria. We have a diverse range of products and customers and value the relationships with our employees, customers and suppliers.
The Australian Reinforcing Company (ARC)
Formerly known as BHA Project Management, Sensum is a leader in modern construction project management, delivering bespoke services and cutting-edge solutions for our clients.
Our unique background in both project management and design qualifies us as an industry leader in modern construction solutions. We specialise in inherently complex infrastructure projects which include the diverse needs of multiple stakeholders, tight delivery time frames and/or budgetary constraints.
Sensum consists of an agile team of highly motivated and experienced staff dedicated to providing a unique and personalised project management service to our clients. Our collaborative team brings a wealth of varied perspectives and construction knowledge from trade, commercial construction, property development, public sector and business administration backgrounds.
Rockend is a Property Software Solutions Provider. They provide innovative, reliable and easy to use property management software, strata management software, document management software and real estate trust accounting software. Their 35 years in business confirms that reliable, functionally rich software is important for any business, however of greater significance is choosing a partner committed to the industry, support, education and the ongoing development of the solution.
Fleetwood is a market leader throughout Australia in the design, manufacture, supply and installation of permanent modular buildings with manufacturing operations in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. Fleetwood work off a volumetric system that allows for greater economies of scale to be achieved along with providing clients with speed of delivery plus an environmentally friendly and flexible solution.
XLam offer a ‘total building solutions’ package including design/engineering, manufacture/supply and construction/project management and installation services. XLam realise that the most important component of any project is the management of ‘risk’, specifically deadline management – managing a task or an activity that needs to be accomplished within a defined period of time (or by a deadline).
Bondor® is Australia’s leader in complete thermal building solutions and lightweight architectural panels. More than just the leading manufacturer of insulated panels, Bondor® has unrivaled experience in design assistance and construction.
A listing of our staff and collaborating investigators and researchers.
Details of our PhD candidates, and a brief synopsis of their theses.
The ARC-CAMPH Research Program & Training Committee is responsible for undertaking research activities and developing training initiatives to facilitate the delivery of projects to ensure the Centre’s key objectives are met.
The ARC-CAMPH Industry Advisory Committee comprises key stakeholders from industry and is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Centre and its projects.
The role of the Governance Committee is to set the directions and goals for the Prefabrication Group and monitor the progress of the projects.
Rob Colquhoun, Managing Director of Prebuilt, a leading Australian prefabrication construction business with over 30 years’ construction experience presented Volumetric construction in Australia. The webinar was an overview of Australian construction including the latest advancements and issues such as complications in compliance while drawing examples from Prebuilt’s recent projects.
CAMP.H hosted another successful webinar on smart and innovative prefab construction series on 27 August with two excellent and well renowned speakers in their fields of endeavour starting with Professor Greg Morrison of Sustainable Cities at Curtin University who specialises in the field of sustainable building with his research over the past decade has focussed on Living Laboratories.
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A collaborative project to develop of prefabricated sanitising chamber for the protection of frontline workers from cross-contaminations of COVID-19 or other infectious diseases. This project aims to develop and evaluate an innovative prefabricated chamber to sanitise individuals within 30 seconds, for use in high-risk sites of COVID-19, other virus exposure and dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria. This is unique due to the state-of-the-art prefabrication technologies including the advanced computational methods used to design the chamber.
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This year’s ARC-CAMPH forum is an annual gathering of all the stakeholders involved with ARC Centre for Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing (ARC-CAMPH) from academic partners, industry partners, research fellow and post-graduate students to discuss forward-thinking ideas to further unlock the potential growth of Australia’s prefabricated building industry moving forward.
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It is expected that within 10 years, the majority of on-site construction will be replaced by Prefabricated and Modular building systems. The growth of innovation in this emerging sector will leave little choice for the construction industry to embrace.
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Dr Tharaka Gunawardena of CAMPH attended the recently concluded International Conference on Smart Infrastructure and Construction 2019 (ICSIC) at Churchill College of the University of Cambridge. The presented conference paper titled “Effective use of Offsite Manufacturing for Public Infrastructure Projects in Australia” received much praise and attention by many other attendees such as the Dr Keith Bowers who is Head of Profession for the Civil Engineering and Built Environment disciplines in Transport for London’s Engineering Directorate and Mr Jas Shanker who is the Head of Technology of Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) of UK.
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Prof Priyan Mendis and Dr Shanaka Kristombu Baduge, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, have received the Victoria Award for Excellence-2019 from Concrete Institute of Australia (CIA) for the research and innovation in Very-High Strength Concrete (VHSC) and pushing the limits of concrete tall buildings. Concrete Institute of Australia recognised that the research studies at the University of Melbourne collaborated with LafargeHolcim and BASF significantly contributed to developing suitable mix design methods, understanding of VHSC and pushing the boundary of existing codes of practice up to 150 MPa through innovative approaches and research.
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The Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre (AMGC) was established in 2015 as a key plank of the Australian Government’s Industry Growth Centre Initiative. Its goal is to drive innovation, productivity and competitiveness across Australia’s manufacturing industry. AMGC is an industry-led, not-for-profit organisation and is run by a board and management team of industry experts.
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Mr Bertrand Teodosio, a PhD candidate supervised by Prof Mendis and Dr Kristombu Baduge at the University of Melbourne, Australia and part of the ARC Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing (ARC-CAMP.H), was invited as a visiting researcher to the University of Alberta, Canada under the Global Skills Strategy scheme. His research topic focuses on developing an optimised prefabricated slab-on-grade substructure for single-detached dwellings on reactive soils conditions collaborating with the Australian Reinforcing Company. He is being supervised by Prof Mohamed Al-Hussein, the chairholder of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Industrial Research Chair (NSERC IRC) in the Industrialization of Building Construction.
The research fellowship commenced in May and will conclude in July 2019 and the activities include research collaboration on innovative design concepts for a precast slab-on-ground substructure and paper presentation in the Modular Offsite Construction (MOC) Summit in Banff, Alberta, Canada. This research fellowship was made possible through the ARC-CAMP.H research support, Pearson William Tewksbury Trust and Thomas Ewing Scholarship.
CSCS China Steel Structure Development Summit 2019, China’s main steel construction forum was held 19–20 May 2019 in Hangzhou, China. It was hosted along with 2019 China Engineering Science and Technology Forum, one of a series of academic activities hosted by Chinese Academy of Engineering and sponsored by major steel companies in China. More than 1500 people attended the Summit.
Prof Priyan Mendis, the Director of CAMPH, was invited as a keynote speaker for this Summit, as a foreign expert in prefabricated construction industry. His presentation was on Modular Steel Construction and covered the latest developments in steel modular buildings, research conducted by the ARC Centre for Advanced Manufacturing of Prefabricated Housing (ARC CAMPH) and a snap-shot of projected conducted by the centre partners relevant to this theme. He outlined lessons learnt and difficulties in steel modular construction as well as future research needs.
Mr Tim O’Grady, a CAMPH PhD student based in Curtin University was awarded the JTSI PhD Fellowship.
The PhD fellowship was awarded by the Western Australian Government: Jobs, Science, Tourism and Industry department to help boost growth in WA industries. Teaming up with Quantify Technology, it hopes to develop smart automation of the power and lighting systems, creating a model that requires low user input once installed. The aim is to create an energy management system that is set to optimal energy performance, and self manages by using internal and external monitoring to best define how to manage the building’s use of energy. This will be achieved by adjusting blinds to shade sunlight, reduce mechanical heating and cooling, and switching off non-essential power outlets when the home is locked.
Creating a smart home automation system that has a single interface linking multiple automation systems allows the four major barriers that hinder the uptake of home automation to be removed. This will enable Quantify to boost their market share, and become a global leader in home automation systems.
The increase in international markets will result in more jobs for Western Australia, and further linkage between industry and academia.
Mr Tim O’Grady, PhD student visiting from the Curtin University, provided a presentation to the technical group on the Legacy Living Lab project that he is working on with CAMPH PhD student, Mr. Roberto Muninno .
L3 is a practice led research project based on the circular economy framework, and sustainability principles of reduce, reuse and recycle aiming to create a tangible asset, which proves the feasibility of circular economy buildings. L3 will be a multi-purpose interactive modular building, functioning as a research and prototyping space facilitating practical partnerships between academia and the building industry.
L3 will be an adaptable modular design aimed toward multiple future lifecycles. The first of which will feature in the East Village at Knutsford, a Landcorp development and Smart-Cities project site from early 2019, powered by 100% renewable energy. L3 will act as the communities main charging source for the duration of the development. The building will stay at the East Village site for 2 years before being moved to Curtin University, for its second lifecycle.
This research aims to prove that there can be a significant reduction of waste in the building industry without sacrificing on quality and experience and will showcase Australia’s most innovate materials and technology in the field of high -quality green buildings.