KiwiBuild progresses to next stage in offsite manufacturing

KiwiBuild is moving to the next stage of procuring large numbers of affordable homes using offsite manufacturing, Head of the Office of the CE for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Brad Ward says.

In September, KiwiBuild launched an Invitation to Pitch (ITP) to companies interested in working with KiwiBuild to supply affordable homes and housing components to the KiwiBuild programme through offsite manufacturing. The ITP closed in November with 105 responses received.

"A key objective of KiwiBuild is to foster innovation and increase the capacity of the construction sector while reducing the cost of building new homes. Offsite manufacturing is an important tool in this process. It can deliver high quality design while speeding up the supply of new homes to the market," Mr Ward says.

"KiwiBuild’s ITP on offsite manufacturing has received an impressive number of quality proposals from both domestic and international providers."

KiwiBuild has invited 44 respondents to proceed to the next stage of the offsite manufacturing evaluation and present their proposals to KiwiBuild in the first part of 2019.

Successful applicants will then be shortlisted and discussions will begin in July. The duration of that phase is dependent on the complexity and scale of each proposal, but KiwiBuild expects the majority of commercial negotiations and contracts to be finalised by the end of 2019.

It is likely that some of the unsuccessful respondents may choose to partner with the programme in other ways including the Buying off the Plans initiative or by supporting large scale developments to be further enabled in the future by the recently announced Housing and Urban Development Authority.

"Kiwibuild would like to thank all respondents to the ITP.We look forward to the next stage in the procurement process," Mr Ward says.

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