This text is part of the special Real Estate section
Tired of building houses in the same way as his grandfather, Pierre, founder of the Fournelle Group, a real estate company in Bécancour, the current president and CEO, Jérémie Fournelle, one day decided to do differently. He then launched a new subsidiary, Fournelle Co, with the intention of reviewing all construction methods.
“The construction sector is extraordinarily inefficient and produces a lot of waste,” says the CEO, according to whom real estate development must accelerate the pace in order to respond to the housing crisis. “In North America, there are 1.2 million projects behind schedule, it’s a problem. The only way out is to stop tinkering. »
Inspired by European processes, Jérémie Fournelle directs his project towards the pre-assembly of exterior walls, floors and roofs in the factory rather than towards modular construction. “This way of proceeding offered interesting speed without requiring investment in a large factory capable of receiving modules. »
After a few years of experimentation in the small 400 m factory2, the model is in place: while some excavate and pour the foundations, others assemble walls and windows in the factory. “At the beginning of October, three employees were able to assemble a four-apartment townhouse in one day: the ground floor walls in four hours, the upstairs floor in an hour and a half and the upper floor walls in three hours. »
In 2024, Fournelle Co will move into a space five times larger, where it will deploy two separate production lines for walls and floors. Now that the procedures are in place and the team has mastered the automatic radial saw, the company will introduce other robots, such as the automatic nailer, drilling and cutting bridges, as well as lifting systems.
“We continue to experiment,” says Jérémie Fournelle. The next steps will be to install the windows and exterior cladding directly at the factory. Eventually, we will move on to electricity, plumbing and even gypsum. I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to do like the Germans and the Austrians. »
Ultimately, the contractor hopes to build a house even faster without compromising on quality. “This year, we doubled the factory’s production rate by building 50 houses using this method. The goal now is to reach 300 homes per year. »
Improve productivity
“In construction, industrial processes must be introduced to simplify production, accelerate it and reduce costs. Too few general contractors take this path,” worries Roger-Bruno Richard, full professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Montreal and specialist in industrialized construction systems.
“In Hong Kong, they are capable of carrying out 85% of the work on a 56-story building in the factory. Here, we still proceed by manual assembly, with formwork and concreting on site. It’s completely outdated. »
According to the specialist, the entire economy suffers from the lack of productivity in the construction industry. ” In The shock of the future, Alvin Toffler already noted that the food industry was more industrialized than construction. It was 1970, and it hasn’t gotten any better. Since 1995, productivity in the manufacturing sector as a whole has doubled. For construction, 20%. »
The architect notes several degrees of industrialization. The first, like Fournelle Co, is prefabrication, which consists of doing in the factory what is done on the construction site, but in better conditions. However, it is possible to go much further thanks to mechanization, robotization, automation and assembly line production. “We can build houses on an assembly line, a bit like an airplane or coach factory. »
Review the organization of work
Roger-Bruno Richard is also concerned to hear the Quebec government say that it will improve the sector’s productivity by relaxing the construction decree. “It is not by authorizing gypsum installers to install tile that we will make a difference. We must tackle the organization of work. » He cites the case of Singapore, which has long lived with high demand for real estate and a scarce qualified workforce. There, access to land is reserved for builders who have a certified manufacturing system, he says.
In his eyes, general contractors must move away from DIY to take on new know-how which consists of ensuring the interface between plans, the factory and assembly. “In the current model, general contractors invest very little, they are paid as they go, they purchase hardware and their staff is limited to contract workers attached to a site. »
“The construction industry underwent a small modernization around 30 years ago, with the introduction of computer-aided design (CAD), but that stopped there. We still build as we renovate and we lay brick in the same way as the Phoenicians 800 years before Christ. It’s backwards. »
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.