A new consortium is banking on prefabricated housing to respond more quickly to the lack of student apartments in Quebec. The Unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE) and Bonneville Industries have joined forces to deliver one project per year.
The two organizations will announce Thursday morning a first multi-residential project in modular construction as part of this partnership. They plan to build “in record time” a building of more than 150 apartments intended primarily for the student population in Rimouski.
And this is not about temporary housing in containers, assures the CEO and co-founder of UTILE, Laurent Levesque.
“What is being built are really apartments with the same quality, the same finish as a traditional standard home, the same lifespan as well. These are permanent homes, and also have an architectural design that is that of any other residential project,” he explained in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Mr. Levesque maintains that the modular approach cuts construction time by about half compared to the traditional model. According to the schedule presented for the Rimouski project, the first tenants could move in within eight months of the start of construction, scheduled for this fall.
The modular units will be produced in a factory by Industries Bonneville, which specializes in modular construction. Their assembly into buildings, as well as the work related to plumbing, electricity, roofing and coverings will be carried out directly on site.
Repeat the experiment
Bonneville Industries and UTILE, whose real estate portfolio currently houses approximately 800 tenants in three student cities, want to reproduce this delivery method on a large scale in Quebec. They aim to complete one project per year and have entered into long-term partnerships with an architectural firm (Blouin Beauchamp Architectes), an engineering firm (GDI) and a general contractor (Construction Longer).
The consortium is betting that from one project to another, it will succeed in improving production and making savings thanks to the expertise acquired along the way, particularly from the various subcontractors.
“The success of modular will come with repetition,” says Martin Bisson, vice-president of business development and government relations at Bonneville Industries, in an interview.
“What we claim is that repetition, knowledge of the product and standardization will mean that we will be able to start reducing housing construction costs because a paradigm shift will have taken place,” he says, emphasizing that the use of prefabricated construction remains minimal in North America.
The consortium will receive federal support to deploy the model and share its knowledge with the industry. Ottawa will provide the consortium with a $1 million grant through a program of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
Mr. Levesque believes that modular construction can be beneficial for any type of residential housing. Bonneville Industries has chosen to dedicate 75% of its current production capacity to social, community and affordable housing.
“This is a market where the need is most pressing. As a corporate citizen, we say, let’s put 75% of our energies into this to be able to find economies of scale, then pass them on to the organizations that become owners of the buildings,” says Mr. Bisson.