Episode 99 | Prefabricated buildings = future of sustainable housing? | Bill McCorkell, ArchiBlox

How modular prefab building beats traditional construction in environmental sustainability.

Today we chat with Bill McCorkell, Founder of ArchiBlox, a revolutionary architecture and building firm specializing in modular prefabricated buildings for both residential and commercial. ArchiBlox has worked with big names such as the Victorian and New South Wales governments, Lendlease, Häagen-Dazs and Tesla. We hear from Bill about the future of sustainable building practices, a critical topic for all Australians.

Here’s what we covered:

• What is the price comparison between a traditional housing vs modular?

• Is prefab buildings the future of sustainable housing?

• What kind of council approval do you need for building a prefab houses?

• Are there problems getting finance for this modular buildings?

• What are the limitations do prefab housing have?

• How prefab houses get around land zoning

• How the small house movement is shaping how we live

• What to consider when renovating a property

A truly insightful look into where innovation and architecture meets.

Website Links
Growing population: Episode 89
Cecille Weldon: Episode 62

Bill McCorkell Links:
If you’re interested in learning more about ArchiBlox click HERE

Work with Veronica? info@gooddeeds.com.au
Work with Chris? hello@wealthful.com.au

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Please note that this has been transcribed by half-human-half-robot, so brace yourself for typos and the odd bit of weirdness…

Veronica Morgan: You're listening to the elephant in the room property podcast where the big things that never get talked about actually get talked about. I'm Veronica Morgan, real estate agent buyer's agent, cohost of Foxtel's location, location, location Australia and author of a new book auction ready how to buy property even though you're scared shitless.

Chris Bates: I'm Chris Bates, financial planner, mortgage broker, and together we're going to uncover who's really making the decisions when you buy a property.

Veronica Morgan: Don't forget that you can access the transcript for this episode on the website as well as download our free fool or forecaster report. Which experts can you trust to get it right, the elephantintheroom.com.au.

Chris Bates: Please stick around for this week's elephant rider bootcamp and we have a cracking Dumbo, the weight coming up

Chris Bates: Before we get started, everything we talk about on this podcast is generally nature and should never be considered to be personal financial advice. If you're looking to get advice, please seek the help of a licensed financial advisor or buyers agent. They will tailor and document their advice to your personal circumstances. Now let's get cracking.

Veronica Morgan: I'm in the process of renovating my home. Well it's actually pretty much a complete rebuild and excluding the time it's taken to get the design right and approved and then find a builder and get all the documentation ready to commence works. The build is expected to take nine months and I'm about three months in and Ryan has already added a week or so to the schedule. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a new house or extension built offsite and then craned into place on a single day ready to be moved into within two months of that of what should happen on grand designs a few times actually, and I must say the ID does appeal. Prefabricated buildings have definitely come a long way from those demountable school rooms we're probably all familiar with and today we're talking with someone who lives and breathes this stuff and we're going to find out more about prefab homes that are more than tin sheds, ones that actually have a design aesthetic.

Veronica Morgan: Bill McCorkell is a fourth generation builder, second generation architect and first-generation manufacturer is passionate about architecturally designed sustainable buildings. And the intersection of architecture with prefabrication and new technologies. And in 2011, he founded Archie blocks or AKI blocks. Ah, keep logs as well. It's not Archie teacher is it notes Archiblox our sustainable prefabricated building business, building his team focused on sustainable urbanization and in particular researching how to deliver more affordable and efficient housing to the Australia market. And this will be interesting to find out more about on the back of some of our recent episodes about the impact of population growth in our cities. We're keen to hear more. Thank you for joining us bill.

Bill McCorkell: Absolute pleasure. And thank you for having me along.

Chris Bates: Thank you bill. Um, I mean there's lots of um, you know, people look at love property, right? And I, I'm looking at your website cause I think it's like property porn, right? Because it is just amazing. You look at these houses that you've built and um, yeah, I've looked at them for years and I just, I, you know, fascinated by the future of, you know, basically the new buildings and how you can build it all off site. How does it actually happen though? Like, how do you go from having a block of land to having a house on it? What's the kind of the build process, I guess open up the tent a little bit for us?

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. Okay. Well there's no, um, uh, there's no two ways about it. We still architects and builders, so there's lots of the normal steps and processes that we need to go to three to achieve the end result being the house. Uh, I guess what we looked suddenly at though is we're, how do you combine the best of architecture, the business sustainability, create mindful spaces that are then encapsulated within the aim built form. And so hadn't had you explore the eight that, and how do you make it more as cost effective as you can? At the end of the day, it's four walls and a roof. So there's only so many ways you can cut it up, but every site's different. Every site briefs, different constraints, budgets, et cetera, et cetera. So I first and foremost it start, we start with the Lego pieces being the building blocks. Um, clients come to us for, uh, with a breadth.

Bill McCorkell: We've got the Lego box, uh, P pieces have been put together, all had been created already. We then put them aside, bringing them back onto the paper arrangement in a way that suits the budget and the brief and the constraints of the site and that step a and so coming up with the concept design.

Veronica Morgan: So like modular?

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. So we find that in our business, like the cost efficiencies come through not only the building side but also the design side. So if we can get the cost of the digital pieces put together succinctly and well then you taking down on your Weist, you're taking down on the materials, they use the cost and the labor to put them all together. So with that in mind, coming up with the Lego pieces, putting the brief together, then coming back with a budget and the brief, again, being builders and architects, we've got a really unique capacity to go and show on a piece of paper.

Bill McCorkell: This is what your house will look like. And it also will cost this much as well. And so I find that's quite unique and the amount of times that we get disgruntled clients coming back up through the system because they've gone down a particular rabbit hole with a particular architect or designer, they've really invested emotionally a lot of time and effort into a particular product thereafter only to find out that it's 2030 40 50 60 70 80% above their initial budget. Yeah. Yeah. So I find find, you know from the whole concept of design and construct, you get really stick budgets. So brief budget design sign off authorities.

Chris Bates: Yeah. On the constraint side, cause I think it's a good word. Is there more constraints if you're going down a modular build way or is it easier versus kind of building, you know, a development I guess like is it easier to kind of just go on, you can plot, put your block of land or your building pretty much anywhere. If you've got the right support versus a building you can't build anywhere. Right. So is it easier to build with modular then kind of normal building techniques.

Bill McCorkell: with every form of building, there's always going to be a constraint or constraints are really vulgar word. So we'll say opportunities. So we create opportunities with the, the, the, the design parameters that we're given through transport. So throughout new South Wales, there's a particular transport width you can go to, which is different to Victoria. So we sort of put these things on the back of a truck run 2% of the site. Okay. People then talk about wheel moving, lots of air, a volume of air. But there's pros and cons. Look, there's pros and cons in everything that we look at. And how do you know, how do I weigh one over the other? So our constraints typically come through the size, the height, and the links. A typical module is 16 meters in length, four meters in height. So you get about a three meter internal height into the internal space by about five to five and a half minutes in width.

Bill McCorkell: But we've done two story voids before. So you've got module C on top of modules. Yeah. And having six meter high voids, you know, living spaces, we've created schools that have 16 meters clear spans and so, and you've got end to end to end. So we've got up to 30 meters of internal space clear, but it can manipulate the structure to create forms and volumes, whatever might fit the internal brief or the external brief that's given to us to.

Veronica Morgan: be a multiple of the actual size modules that you got.

Bill McCorkell: Correct. Right. Yeah. And then we have each module, there's costs not only involved in the transport but also in its installation at point of point of placement. Yeah.

Chris Bates: And so in terms of price, if you just kind of compared building a pretty nice looking houses, sustainable design versus going down the modular white, is it similar or is there a big gap?

Bill McCorkell: It's reasonably similar. Yeah. One of the biggest costs, one of the biggest efficiencies come through time. So I've got a, interestingly enough, a house being built on the block adjoining my house in down here in Melbourne, the uh, uh, the garden next door, the Valley just put a roof on in the last two or three days and they've been with stick frame, been put up, they've been on site now for 10 weeks. We get to what's called lockout, which is windows roof cladding in about 10 to 12 days. So we always tell clients you have an opportunity to have accelerating your life experience by looking the modular route and because you can then experience moving chapters pretty quickly.

Veronica Morgan: I could get my tenants in there a lot longer while it was being built in the factory or I could have still been earning income curricular demolished it.

Bill McCorkell: or not paying income whilst you're renting outside offsite. So it's, look, we say our costs start around about three and a half to $4,000 per square meter. Um, our typical house is around four to four and a half thousand dollars a square meter. That's, so that's architectural fee structure with those everything.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. I wonder about that because I was actually asked that question the other day because somebody asked me, what is your dollar per square meter? And I was like, well, 6,000 and I went, hang on a minute. No, because I haven't added in had an editing or the consultant's fees and I had an entity hadn't added in even landscaping. You know what I mean? It works out to be close to 7,000, 6,800 or something. But yeah, yeah, you're.

Bill McCorkell: 100%. And like when you do start adding all those peripheral costs and people sometimes get blinded by the square meter, right. That you see on a building contract and go, that is how much I'm spending. But in actual fact, you know, when you're spread it over multiple different.

Veronica Morgan: Plus the rent.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

New Speaker: In the total cost of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Bates: Be taking a small ass to, uh, you know, the dozens do families to a house that suits two families, a teenager, a family, teenage kids, you know, so your market's huge.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. And that's the other thing that you've touched on as well. Square made us like eight square made up costs money. Like you've got the flooring, the structure, the paging, the plasterboard, the lighting. And so I really energy efficient, smart, designed home. It doesn't need to be spread over many square meters. And so, you know, they always talk about the lost space in circulation. So if you can take well, well thoughtful, smart design, remove circulation and create really smart spaces, you lose heaps of square meterage which, you know, obviously it comes back to cost.

Chris Bates: Yeah. So do you think it's more attractive to people though that are a bit minimal mindset, more live small? Or do you think that the people who do want those big houses will go down the modular route?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, I think there's a, probably a misconception that, you know, I call this modularity small. I think, um, you know, well, thoughtful design, you can make it as big as you want. I think, um, furniture placement liked actually designing smart from the get go is important.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah, that's a good point actually. Because you know when you do get a traditional way house designed and generally you'll have a furniture plans in there to work out whether you can work in the room basically or whether the room works. Do you do that same thing with the modular.

Bill McCorkell: 100% and you have to, and so getting back to the earlier question is we've, you know, your big mansions that are built, obviously there's, there's a room and place for every type of house, but you know, on the flip side you need to do that. Like the energy efficiencies and smart design. You know, I look at even just the basics of cleaning the house at the end of the day.

Veronica Morgan: I know a lot of people that say I don't want an extra bathroom and means I have to clean it now. I am curious. All right, back to the truck width. So what's the width? Why, why can you carry, you know, a building around in Victoria versus new South Wales,

Bill McCorkell: Victoria, they say it's five and a half meters as a, as a width and new South Wales five but that's from outside spigot gas point gutter to outside point. So yeah, 100%. So there's no wiggle room in that. And the, and the transport companies rightly so, have extraordinarily strict, you know, on those widths.

Veronica Morgan: Half a meter. Does it make many to have, you haven't used South Wales design in a Victorian design,

Bill McCorkell: we typically saw for about 4.8 meters just cause it gives us wiggle room. You know, we don't know what type of sunshine we're going to put on the outside or you know, express volumes or the.

Veronica Morgan: Victorians actually ultimately get half a meter short. I have, you know, houses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, because if you the one size fits all, then they could have.

Chris Bates: other States that are much smaller, like three, three meters or anything like that.

Bill McCorkell: No, no, no. Okay. Well we have looked at explored opportunities or opportunities of heading down to Tazzy. Um, and then you're more constrained by the width that is led on the, um, the sea ferries.

Veronica Morgan: It's carry on people when in building, they don't have to think about logistics in that quite that way. You know, you've got to think about where your materials get delivered and all the rest of it and how they get there.

Chris Bates: But if you had opened up an office in, you know, or a building site in as he, you could build them there. Goodness.

Bill McCorkell: 100%. Yeah. Yup, yup, yup, yup.

Chris Bates: And so are they all built in Melbourne?

Bill McCorkell: Yes. Yeah.

Chris Bates: So if you already want to build on in Sydney, cause I know you've done a lot, you know, in somewhere like Avalon or you know, et cetera. There's, you know, you just put them on a truck and drive them all up.

Bill McCorkell: It's just another thousand kilometers and the actual transport itself is not overly expensive. Okay. So a to B, like you know, the typical cost, there's these, they talk about these rules of thumb and there's always a rule of thumb in building an architecture, you know, kitchen bench, 600 mill, your bench top of bench top 1.2 meters, et cetera, et cetera. So the same with the rule of thumb in the transport world. I say, you know, logistically it's costs around two and a half to $4,000 to actually transport your, your, your module from Melbourne around Victoria and add another thousand dollars to get up to Sydney. So you bet a four or $5,000 for the actual transport where the costume, yeah, yeah, yeah. But where the costs come in is the crane logistics around the power lines and traffic management. So you get really, um, you can get, yeah, it's all site specific.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking that because when I was looking on a website and I thought, Oh, maybe I could have gotten down that path. And then my streets around my place are really narrow. I've got, if my builder said to me other day said, you know, I looked at your site, I thought, great, you've got three street frontages which I do is in inner Sydney. Um, but each of those streets is the width of the lane. It's to be a nightmare trying to get trucks in the parts of it.

Chris Bates: Have you been able to do it on those streets?

Bill McCorkell: Um, we've, we've had all sorts of uh, um, creative solutions. Um, we had one time where we had a crane build another crane to lift over an eight story building to place it in cause the street was too narrow. Wow. But that was softly, that was extraordinary.

Veronica Morgan: Was that in Brunswick.

Bill McCorkell: Uh, that was in Collingwood.

Veronica Morgan: cause I'd noticed on your website there's one in Brunswick. That's what made me think, Oh, you could actually, you know.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah, yeah. No, that was a, um, ah, that was a bit of a story. Um, we had the, um, all the approval from all the, the logistics and transport two weeks out from installation. We get the phone call from the traffic company saying, I don't think we can actually lift the house in from that point. So we had to do a SMAD scramble, you know, you learn from your mistakes. Mad scramble. We went and found out who the D one Dean of this actual typhus or the faculty head. He might've weighed with me that we wouldn't be able to do what we needed to do. Like it was $10. So we used a front, um, for court for their, the, the, the, the TAFE set, the crane up there set another crane up to set that crane up and boomed and it made the length or it made a module.

Veronica Morgan: Must of been stressful.

Bill McCorkell: Um, Oh, we've had a few moments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had another is would be a good television show.

Veronica Morgan: No, tell us lots of stories.

Bill McCorkell: We had, we had one, we had one where, um, another transport company, I'd say 30 ton modules and now five and a half meter high by five and a half, 18 meters and 30 tons. Each cause of the concrete fall we had in there. And over the 18 meters, you couldn't get more than 25 mil deflection of the 18 meters. And the only way that these could be transported from Dairman out to the Danenong train line was um, on, uh, on these things called vessel carriers and a vessel carriers I didn't know at the time was bits of spaghetti and you place these modules on the top of the spaghetti so they can ride 150 mils off the road. But these bits of spaghetti have no structural stability. So we had this aha moment and had to go to a traffic engineer to design these cages at that got built in Tasmania from especially bloke down there brought back up to Melbourne. What over the top of each of these six modules, I gave that structural integrity. Do they intake it out to a site? So there's Whoa. Yeah. And that was, that was a little bit more intense.

Veronica Morgan: And more expensive, no doubt as well.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah, that was, but look, that was a government project and the government was quite amazing because the distinctly, you know, they realize these things had to occur. We had something in our contract that kind of covered us for that. So that was a, and it was a joint effort between us and the government and the, uh, our contractors.

Chris Bates: So what are the government though in that situation? You've got an interest the line, right? They're going to be looking out for themselves, but you know, let's say, you know, Joe blogs wants to kind of get, you know, a modular happen. How easy is it to kind of get all the councils on board that I'm going to move this house? Is it a nightmare or do they try to stop it as much as they can? Uh, we had Northern beaches in new South Wales was one of our first installs up there.

Bill McCorkell: Um, we had, uh, a meeting. We've, I think 18 people all representing different departments for the sh the council also, they could get, um, an understanding of what it was to have a modular house taken a one and a half kilometers through one of their roads. And so it was one of the first, you know, first of the kind up there, um, similar in city of Stonnington down here in Melbourne. Um, uh, we had to get the mayor in at the time had to stand in to actually say, okay, no, they allowed to do it on, I can't remember exactly what he did, but we got an influence from an influence who went into assisted because I had no concept of what it was for a modular home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, in answer to your earlier statement about modulars come a long way or offsite construction has come a long way, people still have the misconception of it being, um, uh, a donor or a mining camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Bates: But, you know, I guess they're not really that, I mean, so what, what some of the bills you're doing now that like, you know, how, how, how assessable are they? Because, you know, I know that your price point, I mean probably a little bit higher, they're not really going down the affordability range, but where are you going in that direction? Or,

Bill McCorkell: uh, look, we set the business up originally to create affordable architecture. That's something that really, really passionate about. Uh, and it's how do you do that is through repetition. So, um, we've third of repetition in the business, then we can create cost efficiencies. Um, anyone that comes into the business of archi blocks these days, I say there's three major things you need to think about. It's repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. It allows us to drive pricing down. Um, we, we do sit, well I think probably cost per square meter. We are cost effective compared to a traditional architectural build, but we'd by no means pushing the limits for volume, house housing, which are, you know, from memory psyche. And I close to a thousand to $1,500 a square meter. But we offer a very different product, extraordinarily different products.

Chris Bates: So it's kind of like the Tesla sort of story, right? You know, no one wanted to buy, you know, electric cars. Um, and so they built an amazing electric car ever and proved that it could be faster and better than, you know, other cars and then people want started to want them and then that made the business profitable and now they're starting to bring down their price of their cars and cause they've been able to build that kind of scale. So do you think that at some point though, we'll stop building at, you know, houses on site, you know, do you see that in the foreseeable future?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, well, no. There's certain countries around the world that uh, having offsite build homes are desirable as opposed to onsite. Uh, I don't think Australia has made that quantum leap as yet. I believe that will happen once you do create really cost effective housing solutions for offsite construction. Um, a lot of our costs come through the need of the S the structure that we require to transport it from ADB. So, and it's also, we still build with traditional building methods. So we've still got a carpenter. The cost X amount of dollars a square meter, you know, skilled labor or skilled as opposed to a skilled laborer, they might. So efficiencies and cost really only start to come down when you look at not only the material wasted but the tried and the labors that go into it. Um, and will the happen 100% that will happen?

Chris Bates: Will you lose the personalization at that point?

Bill McCorkell: Not through repetition. Yeah. Cause you still like, you know, there's the famous sign from Henry Ford was I create 18, 18, 18 colors of car and they all come in black. Yeah. So I'll just kind of, our mentality is like you can, it's still a desire, like it's still a product. It's four walls a roof, but there's no reason why that products isn't achievable and accessible. If it's mindful, sustainable, you get all these benefits on top of a roof over your head. That's cost effective.

Veronica Morgan: How do you do that? So you, your modular, cause I know we in sustainability for argument's sake, yeah. Requires the building to really take into account the aspect argument site. So there's one example. Um, so with the modular building, how do you make sure that it is able to offer that flexibility around aspect in order to make it more sustainable?

Bill McCorkell: So passive house is pretty important these days. Um, so creating a passive house is literally making sure there's no ALA huge. And so if you create a home that's got no Aly hitch kind of, um, knocks on the head a little bit about orientation because you're still gonna use minimal, um, uh, uh, internal environment like air con or whatnot to heat or call a house. So what we always start off with is, you know, creating a really sound seal to the house and that means there's no air leakage, there's no air leakage. Then you can maintain the internal environment really easily. Obviously there's massive benefits from the North facing side. You know, obviously there's massive benefit from closing out the South, the West and letting a bit of the East, but that's just through natural design. Like any architect will look at a site and go, well, my ex, my view might be behind me, but that's my North and that's what I'm going to benefit.

Bill McCorkell: Like we always do start with orientation. Yeah. But it's not such a factor when you don't have mass. And so because we don't have thermal mass like concrete or bricks and they're the ones that store the energy and so that's where you get your most benefit out of solar orientation. So we don't have those to store the heat. Then, you know, we look at other techniques, which is just well sealed buildings and.

Veronica Morgan: insulation on presume.

Bill McCorkell: 100%. Yep. Yeah, yeah man. I insulation ceiling. Yeah. Like it's really interesting. I did a with completed just recently a house in um, uh, in Mulvin walking from the old house to the new house and the old house had no, um, under-floor installation or any say, shape of lighting the, and you feel on your feet cold. The warmth of the new to the oldest. It's quite extraordinary.

Chris Bates: So the elephant in the room is 100% for you.

Veronica Morgan: The reason that Chris and I do these podcasts is because we passionately believe that property buyers can do it better. We really want to help all of you understand all the risks, but also the ways in which you can avoid your elephant making the decisions.

Chris Bates: Well, what we would love for you to do is just to share this episode and share other episodes with people around you that are going through the property process.

Veronica Morgan: Give us a review on iTunes. Five-star please will be very appreciated because this is about making sure that we all benefit from the wonderful information that our guests have been sharing with us.

Chris Bates: so bill, you're not just doing whole houses, you know, instead of just knocking down the back of the house and getting a builder in to do an extension, a lot of what you do is actually the extension portion, 100% and how does it actually work? So you, you know, you're mainly doing the living areas or you're adding bedrooms or you know, how you actually, what actually parts are you doing?

Bill McCorkell: So the most common one we do would be kitchen, living, dining, bathroom, laundry and two bedrooms. And so one on top of the other visions upstairs and downstairs. Yeah. And like again, if you look at access being, you know, cost prohibitive cost factor in a building, um, if you, if you're taking out the need for laborers and carpenters, electricians to lug the materials and tools for money into the house through to the other, it kind of makes sense to be able to in a day lift and both out the back and then you don't feel totally done but does the trout. But it's really like, you know, smart, well-designed, smart, prefab is all about the time, the losing as much time as you can on site. So the quicker we're on or off, the better it is. We don't have, we've got some disaster stories where we on site for far too long, but we also got some amazing success stories.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. So you've got to prepare the site obviously. Yup. So you know, you still gotta do all the groundwork and services and everything else that is required. So there's a period of time, I mean how long would you normally laugh at.

Bill McCorkell: two weeks, right? Yup. Yup. Yeah. Cause remember all of our services are either underslung because we've got 400 mil off the thereabouts off the ground or they're running through the substructure. Right. So, and you've got little manifolds that come out the side and you're literally just tapping in.

Chris Bates: So is there any um, downsides to your product that you still trying to work on? Like big weaknesses in the product where you think, you know, the traditional building I can still got us in this space that we're trying to fix.

Bill McCorkell: Uh, well materials. Okay. Yeah. So I, I sort of mentioned it earlier, the concrete. Yeah, we have done concrete before but it's a costly thing cause there's waste and weight adds cost to crane and transport.

Chris Bates: Where would you want the longer on the floor?

Bill McCorkell: On the floor,

Veronica Morgan: lay the slab and then use the structural slab.

Bill McCorkell: We have done that before. Like we've actually set it all in the form work and then it's more time on site. And I saw you sort of like trying to marry up, um, we've used different products to give some into style products, but it's still not the same. It's not the same, you know, if it's not, you know, it's that whole WY saying you've gone and hit the brick. If it's not brick, it's not brick. Yeah. So anybody, we, we want to be treated in the materials we use them. And I think sort of that, that's pretty important from an architectural sense.

Chris Bates: So from a sustainability point of view though, let's say, um, you know, you are thinking that way and a lot more people are thinking that way. How is it actually more sustainable then just going down a traditional builder? Yes. You know, there might be, uh, efficiencies in, you know, the man hours, but what in terms of actually other things, what, what is it?

Bill McCorkell: Um, we've got a really good rule of thumb we bought recently into the business is been wastage. So how many bins are exit at the facility each month? So we've gone from 15 to three, right? So that's just us being a lot smarter in the way that efficiency. So from a sustainable point of view, wastage is a pretty big one. Um, you then go down to, um, efficiencies in space. So one of the things we mentioned earlier was, you know, eight square made a cost money, but each square meter actually costs money to sustain a heat and cool. Um, well designed sustainable homes, you still and leave with them for 85% of the year, but it's just those 15% times of the year where it's, he's going to be too cold or too hot that you do need to put some environmental, yeah.

Veronica Morgan: So you talk about passive housing, so that's basically where you say there's a tart house and they've got Bence or something that take, I mean, how did they work again, we, we interviewed Cecille Weldon some time back in the NTD touch. Talk about this. Yeah. So explain that for us.

Bill McCorkell: So passive house is basically keeping the no air leakage. Um, I touched on earlier this, this project we did for the government, the, there was, it was a sub, it was a station to station. It was a, um, a, it was a signal control center. And within that you had to achieve a 250 PSI room rating. So that was literally when you think that a standard task got 40 PSI in it, they had to go and put a pressure hose in there and expand it to turn in 50 PSI. Wow. And that was a very environment and it passed, thank goodness. Tick two, boom. Outside the room at that time. But that was great.

Chris Bates: Why do they want that though?

Bill McCorkell: So it was, it had had to do with near suppression, a fire suppression unit because it literally was the control box for the whole in long train line. Right. And if that burned, then they'd lose all that infrastructure safety point of view. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Bates: Do you do a lot in commercial space.

Bill McCorkell: We, last year we built eight schools and the secret child control center before that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well there's a, there's an initiative with yeah and better features. Yeah, there was an initiative that I believe the new South Wales has taken up as well. The Vic government did a couple of years ago where they had a big push towards called permanent modular buildings and it kind of makes sense like if they are modular, it's just a bit of a play on words. Um, but it's, it's from the way we say it, it's like we still procure a building, like it's still four walls and a roof. Um, it just happens that we built them off site.

Veronica Morgan: So the point being it doesn't have to be temporary just because it was good offsite.

Bill McCorkell: No, but we have yet to occur. But, and I'm thinking of three clients. We've come to a snow fall one just happened last week. You have had the house for all the building there for a period of time. But now I want to go and pack it up, take it off and still the land. Wow. It's pretty cold. Cool as well.

Chris Bates: And what are they gonna do with the house?

Bill McCorkell: Oh the one he got bought another piece of go and leave their house. Crack caravans. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Veronica Morgan: They got a new one.

Bill McCorkell: No, that is fun to go off and you know, use the house they've got. They like the house. It likes them obviously.

Chris Bates: Couldn't they just buy another house from you and sell it and get something new?

Bill McCorkell: They could do but it like Costco up. So we, we had, um, costs 12 years, uh, I E S or this particular car, the client, the third first one we're thinking of. We finished the house maybe six years ago and so just cost a guy and a half.

Veronica Morgan: So he's an early adopter. He's an early adopter actually.

Chris Bates: Um, is that, where's that cost going up though? Cause I think it's interesting. Is it the materials, the materials and labor and the, and obviously the labor cause wage costs, costs. Yep. Can you figure out ways to keep that material cheaper by buying more Skyler or,

Bill McCorkell: we try and buy Australian quality. So we've got our, had heaps of opportunities to buy off shore. Um, but we've always as a business said, well let's just by Australia now let's, we'll probably change and change in the future. I think things NATO with volume, um, especially if you want to go down that more. Yeah. More it. Yeah. And that's when you start looking at, you know, you purchasing all of your first materials. Like you'd own timber, your own glazing, window frames, joinery steel. Like you can get a lot of costs, efficiencies in buying offshore, no doubt about it. Yeah.

Chris Bates: And then I guess if then your joining the companies that are making those things as well. Yeah. You know, you can keep reducing the margins and the products and.

Bill McCorkell: that's the whole thing about, you know, being in business, in building, it's a race to the bottom, you know, so being the bottom, the, the most cost effective. I remember years ago when I was doing, I run an architectural business and we had a particular building company that was engaged to do a 75 apartment development for my client. And they were one of the very early adopters in going to procurement through the Chinese market. And they had a building building contract of about $12 million and the next cheapest was $22 million.

Bill McCorkell: Wow. When they smashed it, like that was, um, this business, this was for this particular business. It was one of their first forays into the residential market and this business now turns over a saw last year, they'd do a four or $500 million a year.

Chris Bates: Are they're using lots of combustible cladding or can they probably have in the top, but it was in July.

Bill McCorkell: It was interesting, like, you know, newly adopted for them was going like, well how can we actually get really cost effective solutions and yeah. Trying to run off to China. Yeah.

Veronica Morgan: So how do councils view the modular building?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, early on we would never say that we were modular builders. We just always spoke about us being architects. Um, these days, uh, I mean there's particular councils in, in Melbourne in particular, we might do at least five to 10 projects a year in. Wow. So do they like us? I don't think, I think it's just part of the, it's just part of the natural building environment these days becoming more so

Chris Bates: you got to one of the neighbors mainly, right? I mean after the council will say yes or no, but you know, if the neighbors are kicking up that's probably more likely to get through. So is that a lot of your challenges helping the neighbors educate them? We were funneling, funnily, funnily enough we went in once I know what's coming, it's still going to be as noisy as long. Yeah.

Bill McCorkell: We did an install a couple of weeks ago now, um, and seven years ago, six years ago when we started doing installs in a urban Melbourne, you'd get truckloads of people would be there two weeks ago, two weeks ago, I think there was three or four people from the office. I was thinking, I was thinking it's really weird, like, you know, six years ago, it was a beautiful day. I was one of the first spring days. Yeah. But it's interesting. They, um, it's sort of lost the fascination a little bit, particularly in urban areas where it is a bit more commonplace.

Chris Bates: So who's your major competitors then? I guess if it's common I sent didn't know was that many players. Ah, this market,

Bill McCorkell: look there's, there's AKI blocks. Um, we always say prebuilt. Yes, yes. Um, prebuilt who's, um, who's in the same marketplace as us and mod Skype.

Chris Bates: So really only three big players at a,

Bill McCorkell: there's a lot of other peripheral pliers that sort of bounce around. I think we're the only ones that really do the addition market. So we were, we've got rightly or wrongly, that's a decision we made a little while ago. There's certain things we won't do in the audition market. Like we've, we were very adamant these days. It does happen occasionally that we won't do any work out iterations to the existing dwelling because again, time on site, I don't want to spend time and so it's, I get to sit in and out. Fantastic.

Chris Bates: But they're not really competitors really. Cause your, your major competitors are probably going to be the big builders right there. and traditional builders and.

Bill McCorkell: traditional builders and architects. Yeah. And look, we, you know, I think there's a, there's a, there's a place for each person in the marketplace. Um, I think, you know, the people that in the same area industry area that we are, I think they all do great work. Um, I'm an architect by, by profession and the builder by trade, but I've come up, I've run architectural business of for six, eight years. So that's my first love.

Chris Bates: In terms of going outside of Australia, have you thought that, is there anyone over the, over the, around the world that, uh, got a, you know, you're probably the only person doing this out around the world, that you think these guys are really killing it and you know, a lady in the Y like countries and types of country companies like you?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, well, um, yeah, Japan, there's some great examples of some businesses that do in excess of 22,000 pray five times a year. Yeah, slightly more than we do.

Veronica Morgan: I actually saw one of the grand designs that Kevin McCloud, English version, it's a very old episode. There was this couple that had a home built in a factory in Germany and w much was made about the fact that the crew gets in the van from Germany and drives all the way across Europe and over to England. And basically there's not one screw leftover at the end that's so incredibly organized and every single bolt has been made and labeled and yeah. Yeah. Except that, you know, without the, um, the requirement for instructions quite a bit. Uh, with the G and the Swedish instructions. Yeah. It was quite an amazing episode just to, to watch the whole idea of that planning, not just in the design of the building, but the full on execution of everything right down to the last bolt.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. So that's the fourth house is the name of that business. Yeah. And from the Northern European States or countries, that kind of does make a lot of sense in terms of the shutdown for the winter periods, um, in Scandinavia, right. You of course, those Northern European countries, 60 70% of homes are prefab, whereas in Australia it's under five much better weather, don't we? Yeah.

Chris Bates: Yeah. And so let's say I've got on your website, I love them and I'm like, you know, can the builder ID, I just want this done, I want to, you know, modular's the best for me. Are they having problems? I, when they go to the bank and actually getting the finance and is there are banks coming on board and because Mike's greatest sends to the bank, you know, it's probably less risk, but they're probably still got a perception problem where they're not really understanding that, you know, it's actually a good result for everyone.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. So banks which banks have that, that the um, uh, the cautionary tale of built off site, not adding value to site. So although they've got a $600,000 building contract that's been built out of Levison and the site sitting over in Armadale, there's no tenure. There's that connection. So that's the first, you know, leap of faith from the banking point of view. Is it a leap of faith? Probably not. I mean, we're still covered by all of our insurances, all the state warranty insurances, all of our local building insurances. So they're not really out of risk.

Chris Bates: Your business has been going for quite a few years. You're not, you know, you start your first job. Yup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a six,

Bill McCorkell: I think we're eight years into the business now. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's from our point of view, they did become more cautious about three months, up to about three months ago leading up to the last election. Um, but they seem to have really relaxed a little bit again. Yeah. So it's funny like you can go to, you can go to the same bank, but speak to 10 different people within that bank and you get a different answer.

Veronica Morgan: But does that because it's not commonly understood? 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So somebody gets it, we'll go, all right, let's put together a deal. And somebody doesn't get it. Go too hard. I just want the traditional way.

Bill McCorkell: Well, we've had instances before where finance institution look at what we and say, but it's just bolted onto site. A can come and unbolt it and take it away when you're not there. I'm just like, you're kidding me. How did you ever seen house removals taking down that old Edwardian ripping down the Hume highway that's been taken from ACU?

Veronica Morgan: You know, they'd stolen a house. Yeah, that'd be a first, yeah. Ah, sorry. Okay. So I on your site in particular that you could see that it lends itself to if someone's got a weekend or, or you know, some nice bit of acreage or in our Island somewhere or maybe not an Island, you couldn't get it there. Um, that, you know, you can, you can plonk it almost anywhere on the site as long as you can get services to it, et cetera, et cetera. But, so what are the limitations? So if you have an urban site, you know, or off the front of your house does need some renovating. I mean, obviously you said that that's not, not business that you want to go for, but what are the limitations? If you do, just want to put an addition on.

Bill McCorkell: Um, I think you've noted in your earlier conversation with your own house is access to salt. We had an example of a pill beach on the central coast. Um, amazing location itself was almost a suburb within Sydney. But yeah, unbeknownst to my design architect who made the first visit, it's five K's back up. The roads are windy. Yeah. So we've had that happen twice.

Veronica Morgan: The Google earth is your friend. He goes.

Bill McCorkell: how far out do you start to add another one where we were about 15 K's from the site and those two trays happened to be on the road and we actually blocked 4.5 meters. Oh my God. It was the middle of the Bush. So we just knocked on the farmer's door and said, you might just go through, no, no, just drive for your headaches. We just tried to draw a three, a petty. So there's always, yeah, I mean w I was at a site, uh, last weekend down at point Leo, and it's a, an amazing estate, but to get to the site that the clients want to look at building on you actually, literally, you'd have to probably take out 150 meters of 40 year old trees to get the access there. And I'm like, no, you might have his land. Yeah, yeah. But you know, we sit and speak to the property manager and go, okay, well that's one ex-US. Surely you bring high onto the property. Yes we do. What's the excess? Or that's off this eclipse road down here. It's like, we'll say, so it's just about, you know, you gotta ask the right question.

Chris Bates: So what about these, you know, as always, please, you can go online and you can say, I can buy 50 acres, right? And then you look at the zoning of that 50 acres and you realize you can't build on it because it's, um, environmental, uh, you can only have one dwelling on it, um, that Rawlings what's already on there. So you've got to knock that down. Um, but you've got all these 50 acres and you think, wow, I'd love to have a little demountable house in the Bush or et cetera. Is it, um, is there ways that your product though does skip past the potentially it's not fitting there forever and it's not into the ground?

Bill McCorkell: Yup. Yup, yup. Um, so we don't like on that situation, you've got the two, you've got a property and you want to have it can put a second house on there. They was talk about each cancel is slightly different, but they talk about four water points. So first being a laundry trough, a water pan, a kitchen sink and a shower. So have you have three of those fall then it's a non habitable space, I. E. it's not fit for continue habitation. Right. So that's the first thing that we'd look at. And we've done that on numerous occasions where we go to the client and we said, look, as part of the building permit we need to decommission your kitchen in the old house or coordinate. We're never going to use that anyway. Right. Or you don't put the laundry.

Bill McCorkell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we're doing, um, you know, the proverbial granny flat, um, and you've got that, the, the issue with the jewelry, then you always do saddle, let's not put the laundry trough in and we'll get it by that white shower out in the back or something. Well, no, no, it's all bath. But functioning bathroom, just don't put a laundry trough in there or put the shower at the back or a bath. Yeah, yeah. We always try the bath. And recently we got picked up by the building's fair and you know, putting two and two together, a bath can hold 450 mils of more of water. That's how it becomes a swimming pool. And so you need to enclose it with a 1.5 minute high fence.

Veronica Morgan: Oh no, nothing. Just did some laundry. They can go to the local laundromat or they local laundromats that way.

Bill McCorkell: Um, but there are other ways. I were doing a job at the moment at park, which is about two hours Northeast, Northwest of Canberra. Um, and we are going through a particular day. I loophole, no lipo, um, uh, Dai compliance about the pre, uh, prefabrication.

Chris Bates: And so the, there is a bit of a, you know, if you type in tiny house into Google, you know, it's obviously a phenomenon around the world where, you know, people are fascinated by the ability to live small, minimal, et cetera. Uh, and a lot of these tiny houses, they're putting them on trailers with wheels. Um, and then it's like a caravan and you know, it's got self-contained, uh, you know, water and fill it up and things like that. Is that a way that people can use your type of product potentially? Do you think you'll ever go in that direction where you can basically take your archi block anywhere just with the trailer?

Bill McCorkell: Yup. Um, uh, yes. How is it different from a caravan?

Veronica Morgan: Well that looks like a caravan, right?

Chris Bates: So they look beautiful little house wheels, but the wheels are really just pointless because the wheels are just there to pretend that it's movable, but it sits there forever.

Bill McCorkell: Yup. Yup. Um, we have, I mean, look, being six, eight meters by five meters by four meters, then it's a more substantial trailer home. Yes. Um, we have had clients, uh, who have, who have had the opportunities of looking in and relocating further down the track. We, you know, the tiny house movement, I think it's an amazing movement. You know, it came about after the hurricane Katrina back in the States and that's where the movement really got a lot of traction from. Um, but you know, we always say that you've got to still live in the house and having, you know, a tiny home, I think there's a lot of romantic notions with it, but you still got to create a usable space that, you know, it's in cold environments or hot environments, you need to be usable. So we say, look, there's elements of all tiny home that you take onto a house from spice efficiency, um, put that into an occupy box house on a bigger trailer. And yes, you can move it around.

Chris Bates: So, but it's interesting though, you're, what you're saying is a lot of the principles of that in terms of design, well use space. Well, you can do that in your design, but you don't, it's not, it's, you feel like you've got to be a much bigger and you're not going to have enough space, you know?

Bill McCorkell: Yeah. Agree. I mean, one of the things that we drive in the businesses, uh, mindfulness and so you've got a crowded space. Each be mindful in, and a mindful space is not something what you just, you're living on top of each other. But again, there's lots of good reasons for tiny homes. Um, I just don't feel that it's a reason to live small. I think you build small, but you need to design big.

Veronica Morgan: I think. Yeah. And there's one extreme too much space and just a hundred media rooms and one sort of silliness. Um, versus, you know, Tanya has a say Clever's be like designing a boat to live on or a plane, you know, I mean they'd small spaces and it's really clever and creative in terms of what you can do, but it's almost like project rather than a real way to leave, don't you reckon?

Chris Bates: Yeah. I mean I think there's, it's interesting looking at Ikea for example, they're doing, you know, robotics, you know, cause they've got, you know, lots of customers all over the world. Some are living in like a 30 square meter, two bedroom unit with bathroom. You know, et cetera. And they've got to say, well, I need to put a bed in here, so let's make that robotic and things like that. And have you kind of looked at those top of why of yes, it is only a container bot. It can move into a, a studio, into a bedroom, into a lounge room. Have you considered looking at those things,

Bill McCorkell: the concepts for various people on, on, um, uh, manipulation of space, you know, and how you can move a wall and then you go from a dining room to the kitchen to a living space or whatever they use might be come out of it draws. Yeah, some interesting stuff. Awesome. Fascinating. Yeah. So I think there's lots of things you can weave everything. Like you can sort of pick hen, pick the best of everything and you can put it into one space and it's an amazing eye concept. Same with tiny house. You can hand pick, you know, great ideas from that and, and, and placed them into your own home.

Veronica Morgan: So what's the main reason somebody pick up the phone or come to you?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, so we find I, they lock our style,

Veronica Morgan: you know, so I think that's the foremost, yeah.

Bill McCorkell: And I think, you know, it's one thing I'm really proud of as a business owner is X. We actually have created a brand through our style. Yeah. And I had a really, I had, sorry, the guy who, who came up with the name of archi blocks, it was selling a house down the coast and he had a piece of land next to the house and the agent said to him, this house you've got here, that's amazing, but the house next door, it's something you could do an AKI blocks on. It's like, it's my name. So I, for me it was like really cool. Yeah. So it was really cool that it became a brand. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's, yeah. So we, people come to us because of that. We also, we also, myself and my wife Christine, who worked collaboratively, collaboratively in the business together, we always do strive for sustainability and mindful living. Um, and I think that's sort of taken up with a lot of our clients have that notion as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're mad. You know why not to take up semblance of the game, different bits and pieces.

Chris Bates: Every week we hear incredible stories of the dumb things. Property buyers do, dumb things that end up costing a whole lot of money and or a whole lot of stress mistakes that can be avoided. Please, bill, can you give us an example of a property Dumbo, we can all learn what not to do from these stories.

Bill McCorkell: Uh, probably Dumbo would be, don't be an architect and try and buy a house because invariably you would design it before you even turn up on auction day and you'll leave disappointed.

Veronica Morgan: Oh, you paid too much. I pay too much. Yes. What happened there?

Bill McCorkell: Also, I've done it countless times, countless time. Um, where you know, you get excited about searching for properties and you find the ideal house and then you spend hours and hours and hours of creating what that's gonna look like before you even go and see it. See it.

Chris Bates: Well, I think even if you are not, not even an architect, you do that, right? Like you still get the ideas of what could happen. I could have this room there and you've got no idea what you got. You got less idea. At least you've got an idea that what you can and can't do.

Bill McCorkell: Yes. Yep. Yeah, that's a fair point. And I kind of know how much is going to cost to build a two. Yeah. Yeah.

Veronica Morgan: What's going to cost to buy it?

Bill McCorkell: Yeah, that'd be right. No, no, no.

Chris Bates: Did you end up paying a bit?

Bill McCorkell: The current house we do have. Yes. Yeah. Did you fall in love with it before we bought it? My wife did. Yes. Yeah. And I over-designed it. It was a double whammy. I have a designer, I have a cost to that because you Nakia box. Yes. Yes. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, of course we did. But your neighbor's not obviously, um, no, no, no, no. I did suggest it. Of course you did. I would have to follow you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah. It's just like, it's funny though, isn't it? Like the, um, they often side don't do work for friends or relatives. And I always find, well if you can't do a good job for a relative or friend and who can, who can he do a good job for?

Veronica Morgan: I'd be so upset if a relative, a friend actually went to someone else. I know I've got their best interests at heart, you know, I imagine you'd be the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bates: And so is there any point as points way around, you know, what's the common misconception? Obviously you know, that people might have where they, you know, what's your roadblock? Like it's not price cause it's similar price. Maybe it's a bit more logistics and things like that, but where does the person where you think they're going to sign out and they don't sign up? What's, what's the big education problem that they've potentially got?

Bill McCorkell: I think with any design process, it's communication. Yeah. So if you can't communicate during the design stages on both what the aesthetics going to feel and look like as well as the budget and price then and clients get led. So sorry, I say again, plants lead the conversation. So I find from our point of view, if we don't communicate what the constraints or the opportunities are, if they're not priced correctly and they'd client starts to lead the conversation, then the budget and brief often spirals out of control quickly. So therefore that's where we find the biggest, um, uh, fall off Fridays is just when clients start to lead the conversation. And you don't need to listen to clients. I always say it's one of those things. It isn't, you suggest something, if a client suggests something else back twice, then you work with that.

Chris Bates: So it's more a case of, you know, they're not understanding what it costs to add all these features and then all of a sudden they get a price and it's 1.2 million, you're like, and then a lot, well actually I don't want to, what do I lose? What I cut back. Yep. And then it's a process as I don't want it cause I can't get, what I want

Bill McCorkell: wait do these days is you know, he's design, here's the budget, here's the brief TT Tico matches a lot to, you know, I put an upgrade of kitchen appliances and bits of pieces. Yep. We can do that. Let's sign the variation form. He's in new country. He's a new process summit is that we move forward. Right. You know, so that there, we'd lead that conversation.

Chris Bates: At least it's something called like fixed price. It was, right. Because I think it's a bit of a problem that people are doing renovations is there's a, you know, two different contracts, right? One's a contract plus, you know, it could potentially be changed over time and then one's more of a fixed price contract with a builder. And can you explain how people can sometimes get themselves into problems with that?

Bill McCorkell: Uh, so one thing we often do as a provisional sum, that's where you put an estimate into the contract is to do with site services. So site service has been running up the gas or the plumbing and the sewer or the water or the electricity. That's often a provisional sum for us. So that's where, you know, if you've got to upgrade, uh, an example is I went to a client only last two weeks ago. We had an allowance even before we went to site for the storm water. I'd go to site, there's an old dam pop that comes off the back. It goes through a retaining wall through a raised garden bed and then dispills into an open drain. Now that's not going to be compliant code. And so I know for a fact it's going to cost the client another $15,000 to upgrade.

Chris Bates: That wasn't in the provision. No. Yeah, no services. Uh, that's common that you've got that. But I mean in terms of the more build side, like is it, you know, cause I think a lot of builders do provision of it's going to cost somewhere 400, but it could be up to 500 and some will use like a, it's four 50.

Bill McCorkell: Yup. Uh,

Chris Bates: because you always, it must be just.

Veronica Morgan: the provisions aren't usually that large upside.

Bill McCorkell: provision for the overall house.

Chris Bates: Yeah. Like instead of the contract, you know, you're starting to get built and then it's like, Oh, actually no, it's a bit more expensive, actually not, it's a bit more expensive then as you're building it's getting more expensive, but you can negotiate kind of like a fixed price.

Bill McCorkell: Yes. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So cost plus over fixed. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I would never recommend doing a cost plus. Yeah. No. And I wouldn't do that with me either or anyone. And the reason being is like in people need to have control and caps and from my point of view, it just adds a lot more time and effort, you know, from the building point of view because you want to be fair and reasonable. Um, but if you don't have the capacity to keep other people down the chain fair and reasonable than it just, it can open up cans of worms. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Bates: Yeah. And so let's say I wanted to experience the home before I signed the dotted line. How do you give me, you know, do you have a display suite or how do you give me that? This is what it's going to feel like because that's one of the benefits, right? IBM bascially Oh, and I've actually stayed in one of you as an Airbnb. I don't actually know too. It was to this morning. I, um, I started the one in Crammorn. You've got that, uh, you know, as a house and it's a three level with a rooftop terrace. Yep. All right. You don't remember every single one.

Bill McCorkell: I had an embarrassing situation recently where a client came up and said, I'll be like, how are you going? I'm like, I couldn't, I couldn't be to him. I didn't, he told me who he was on my stomach wasn't like that. I worked out who he was and I could give him,

Veronica Morgan: Oh look, I have, I had that, you know, I can't really know him, but I can remember the house. You bought the house. You sold the whole story around the move, but I can't remember.

Chris Bates: So how do you do that? Do you have, you got like go to the houses or you've got display suites, things to really give us that. They are, if you've got like, I don't know how.

Bill McCorkell: we have tried VR. Um, that's hasn't been very, that was never very successful and that was ripped out and taken back to the kid's bedroom. Uh, the um, uh, so displays, we have had displays, we do open houses and if the client's really red hot, um, we go through the facility with them and just walk through like say three, four or five homes.

Veronica Morgan: Wow. Must be quite amazing just to be in a factory, seeing people's houses being built.

Bill McCorkell: Look, it's, it's cool being at the facility and just being aware and you can see, you know, the progression, how quickly it goes from start to finish. Um, but we do get held up by the usual things. Joinery is often a big lead time item, but that's, yeah, you've got your floor. If it's a solid timber floor, you've got your floor polishing and waterproofing. There's a couple of weeks, both of those. But apart from that, things can be pretty set pretty seamless.

Chris Bates: And have you saying a lot of these are robotics sort of builders and things like that. You know, cause I guess, you know, traditional math, while your writing a new way of building homes, traditional builders are also thinking, how can we do it more efficiently? Right. And there's new technology coming out that, for example, can lay bricks for them and things like that. I view saying those sorts of things. And do you think that actually you'll, they'll be able to catch up with kinda making it much quicker?

Bill McCorkell: No, but yes, I have seen them. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think there's always opportunities out there to be creative and to cut costs down in labor. Um, but you know, if, if we've got the opportunity with placing a house in a facility that you can literally drive up next to and walk around, it's a very different game than having any days. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it's a very different game than having something that's been built on site. That's, you know, you might have to park X amount of meters away to get to site and traffic and parking inspectors and loading and unloading, et cetera. Yup.

Chris Bates: But I mean in ready days to affect you though, because you probably booked in everyone. So the council or the truck, the thing to all happen on March 22 and then, you know, big storm comes in.

Bill McCorkell: Why only once. Oh, right, okay. Yeah, yeah. So I've only once had to call off a lift and that happened down at point long style, uh, in may of this year. Okay. Uh, we put it back here. We'd left, lifted on the side of the road.

Chris Bates: Oh, I think no one was living in it when he got back.

Bill McCorkell: Like, you know, we made it, he got on the phone and I rang the surf coast, shut Shar council and said, this is what we're going to do. And that's it. That's fine. Yeah. Very much sure. And said, yeah.

Chris Bates: Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you very much for the chat.

Veronica Morgan: It's been a bit of an interesting, yeah. Tour around a different type of building. And thank you very much for that. It's going to be interesting to see whether it takes off, you know, more and more I guess over time. So I guess we'll watch this space and thanks for sharing that.

Bill McCorkell: Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Chris Bates: We want to make you a bit of elephant rider and this week's elephant rider training is,

Veronica Morgan: let's talk about just some of the things that we do need to consider if we are going to renovate a property. And obviously I'm in the thick of it, so this is all very fresh for me. Um, the, you did talk about sort of contracts, cost plus versus fixed price and I guess we could sort of explain a little bit more what about what that is and certainly the fixed price contract. Um, I'll talk about the way I've approached it that way. So I made sure that when I got my plans designed by an architect and obviously approved through council, but then I actually sat down with the architect, interior designer and chose all the finishes and got all the sort of the lighting plans and the electrical plans and all the extra bits and pieces done, all the detailing, all the drawings of the joinery, uh, et cetera, et cetera.

Veronica Morgan: All the, all the bits that actually make the interior of the house effectively. Right. And also the choices in terms of outside finishes as well. Paints and Colorbond and windows and all that sort of thing. So that meant that because I had all of that detailing done to, to a high degree of, um, de accuracy, then when we actually put it out to tender, that's a very complete set of documents that the builder can actually quote to with confidence. And so even those provisional sums that you talked about, for instance, there's certain things that the lighting is a provisional sum. So, but it's an educated guess as to what is reasonable to spend on lighting given the exact amount of lights that I'm going to have. Um, so the reason it's provisional and not fixed is because I still have to choose the, you know, the pendant lights or the actual track lighting in certain parts of the area, uh, at the living area.

Veronica Morgan: So because I'm reserving the right to make those choices, um, that has to be provisional rather than fixed. The thing is what often costs money is when that level of detail hasn't been done. So there's a whole bunch of surprises along the way. And also the other thing that costs a lot of money are variations. And that is where you change your mind. So the design has to have been really well thought out, really well thought out and committed to. And I have a friend of mine is, is very, very good in the design space. And I sort of as a bit of a mistake actually showed her my plans well and truly after they were approved and we'd gone through this whole process and then see she sort of came up with these nice ideas and they were very nice ideas. But by that point I realized that I was, it would have cost me tens of thousands of dollars probably to change at that point.

Veronica Morgan: So maybe exactly what was the beginning mill the thing then show the Clinton friends, sorry. In reality, um, if I wanted to input, I should have showed it before it was all bolted down, so to speak. Um, because obviously all of those changes require, you know, they require change with drawings and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and then sort of the domino effect. So I guess that's the thing that this bootcamp is really about. That's the way to try to minimize. So I, you know, there's a couple of little blowouts that I have that were unanticipated. Um, but they are very contained and as a percentage of the whole bill costs, they might end up being, um, not even 2% of their total bill cost by the time it's all done. And they were unavoidable in terms of, um, Siteworks stuff that we discovered once the actual work started.

Veronica Morgan: So it's hard to plan for that sort of stuff. Um, but in terms of everything else, it's going, I'm not deviating, and that is the way I'm keeping it under control cost wise.

Chris Bates: There's another little learning there as well as if you, before you make a big decision in life, is making sure you go to all the sources of expert information in your life yes. Before you make that decision. Because when you make that decision, the last thing you wanna do is go and for their advice, because you can't change it.

Veronica Morgan: And taking that advice would have cost me a lot of money and just, yeah. And then I've gotten to backpedal as well and not insult her. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So be careful who you ask from advice for at the right time. Yes, very true.