Business View Oceania | February 2021

27 28 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA FEBRUARY 2021 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA FEBRUARY 2021 PrefabNZ changes at the government level that will help that. The Housing Ministry is adopting an offsite manufacturing strategy, which is great. So there are some good fundamental improvements for the industry ahead. “As an association, our role is to continue to help the industry along. To challenge some of the traditional thinking that may get in the way. Our job is to work alongside government to make sure that their regulations actually work. So we become the conduit between government and industry to facilitate the conversations to ensure policy makers are making the right policies. I’ve always had a passion for the built environment. I’ve worked with other industry organisations, so I know how we should be functioning to make the most on behalf of the industry. Globally, construction is renowned for not being overly productive, so I like the challenge of being part of the solution for an industry to improve its performance, its output and see that it delivers to its full potential. “One of the key points to underscore is that technology is a vital part of improving productivity, but one step towards adopting technology is first making sure that you are following the construction principles around minimising waste of material and waste of time. I think that’s an important part for the broader industry to adopt and in many ways the offsite sector has adopted that philosophy already. Simply by understanding that it’s good to build away from a building site and deliver the elements there.” which is a unique skill set that is required within the industry. Increasingly, we’re finding people from other industries making their way into the offsite manufacturing sector. They’re coming from the food industry, the automotive industry, or other manufacturing businesses because the benefit of building offsite is the importance of understanding the manufacturing process. Another really important element is a foundation in lean construction or lean manufacturing.” BVO: How do you communicate with the membership? Fisher: “We have regular communication with newsletters and pre-COVID we would be getting together face to face for networking and information sharing. We also run a monthly webinar where we get a speaker on a particular topic for a presentation followed by a Q&A session. They’re very popular. Each year we run our CoLab conference – it’s all about collaboration. Historically, they have been in- person conferences. COVID got in the way of that in 2020 but we were very lucky we had good commitment from all our presenters and we turned that into a virtual event which was very well received. We had speakers from the U.K., and Danny Forster, an architect out of New York, presented in a Q&A form, which was really engaging.” BVO: Looking ahead, how will PrefabNZ continue to be a viable voice for members? Fisher: “We’re very optimistic about the future of the industry. The fact that it is in good health now when the environment is not ideal and there’s a bit of friction around the consenting, as the environment becomes more straightforward to operate in, we’ll see existing operators grow and expand. And we’ll see new people coming into the industry as well. I think it’s only going to gain strength and there are a lot of new policy