Australia needs to adopt better construction methods in order to address long-term housing deficits and avoid timber shortages, a new report has found.

Released last week, the More Homes Sooner Finding the Australian Dream Report was published by Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA) and prepared by IndustryEdge in conjunction with HireThinking.

The report delivered projections on Australia’s long term housing requirements. It also projected the supply of sawn structural softwood that will be needed to deliver upon these.

It highlights a need for better practices in order to avoid overreliance on imported product.

According to the report, Australia will need to deliver 2.48 million homes over eleven years from the beginning of 2024 until the end of 2034 in order to both meet new demand and address existing housing shortages.

This equates to an average annual build rate of 225,400 dwelling completions – well above the annual average of 192,000 homes that were constructed over the decade to 2024.

In addition to existing supply deficits, the report suggests that housing demand will be driven by population increases and shrinking household sizes.

In terms of population, the report projects that Australia will reach 31 million by 2034.

By that time, average household sizes will have contracted to 2.4 people per household.

To meet this demand, the modelling suggests that the amount of sawn structural softwood timber that will be needed in each year will generally range between 2.0 million cubic meters and 2.5 million cubic meters – with a peak of 2.5 million cubic meters occurring in 2027.

By contrast, current data from FWPA indicates that domestic supply potential equated to 1.350 million cubic meters in 2023/24 and peaked at just below 1.650 million cubic meters in February 2018.

This means that without action, Australia will become increasingly reliant on imports for structural timber supply.

Indeed, the report projects that reliance upon sawn structural timber imports will exceed 40 percent of total supply during four consecutive years across 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030.

This is concerning as this is the threshold above which supply and pricing volatility become likely.

(With projected changes in population and reducing houshouse size, Australia needs to deliver an annual average 225,000 dwellings between 2024 and 2034 (see Scenario 2) in order to meet new demand and erase current housing shortfalls.)

Speaking at report’s launch, IndustryEdge managing director Tim Woods said that the data highlights the need for action.

He points out that domestic timber supply is largely fixed over the next three decades by the volume of wood that is in the ground in plantations.

In terms of strategies, Woods calls for action in two areas.

First, the timber industry needs to harness a gradual shift in multi-residential construction and capitalise on an opportunities to deliver products and system based requirements which meet the needs of this sector.

Beyond this, Woods says there is a need to standardise building designs to improve efficiency.

This is not about onsite labour but instead focusing on supply chains, improving onsite scheduling and reducing onsite labour reliance.

It will enable incremental investments in supplying prefabricated elements such as frames and trusses and floor cassettes.

The ultimate objective is to produce standardised elements in a factory setting.

“We need to move towards standardised building designed to increase efficiency,” Woods said.

“The increase in efficiency is not about on-site labour. It is about focusing on supply chain, it’s about the ability to improve scheduling when we’re building houses on site and reducing our site labour reliance. (It’s about) reducing our reliance on a bunch of blokes rocking up to a concrete slab in a dusty paddock whenever they feel like it in big-banging utes and putting a house together in a way that you would never purchase a car. It is bizarre and arcane that our most amazing investment (a home) – the one that makes a difference in our lives – we purchase in that manner, always and consistently, with as little prefabrication as we can get away with, with a view that labour is an endless supply when we would never buy a car that got there any other way than building in a fit and purpose factory.

“It’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense.

“What makes sense is that we focus on supply chain, make those improvements and then we would make incremental investments in prefabrication.”

FWPA Head of Built Environment Programs, Kevin Peachy, says increasing timber usage in construction can help address the current imbalance of supply and demand in housing.

“There are opportunities and challenges for the industry,” Peachy said.

“Leveraging prefabrication systems and factory-based manufacturing offers reduced costs and construction times compared to conventional methods.

’Systemic change is required, all of Australia will benefit from more efficient use of timber in the built environment, as this will help meet one of society’s most important and pressing needs of building more houses sooner.”

Enjoying Sourceable articles? Subscribe for Free and receive daily updates of all articles which are published on our site

Want to grow your sales, reach more new clients and expand your client base across Australia’s design and construction sector?

Advertise on Sourceable and have your business seen by the thousands of architects, engineers, builders/construction contractors, subcontractors/trade contractors, property developers and building industry suppliers who read our stories across the civil, commercial and residential construction sector