Housing production in remote and rural developing economies.

The delivery of metropolitan quality housing into thinly populated remote and rural areas of Western Australia with industrialised and rapidly changing economies is challenging. The established conservative building industry has become very efficient at delivering its product in the metropolitan area. However this industry struggles to deliver the same products to the more remote areas of the state without very significant cost uplifts. The rapidly developing state economy is already faced with inflated costs in the housing market fuelled by the mining and resources boom. This only exacerbates the differences that are presented by the economy of housing in rural areas. This paper will investigate the possibility of a re- conceptualized building industry structured to deal with the demands of these economies undergoing rapid change. One aspect of the solution that is proposed here is to establish autonomous building production facilities that are closer to where the products are needed. Through the examination of a number of ATCi [Advanced Timber Concepts] prototypical projects, models of how this kind of construction industry might operate, and how it might deliver its product will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]