Latest / Best of Business / Dr Chris Litten: BRANZ General Manager of Research on the building sector body developing pre-designed home plans

Transcript

Dr Chris Litten: BRANZ General Manager of Research on the building sector body developing pre-designed home plans · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZEDB. Follow this
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Brian Bridge.
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  Speaker 3: One size fits All home designs the future of housing
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: in New Zealand, That is the question. The Building Research
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  Speaker 3: Association of New Zealand Brands is getting ready to launch
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  Speaker 3: its new consent ready home plans. This is in the
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  Speaker 3: next couple of months that all happen.
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  Speaker 4: They say that.
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  Speaker 3: Their pre designed three bedroom home will save home builders
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  Speaker 3: huge costs on architects. Dr Chris Lisen is the GM
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  Speaker 3: of Research at Brands and joins me.
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  Speaker 2: Now, Hello, Hi Roan, how are you going tonight?
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  Speaker 4: Very good? Thank you. Now give us the elevator pitch on.
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  Speaker 2: This, okay. So we really know that housing affordable is
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  Speaker 2: the real key issue for New Zealanders. So Brands is
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  Speaker 2: all about using our research and test think about create
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  Speaker 2: practical solutions and to do that we've come up with
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  Speaker 2: a development of the next home and it's really to
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  Speaker 2: show New Zealanders that you can build high quality, low
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  Speaker 2: carbon and affordable homes. So we'll have these designs available
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  Speaker 2: later in this year for free download. Said, anyone can
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  Speaker 2: use it and they'll be consent ready, so you should
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  Speaker 2: be able to use it anywhere across New Zealand.
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  Speaker 4: When you say consent ready, do you mean pre consented
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  Speaker 4: or do you mean what do you mean by that?
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  Speaker 2: So there's a scheme that the government runs called multiproof,
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  Speaker 2: and these designs will be approved by that. So he's
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  Speaker 2: literally about to take the designs, go to your counsel
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  Speaker 2: and say here they are. Can we build a particular
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  Speaker 2: building on what of the land I've got? Councilors should
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  Speaker 2: say yes, and that's it.
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  Speaker 4: What will this save your average house builder?
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  Speaker 2: Well, these designs. I think one of the misconceptions is
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  Speaker 2: that high quality and low carbon or sustainable buildings are expensive,
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  Speaker 2: and we're showing them not. So these designs are going
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  Speaker 2: to be about the same price as a standard building
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  Speaker 2: that's going on at the moment. But you get the
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  Speaker 2: added benefits of saying really high quality, which means great
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  Speaker 2: indoor equality, which means you will be healthier your carbon
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  Speaker 2: footprint if your inentinant carbon footprint will about fifty percent
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  Speaker 2: lower than your standard how and yet it will be
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  Speaker 2: a similar price to what you'd be paying normally.
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  Speaker 4: And I mean it sounds too good to be true
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  Speaker 4: of course.
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  Speaker 1: Is there a catch?
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  Speaker 2: There is no catch, and that's why we do this
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  Speaker 2: research to really try and understand this sort of stuff.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, as I said before, there's a been misconception
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  Speaker 2: that high quality and sustainable means unaffordable, and we're showing
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  Speaker 2: that's not.
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  Speaker 3: What about the each site has its own quirks and
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  Speaker 3: sunlight coming in different directions.
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  Speaker 4: How do you account for all of that?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really why they still do need to go
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  Speaker 2: to the council to get that consent to say actually,
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  Speaker 2: this is the right place. I'm not about to build
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  Speaker 2: on a floodplain or on a slippery all that's going
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  Speaker 2: to wash my house away or anything like that. So
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  Speaker 2: that is that we can't control that. There's very much
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  Speaker 2: having those designs, talking to the council about it, and
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  Speaker 2: it should be very simple to get it all sorted
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  Speaker 2: out with them.
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  Speaker 4: How do you think this could scale up? You know,
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  Speaker 4: whill we have entire suburbs of identical homes.
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  Speaker 2: Well, one of the real issues with New Zealand is
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  Speaker 2: we all love to have something different, Right, every home
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  Speaker 2: we want looked different to their names. As an unfortunate
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  Speaker 2: it's just not the way you can build sustainable and
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  Speaker 2: build sustainable and have sort of affordable homes. So these
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  Speaker 2: designs are very much about standardization. They've got standard window sizes,
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  Speaker 2: they do have some standard floor structures and layouts. But
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  Speaker 2: the end of the day, I think this really is
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  Speaker 2: you sees a lot of places are all similar. You
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  Speaker 2: can paint these made, these things can look different, but
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  Speaker 2: it is the way of the future. Really.
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  Speaker 4: It's about affordability. It's not about fleshy.
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  Speaker 2: It is about affordabile. It's not about fleshy. But again,
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  Speaker 2: in this case, fleshy means it's really high quality and
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  Speaker 2: you're going to have a great healthy environment inside the home,
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  Speaker 2: which quite a lot of homes don't have.
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  Speaker 4: For so the architects angry at you.
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  Speaker 2: We've got our own architects on board. We've had architects
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  Speaker 2: peer review these and they're all really excited about what's
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  Speaker 2: going on.
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  Speaker 4: No one's going to be put out of business.
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  Speaker 2: That's not our aim. Our aim is very much about
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  Speaker 2: having some really good designs that people can use. And
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  Speaker 2: we're not going to make anyone use them, of course,
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  Speaker 2: but they're there and available. If you want to, you
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  Speaker 2: go for.
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  Speaker 3: It, all right, We'll leave it there thanks so much
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  Speaker 3: for your time. Doctor Chris Listen is the GM of
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  Speaker 3: Researcher Brands.
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