After nearly a decade of very little residential construction, cranes have now returned to the skylines of Spain's major cities. We take a closer look at how AEDAS Homes is helping grow the offsite industry in Spain.
The recent surge in activity belies serious endemic problems in the construction sector, which affect productivity, capacity and reliability. In response to this challenging landscape, residential developers in Spain, who face increasing costs and potential delays due to a shortage of workers, are starting to embrace industrialisation as a way to deliver higher-quality homes to their customers much faster. AEDAS Homes, one of the country's leading publicly-traded homebuilders and the first to launch large-scale modular developments in Spain, is spearheading the charge to modernise the sector by investing heavily in offsite and championing the DfMA mindset.
In 2018, AEDAS Homes started its offsite business line, and by the end of this year, the company will have put more than 180 modular homes on the market in Madrid and Costa del Sol for a total gross development value of €92 million (£83.7million). At present, the offsite line accounts for only a fraction of the 4,000 mid to mid-high end units the developer currently has under construction in five major regions, but it plans to scale this up significantly, with the goal of precision-building 10% of all its deliveries in dedicated offsite factories by 2022.
In the Madrid region, the company has three single-family, modular townhouse developments that are under construction or nearing completion: Merian I and II (28 units) in Torrejón de Ardoz, a growing suburb just 20 minutes east of the city centre, and Etheria (41 units) in El Cañaveral, a newly-created district within the city limits.
Construction on modules for three additional developments in Madrid - Merian Gardens in Torrejón (26 units), Tinné in Boadilla del Monte (14 units) and Gaetana, also in Torrejón (21 units) - will begin in autumn and early next year.
Further south, on the sun-drenched Costa del Sol, modules for the 53- unit Vanian Valley development will start being craned into place this autumn, and in the coming months, the company has plans to expand its offsite business line by launching modular developments other Spanish cities where it operates.
For the full article, go to Offsite Hub issue 19
