Could prefabrication be the way to speed up housing delivery in Vancouver?

North Vancouver-based builder BCollective Homes made its entree into prefabricated housing construction last week with an impressive display of the speed with which components of a home that are manufactured offsite can be assembled.

A crane, a crew of four workers and a truckload of panels, prebuilt to BCollective’s detailed specifications, arrived at a site in the 3000-block of East 22nd St. in Vancouver. Over the course of 18 hours, from 8 a.m. on Wednesday until 2 p.m. on Friday last week, they assembled the frame for a 2,700-square-foot single-family home.

That included wood framing, insulation, membranes, and air- and weather-resistant barriers made to meet energy-efficient Passive House standards. They did hit a one-day delay on Thursday when a wind warning meant they couldn’t use the crane, but it was still “like a real big speed-up in a process that would otherwise take three to four months,” said Chris Hill, partner and master builder at BCollective.