RICS launched a revolutionary concrete panel based mass housing concept – known as ‘India Concept House (ICH)’ in partnership with Sam Circle Venture and its partners, KieranTimberlake and ProjectWell.
India concept house is conceived as both a dwelling for inhabitation and as a process by which homes are produced through a managed supply chain. It is designed as 23, 46, 70 and 93 sm increments, its modular component system facilitating expansion from one room to four rooms.
In a country that has a staggering housing shortfall of nearly 27 million homes and inherent project execution challenges including shortages in skilled manpower, the current execution capacity based on traditional brick and mortar construction is hugely limited. Housing as an industry is still hand crafted and heavily depended on manual labor and on site construction, which lead to large amount of material wastage and labor in efficiency, leaving aside the quality and thermal comfort level.
ICH has been developed with the objective of bringing standardisation, principal of supply chain and assembly line production to construct houses. Taking inspiration from automobile industry, which was also hand crated till ford introduced Model T in 1908 to bring assembly line production, Amber Malhotra Managing Principal of Sam Circle Venture drew analogy “affordable housing in India need a similar approach of component based off site production with supply chain linkages to the material suppliers and backward linkages to create skill manpower. This will help houses to be manufactured rather then built”
The India Concept House demonstrates not only construction of affordable housing out of pre-fabricated technology but creating an eco-system of manufacturing and assembling solid and quick to build affordable housing to common people.
A white paper titled ‘India Concept House – manufacturing and assembling of an affordable, quick to build and sustainable mass housing solution for Indian cities’ was released by Shri R.V. Verma, CMD, National Housing Bank. The white paper describes the complete housing solution including its spatial arrangement, modularity and expansion, wall and roof components, their manufacture, associated construction time, delivery process etc.
Speaking on the occasion, R.V. Verma, CMD, National Housing Bank, said, “I believe this is a great initiative by RICS and Sam Circle Venture and one that has great potential to give an impetus to the affordable housing sector in India today. My personal belief is that this will see great success in Tier II and Tier III cities of India where there is more flexibility and availability of land. The role of technology in creating innovative products such as India Concept House has the potential to commoditize the housing sector in India today and I see industry bodies and other stakeholders needing to play a big role in driving both acceptability and adoption of the India Concept House in the immediate future.”
Sachin Sandhir, Managing Director, RICS South Asia said, “ICH has been developed by Sam Circle Ventures, Kieran Timberlake and Project Well, and RICS is collaborating by playing a key role in educating key stake holders, and creating a paradigm shift in how we think of houses, and this is an attempt to not only design a house, but to create an entire eco system, by which a new industry category will get created, consisting of manufacturing units, assemblers and after sales support. This will require new skill sets, and conversion of un-skilled construction workers to acquire new skill sets, there by creating an opportunity to build capacity in the building industry, which is an area RICS is committed to.”
James Timberlake, the design partner for the ICH, defines its potential broadly, “While this was designed within the Indian context, and responds to India’s unique culture, we think it forms the basis for a model that can be applied to a variety of cultures worldwide.”
ICH is now poised to be proto typed and assessed in the Indian context. Construction of a prototype is anticipated in 2012 in order to evaluate manufacturing, delivery and construction, and to measure the house’s thermal comfort, energy and water consumption. ICH would be putting manufacturing units and trained assemblers in various tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4 towns in India with the help of various government agencies and private sector players. A viable operations framework is being established in consultation with knowledge partners, thought leaders and policy makers.
Anshuman Magazine, Chairman, RICS South Asia Board said that RICS will continue to promote this concept to the industry, as an example of the kind of offsite mass housing solutions which can revolutionize the market for affordable mass housing solutions in India. RICS has taken on the agenda of educating key stakeholders including policy makers, developers, banks, financial institutions and academia, because without this education and engagement, it will be impossible to address the huge housing shortfall that India is confronted with. The press conference will be followed by full day awareness workshops in Delhi (8th Dec) and Mumbai (9th Dec) for which CREDAI is an industry partner ,where nearly 250 representatives from leading development and construction firms will be educated about the solution in great detail.
