THUNDER BAY — No matter where you are in Northwestern Ontario, CEO of Smart Modular Canada Bill Boulton told Newswatch, they are seeing a need for affordable housing .
“Everywhere is in the same problem. Even our own little area, Fort Frances has no housing or you buy, rent or whatever... And Nipigon has the same problem. Geraldton has got the same problem. And even Rainy River was here yesterday and they have the same issues,” Boulton said.
Smart Modular Canada is a local company that produces residential and commercial modular buildings. They received a $400,000 grant from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation to help ramp up production of modular buildings for rural communities and first nations.
Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Kevin Holland announced the funding on Thursday.
He said that smart modular homes are “going to be key” to making sure the province is “meeting that housing demand.”
“This announcement is so vital to ensuring that we have the sustainability and the viability and improving our business operations for the jobs in the north that we need,” Holland said.
They're renovating their factory and investing in new automation equipment Boulton said will speed up the process of building more homes faster, and also “make it a safer workplace for (their) employees.”
For instance, Boulton said the wall and floor tables allow employees to assemble the floors and wall in one spot, while the new automated crane will do the heavy lifting of material from one part of the shop to another.
“That saves a huge amount of a bottleneck that we have at the other end of the shop where they're trying to carry four by eight GS, the drywall through the doorways and put them in the house,” Boulton said.
Moreover, the new hydraulic lifts help to lift the entire building so that workers can install the HVAC system, electrical, and water piping underneath.
At the moment, the homes are built in a traditional way from the outside in, but that will soon change.
Because Smart Modular Canada builds nearly every piece of their homes entirely in-house, so new automated equipment will allow workers to build from the inside out, according to Boulton.
“We'll build all the interior walls first, put them in place, and then the exterior walls that are built on this table will be moved over and put onto the floor that was built here,” he said.
“And then the roof will be built in another section over here at ground level. So, it's safe and then craned into place and put on top of the walls,” he continued.
