Offsite Manufactured Building

[Music plays quietly]

Leon Du Toit, Operations Manager – Interlink Modular: Off-site buildings are buildings that are built in a factory environment, as opposed to the old traditional way where everything is built on site. A temporary building is a garden shed. That's not what we do here. We build high spec, high quality teaching spaces for our kids of the future. That's what we do. 

Darryl Gibbs, Principal – Cambridge Middle School: I'm Darryl Gibbs. We're at Cambridge Middle School. I'm the principal of Cambridge Middle School, and we're here looking at our new modular buildings. We've had quite significant growth here, and so we had to develop a master plan for our site with our growth, and part of that was looking at what sort of buildings would be placed here, and the Ministry decided that some of those would be modular. 

Leon: So if we build them in a factory environment, we speed up the process a lot. So because we're building it from off a production line, we are much more efficient with material handling, with processes of pre-cutting materials, assembly, quality control. I think for the schools, the big thing is typically when building work starts on site, it's a long, tedious process. It's a lot of noise, it's disruption to traffic, it's disruption for the school. What our process allows us to do is to be a lot more efficient. We've had reports that some school have had kids where for the duration of that kid being at that school, 4 or 5 years, the school has always been in some stage of construction. Off-site manufacturing allows us to reduce that time. 

Colin Haddon, Property Manager – Cambridge Middle School: I am Colin Haddon. I'm the property manager at Cambridge Middle School. For me, this is a lot easier. If you're building bespoke, you've got 10 contractors on site at any time. Somebody wants access, there's always something that they need. 

Darryl: For me, the process has been quite smooth working with the range of people you have to work with. So at the start, when I realized I was working with a person from the modular building company, a Ministry person, and then the contractors on site, I sort of thought, "How might this work?"

Colin: One of the biggest advantages is the time it takes. Building modular may take 2 months, whereas building a bespoke could take 6 months or even longer. 

Darryl: The lead team were really good at communicating every step of the way, regular meetings, and really clear on the product that they were going to deliver us. So the process was smooth. 

Tessa Wood, Teacher – Cambridge Middle School: My name is Tessa Wood. I am a classroom teacher here at Cambridge Middle School. The kids love them because they're warm, they're quiet. They know, especially in winter when it's really cold outside, they just come in straight away and they get settled, and then even in summer as well, they're easy to cool down. 

Trisha Honey, Teacher – Cambridge Middle School: My name is Miss Honey. I've been a teacher at Cambridge Middle School now for 17 years. These rooms are just lovely. I just love being in this room. They're very fresh, very modern. The lighting is beautiful. We've got lots and lots of natural light, and the way the lights are installed as well, when there's not enough sunshine, it's still bright enough that we don't feel gloomy ever. 

Darryl: So the actual product that's inside the rooms is high quality. The composite coverings on the walls, the flooring tiles, the ceiling tiles, the acoustics in the space, all of the children and teachers who have worked in there or use it really enjoy the space. It has a nice calm feel and the sound quality, all the little things, the air temperature or CO2 monitor, they all help the teacher and the children. 

Emma and Madison, Students - Cambridge Middle School: Yeah. They're more insulated and just very much warmer, like with the air con on, and a lot more spacious and very warmer and nicer to be in. 

Trisha: They're incredibly comfortable rooms to be in. Everything is just, like I said, fresh, I think is probably one of the best words. 

Darryl: Since I've been here, we've built about 10 classrooms, I think, and we've got more coming, and half of them now are modular. Whilst with the bespoke build, we do get some different flexibilities, the timeframe, the working with the Ministry, the quality of the product is just as good as anything else we could do bespoke, and we've been really, really happy with all of the people we've worked with and the product. 

Leon: There's a sense of awe when these buildings arrive on site, and it's because people have this perception of a Portakabin, a temporary building solution. This is not what we're providing. We are providing a good quality building, and to see people's reactions when they see it, "Oh, I didn't realize it's that big. I didn't realize the space is so big," once they're inside. We love to do a sort of a walkthrough once we've landed the building, just to see the reaction from people to say, "Wow, this is not what we expected."

Darryl: Yeah, I can see we are 3 months on, and the process has continued to be smooth, bang on time, which is always great. The follow-up so far, the final walkthrough, all of those things from my perspective as a principal were easy. The finished product, so happy with it as a school. It's a newer version than our other 3 that we have. I think the modifications that have been made to the build from the last design, the children love being in the spaces, and all of the spaces are new in the older one. But the teachers as well.

Georgina Glenn: My name is Georgina Glenn, and here at Cambridge Middle School, I am the co-team leader and the classroom teacher of room 22. This is our newest classroom here at Cambridge Middle School. We've only been here a short time of 3 weeks. So far the kids are absolutely loving it. Everyone around them at school is jealous. They love how they can spread out. It's so quiet, and they can each find their own space to work with their needs, and they're just over the moon.

Darryl: I think, yeah, just the acoustics, the warmth or the temperature control, the noise levels, yeah, they're just really nice spaces to be in. 

Trisha: It's just so lovely. Being able to be creative with the kids and have them out painting and building and exploring things, and not having to pack it all away into a tiny space at one side of the room. We can leave it set up so there's no downtime, and their stuff doesn't get wrecked when it's put away. I love teaching in these spaces. 

Darryl: I think from a principal's perspective, it can be exciting to bespoke build yourself, but you've always got hesitations around how certain things might work out. Whereas now, having gone through this process twice with the Ministry, the company that we've dealt with and the Ministry and the follow-up service has been amazing as a principal in terms of the time that I've had to commit to it versus other projects. 

Georgina: For me, it has, yeah, it's been my favorite space so far to teach in, and I think they definitely work well. 

Emma and Madison: The new classrooms are so much nicer to be in. 

Tessa: Yeah, it is really good. 

Colin: As a system, I'd highly recommend it. It's absolutely brilliant. 

Georgina: These are amazing classrooms, so I definitely recommend just go and do it.

[Music plays]

[Offscreen] Why do you like this classroom so much? 

Joshua – Student, Wairau Valley Special School: I like cooking. 

[Offscreen] Yeah. And you like it in that room when we do it there? 

Joshua: Yeah. 

Hamish – Student, Wairau Valley Special School: I like this room better. There's lots of space. 

Natalie Todd – Principal, Wairau Valley Special School: Our school is Wairau Valley Special School in Auckland. Our values are aru, to follow, so acceptance, respect and understanding. 

In 2020 we realised that we needed more, more buildings on site because we didn't have enough classroom space. And so the Ministry got hold of us and we spoke about what this would look like. It was an incredibly collaborative process. We could talk about what the building would look like, what we would need for it to be effective for us, and then we could take it to the teachers as well and show them what we were going to get. And because all the work had been done off site, there was minimal disruption. The best thing for me was that time frames were met. 

The majority of the students in this class are on the autistic spectrum. Noise really impacts on their anxiety levels, so therefore on their learning. And so this is an area away from the rest of the school, but still within walking distance. The students can go and work individually and workstations. There's enough place to do that. And at the back, they've got where they're going to do their hard tech. It's not within the class. So with children with autism having defined spaces, it's really important so they know what to expect and where to go to. We're getting fewer incident reports which shows me that they really comfortable in their space and so that speaks volumes for us. 

Carel Broekman – Teacher, Wairau Valley Special School: The classroom is so much bigger. They're calm, they relax, they've got more space. They like the colours of it as well and lots of light coming in. Then you've got a separate space there for the kitchen, which is beautiful. They love using their space and doing their cooking there and having their lunches and morning teas there to separate space, which you don't always have in the old classrooms. It's quieter and they feel safe to go out and have space by themselves. They take responsibility for their own behaviour. Of one specific student that comes to mind, he's verbal, but he's very detached from people. We moved into this room. He's been more responsible. He's been taking responsibility of opening and closing the classroom and taking responsibility of keys and knows what his role is in the classroom and he takes on that lead, which is beautiful. 

Natalie: For those they can tell us, they will tell us they like their new class. For the others, we see it in their behaviour. If we get it right for them now, it helps when they're older and so we're building up the skills, particularly around self regulation, so that we can take them out into the wider community and broaden their worlds.

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