Housing Innovation Roadmap | Off-site Construction Research Centre | UNB

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Off-site Construction Research Centre

Atlantic off-site housing innovation roadmap

Atlantic Off-Site Housing Innovation Roadmap, a project led by the University of New Brunswick’s Off-site Construction Research Centre (OCRC) and funded by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), supports increasing housing supply in Atlantic Canada through off-site and modern methods of construction.

Drivers for change

Atlantic Canada is experiencing one of the most significant housing pressures in its recent history. Since 2020, rapid population growth and increased migration toward urban centres have driven housing demand across Atlantic Canada. Concurrently, labour shortages, rising construction material costs and regulatory complexities have constrained housing supply, intensifying affordability and availability pressures across all housing types.

The roadmap was informed by a multi-stage research and engagement process that included:

    1. Policy and by-law reviews across all four Atlantic provinces
    2. Interviews with private and public sector stakeholders
    3. Regional workshops in each Atlantic province engaging over 235 participants

    1. Policy and regulatory systems, aimed at improving consistency, clarity, and efficiency in approvals and inspections.
    2. Financing and insurance, addressing cash-flow, risk, and valuation challenges specific to OSC.
    3. Procurement models and contracts, focused on enabling earlier manufacturer involvement and aligning contracts with factory-based delivery.
    4. Skilled workforce and skills development, supporting training pathways and year-round employment in factory and site settings.
    5. Transportation and logistics, targeting planning, permitting, and damage-reduction challenges associated with modular delivery.

The roadmap is structured to support phased decision-making, enabling jurisdictions and organizations to prioritize near-term actions that reduce immediate delivery risk while laying the groundwork for medium- and long-term capacity building.

The initiatives in the roadmap are broken into two groups, based on their expected timeline for implementation:

  • Collaborative initiatives, involve a coordinated effort across Atlantic Canada.
  • Provincially independent initiatives are actions which apply to each province individually.


Governance structure: Functional working groups

The results of this project indicate that no single organization or level of government can implement the roadmap independently. Thus, the report recommends establishing an Atlantic Off-Site Housing Innovation Network to support roadmap implementation.

The network should be a collaborative body with a mandate to advance OSC housing solutions across Atlantic Canada. It would be structured to ensure balanced representation across industry, government, and academic/training institutions from all four Atlantic provinces.

Representation should include, but is not limited to, industry and professional associations (including representatives from all phases of the housing development life cycle), provincial and municipal governments, housing authorities and non-profit housing providers, Indigenous community representatives, research and training institutions, and financial and insurance experts.

Conclusion

The Atlantic Off-Site Housing Innovation Roadmap provides a practical, evidence-based foundation to support the appropriate scaling of off-site construction as part of a broader strategy to increase housing supply in Atlantic Canada.

Learn more about the project,