In 40 days a new home 

Prefab has mostly winners

Contractors are increasingly recognizing the advantages of prefabrication. The main argument is speed of construction. Therefore, residents of the earthquake area in the province of Groningen opted not to improve their existing homes, but to build new ones that were habitable again within 40 days. A collaboration between prefab producer MBS Group and Nijhuis Bouw guaranteed this ultra-short construction time. The biggest winners: the residents.

MBS Group was founded in 2000 by Erik van Schaik and Wim van Looijengoed, who manufactured products mainly for the agricultural and infra sectors in Soest. "Today the company consists of six operating companies with three production locations that can supply all concrete products," says Geert Nieuwenhuis, commercial director of MBS Group. "In Emmen we make the products for the agricultural sector and infra, in Soest is the head office and 'specials' of exposed concrete such as stairs and landings are produced, and in Alphen aan den Rijn is a brand new factory for walls and floors that find their application in ground-level housing construction. The latter is a continuation of the old factory in Vianen; in 2022 that production facility was transferred to the very centrally located Alphen aan den Rijn in two weeks. Our customers didn't notice anything about the move. And we now have a modern factory right on an inland port for the supply of raw materials." In 2020, the founders transferred day-to-day management to the current board of directors. 

Hybrid airframes

The new factory in Alphen aan den Rijn produces high-quality precast shells for residential and high-rise buildings. Nieuwenhuis: "We once thought that we should not only make concrete shells, but that we should develop them into more complete products. We then started focusing on hybrid shells with floors and walls, complete with installations and facades with the insulation incorporated. That's also where the name of the MBS Hybrid Casco unit comes from: bringing worlds together. MBS Hybrid Casco provides the ground-level housing for MBS Group. The construction site thus becomes more of an assembly site. We thus enable the contractors to build very quickly and with high quality."

40 days out and home

A good example is the '40 days out and home' project that MBS Group realized with regular partner Nijhuis Bouw for Oosterwolde. Nieuwenhuis: "There, the initial request was to make the existing homes more sustainable. In our opinion, this is old wine in new bottles, with still low ceilings and low window frames for the residents. Together with us, Nijhuis then proposed a plan for new construction. The approach: in the time that you achieve sustainability, we can build a whole new house. To be precise, within 40 days the residents received a new house on their old spot, including garden, PVC on the floor, complete kitchen and heating on. The majority of residents ultimately chose this option, which we are now successfully implementing in more locations. We do it primarily for the residents, you don't want to burden them with construction times of two or three years with double charges, do you? This collaboration tasted like more and after 126 homes in Oosterwolde, we are now working on 356 homes in the middle of the earthquake area in Groningen."

Established relationships

An important thread in MBS Group's business philosophy is long-term relationships. "One-off projects are fine, but we especially see great benefits in long-term relationships. With prefabrication, you have to work together more intensively anyway because you sit around the table earlier and do a lot of engineering together. With long-term relationships, you can also make price agreements on parts of products in advance and then concentrate on making production more efficient and making the work better and more enjoyable. I'm always reminded of a quote from former Unilever Paul Polman, who said: am I working for someone's benefit or at someone's expense. If you choose the former, you get long-term relationships. As a result, 83% of our sales are now reciprocal and many companies have been with us as relationships for a long time."

"Think of our versatile production capacity as a facility for medium and large contractors in particular," said Nieuwenhuis. "After all, for them, in-house precast production is hardly doable. We have modern factories where we can work, plan and procure efficiently using advanced ERP software. In addition to being a precast supplier, we are also an engineer and constructor and can think along with the customer. And don't forget the advantages of building with precast: just-in-time delivery, a very fast construction time, a tidy construction site and low failure costs. My advice: build more with precast. Working together means that the contractor does what he is good at and we do what we are energized by. The combination of these two worlds makes building more fun and efficient every day."