A Limerick man who emigrated to the United States more than 50 years ago is returning to the city to offer a solution to Ireland’s housing crisis - precision engineered timber-frame homes which can be built in less than three weeks.
Michael Benn, aged 69, his son, Patrick, and Patrick’s business partners, Michael Clarke, Alan Fahey and Stephen Corish, are the founders of Clenn Construction, which operates from a factory in the Galvone Industrial Estate in Limerick.
A delegation from Limerick City and County Council, including Mayor James Collins, chief executive Conn Murray, and Director of Economic Development and Planning, Dr Pat Daly, will attend the launch of two of Clenn’s showhouses at their factory at midday on Friday, July 13.
Michael Benn, who emigrated from Clare Street in Limerick when he was 15, is returning from New York for the launch. He plans to relocate permanently to his native city, once the factory, under the management of his son, Patrick, is operating at full capacity.
“We will employ 50 people initially, and we plan to grow to 200 once the factory is operating at full capacity. It can take 18 months to build a house using traditional methods, we can build precision-engineered timber frame homes offsite in less than three weeks,” Patrick Benn said.
“The Housing Minister, Eoghan Murphy, has seen a presentation of our work and we would like to formally invite him to Limerick at any time to see what we can offer to help Ireland’s housing crisis.
“We are reaching out to all the local authorities, beginning with Limerick City and County Council which has been in dialogue with us and our partners, Healy Architects and Punch Consultants, since we first made contact last year and offered to help the housing crisis here,” Patrick, who has returned from New York to live in Limerick, said.
“My father left Limerick more than 50 years ago and made his way up in the construction business in New York. He’s never lost his love of Limerick and Ireland and he was reading about the housing crisis here and was determined to do whatever he could to help that.
“We promised Limerick City and County Council that we would give them the first crack at it, if they wanted to try to help solve the housing crisis. Limerick City and County Council is scheduled to build 3,000 homes over the next three years, we can do that in one year. At current capacity we can build 1,700 houses a year, but we are ready to scale up to meet the demand in Limerick and nationwide. The Economic Social and Research Institute says we need to build 90,000 houses nationally by 2021. The demand is unprecedented and I believe we are offering a solution which speeds up the supply of houses, while also reducing costs.
“What we do is we build the house in our factory. It’s built as a series of timberframed boxes. So, for example, a bathroom: everything for this is assembled in one box. The bath, the tiles on the floor, everything will be assembled in one box inside in the factory. Then it gets wrapped, watertight, put on lorry, dropped off with the other boxes that make up the house. Meanwhile, the concrete foundations have been laid for the house on site. Then the boxes are craned in, dropped onto the foundations, we bolt all the boxes together, permanently fixed down never to be moved again. Then we do the inside, carpet, plaster the ceiling above, connect electrics, plumbing and it’s ready. All in under three weeks.
“We are the only volumetric builder in Ireland. We go in with our completed boxes and in two weeks, the buyer is having a cup of tea in the kitchen of their new home. Everything is 90% complete in the factory. So we save money and time by taking all the traditional on-site build and instead doing it in a factory off-site. It’s all done through precise calculations and engineering.
“Building timber-framed homes off-site in the factory is gigantic throughout the whole world. It’s extremely rare now to not consider the option of off-site build. If you look at New York City, we are doing hotels, full skyscrapers in pods and modular buildings off-site, then they get dropped and craned in, lifted on and fixed permanently. It’s the same thing here, we are taking the Irish climate and the Irish weather out of the equation. So instead of a job site being shut-down because of rain and all this other stuff, we are still able to build inside the factory and we’re ready to go.
“Because we are offsite, we don’t have to worry about noise restrictions and we can work 24 hours of the day because we are in an industrial unit. We can build houses, schools, a Garda station, you name it. As we scale up, we plan to have 200 people working in two, 12-hour shifts, so the factory is in constant production.
“We can do any type of house. We can build any size, any shape. We take the plans, we modularise them, we know all the rules and regulations, and we create our boxes.
“On the outside of the house we use fibre cement boards that are designed to look like wood but they are incredibly durable and come with a 30-year guarantee. Ireland gets a lot of rain, but in the States we get a lot of climates. We get cold, freezing temperatures, and we get blistering heat, all the extremes. Our houses are built to stand up to all kinds of weather.
“The showhouses we are showing today are the design grade for our social houses. So if we did a development that was a mixture of private and social houses, you wouldn’t be able to segregate the social houses out because from the outside they’ll look the same as the private houses. There’s no difference.
“We are looking at doing this as a pilot project in Limerick before rolling it out for the whole country. We hope to expand throughout the whole country and make this modular factory the hub of all volumetric homes throughout Ireland.
“From this central location, we are two minutes from the motorway, we can ship to Dublin, we can ship to Cork, to Galway, anywhere in Ireland. We hope to create about 200 jobs in local employment within a year. We will start with about 50 jobs, and expand from there. We are going to try and keep them all locally sourced.”
“Right now, we have 12 people training with us as part of the regeneration programme with Limerick Council. We are training people from Moyross and Southill and showing them every part of the trades and training them up, hopefully, to get full-time employment with us. There are quite a few of them that come from unfortunate backgrounds who wouldn’t ordinarily get a chance to work in a place like this any other way. They went through a training programme and now we are teaching them, and once we get a few contracts I would like to employ a lot of these young lads and keep them working full-time.
“I really believe this is a way for local authorities and the Irish government to tackle the housing crisis in a quick, meaningful way, that is cost effective - our homes are about €5 cheaper to build per square metre than traditional housing. On an average house you are looking at saving between €7,500 and €10,000 on current costs. So this is a solution to the housing crisis on the one hand, and it’s also a means of providing employment to skilled tradesmen and women - roofers, tilers, plumbers, machine operatives - and training to people from disadvantaged areas.”
“In England the government has signed a two billion pound contract with a company to establish a factory in Leeds building these type of homes. The English government is following a worldwide trend, and we hope that Minister Murphy, and other local authorities throughout Ireland, will be open to meeting us, so that we can pitch our product as a solution to a crisis which is affecting, not just those waiting on social housing lists, but those who are looking to buy in the private sector but who can’t get on the ladder because the supply of houses just isn’t there.”
"It’s more than 50 years since Michael Benn left Clare Street in Limerick for America. He built his way up in the New York construction business but never lost his love of home. Together with his son, Patrick, he was determined to do something to help the housing crisis in Ireland, starting in Limerick. I’m delighted that both Michael and Patrick are here today. It’s been a year since a delegation from the Council first met with Patrick and Michael and discussed the idea of opening a factory in Limerick where precision engineered timber frame homes could be built in a matter of weeks. Today, we see the reality.
“We have an ambitious target of building 3,000 social and affordable homes in Limerick City and County Council by 2021. There are about 3,500 people on the housing waiting list, so you can see that it’s a difficult task for us to keep the supply of houses up with the demand,” Mayor Collins, a Fianna Fail general election candidate, said.
“The availability of land, the cost of construction, and the speed of delivery are the three main issues we have to deal with. Michael and Patrick Benn are introducing a new way of building that can deliver houses in a matter of weeks and at a competitive cost. Around the world, it’s increasingly common for houses and apartments, and all kinds of buildings, to be constructed off-site. So we have to look at any cutting edge techniques that can help solve our housing crisis.
“The two showhouses launched today took seven weeks to build in total, and that’s working from a standing start, in a new factory where only the first of four planned production lines was in operation. In practice, when the factory is operating to full capacity, each of these houses can be built in three weeks. Representatives of Limerick City and County Council met with Clenn Construction last year when Michael and Patrick Benn were proposing setting up in Limerick. We are in discussions about a pilot project. The Council is obviously willing to listen to any good ideas that can help us tackle our housing crisis - which is the single biggest social challenge facing Limerick and Ireland today.
“Michael Benn left here at 15, but Limerick never left him. He’s returned here today with an exciting new business, that’s aiming to supply social and private houses all over the country, employing Limerick people in his native city. Michael and Patrick have invested in Limerick, and are training people from the Regeneration areas and putting them on the road to full-time employment. They hope to grow the business to 200 employees in Limerick, when the factory is operating at full capacity and delivering 1,700 houses a year.”
