Fortis Homes, Te Kauwhata Lakeside

Two houses, built to find out whether the next fifty will work.

Fortis Homes Group is developing at Te Kauwhata Lakeside in the Waikato on a group housing template, and before a template gets rolled out at volume, somebody has to build it once or twice and see what breaks. These two homes were that test run, with Earthwool thermal to walls and ceilings.

A pilot install is a different exercise to a normal job, and it is worth being clear about what is actually being tested. It is not whether the insulation can be installed. Of course it can. What is being proven is the repeatability of everything around it.

Install rhythm: how long does one house genuinely take, with a real crew, on a real site, as opposed to the estimate. That number sets the labour plan for every house that follows.

Material call-offs: how much product does the template actually consume, what does the wastage look like, and what is the right order quantity and delivery frequency once you are running several houses at once rather than one.

QA paperwork: what does the documentation for one house look like, and does that process still work when it has to be produced fifty times without becoming a bottleneck at code compliance.

Get those three right on two houses and the rollout is a known quantity. Get them wrong and every error is now baked into a repeatable process, which is a much more expensive problem to discover at house thirty.

A note on the contracting structure, because it is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly. Our supply and install contract sat with Bunnings, while the build itself ran through Fortis Homes Group. That is not the standard arrangement and we have written it out here so nobody has to guess at the relationship.

Both homes delivered cleanly to scope.

If you are developing a group housing template in the Waikato or Auckland and want the insulation scope proven before you scale it, this is exactly the exercise we have already run.