BSJ sees tenfold rise in modular home assessments

Several providers of modular homes are seeking approval of their building systems by the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) in preparation for the post-Melissa rebuilding of western Jamaica. 

Manager of Testing and Industrial Services at the BSJ, Richard Lawrence, said more providers of modular homes have contacted the BSJ for assessment of their systems since Melissa than in the past 15 years combined.

"Since the passage of Hurricane Melissa, the number of systems that we have received for assessment is more than 10 times what we get on average per year. What we have gotten in terms of application for assessment since the passage of Melissa has surpassed all of the 15 years combined, just in the last probably eight months. So we're working overtime to do these assessments," Lawrence said on June 25.

He made the observation at the Jamaica Developers' Association's Real Estate Development Webinar entitled Building for the Future — Costs, Risks and Resilience Post-Melissa.

Some 24,000 homes were completely destroyed and 156,000 were partially damaged in the category-5 hurricane, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management said last November.

Also at that time, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, announced that the National Housing Trust would procure 5,000 pre-built container homes for rapid deployment across the island to address urgent housing needs following Melissa.

The government has since established the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority as the dedicated agency for coordinating the post-disaster reconstruction effort.

Lawrence noted that since 2009, when the first set of modern building codes were promulgated, the BSJ received "a few" requests each year from developers to use new building systems from different parts of the world, but nothing like what has followed since Melissa struck the island on October 28 last year.

Lawrence explained that modular systems are assessed against the local building code. "When we do our assessment against the building code, there is always some caveat for compliance. We might see this system coming out of Turkiye or Saudi Arabia, and we accept it for Jamaica with these restrictions or modifications. The modular building system is similar to the other building system in terms of the compliance part," Lawrence said.

However, Lawrence noted that the BSJ was not a regulatory body, as its regulatory authority had been relinquished to the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority. "Under the Building Act, we are empowered to do assessments against the building code, then the municipal authority uses reports from the building code to do their regulatory activities," he said.

Also speaking at the webinar, Kinson Case, principal director of the Projects and Technical Services Branch in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development, said market interest in permanent modular housing solutions was "very strong". He said, however, that while many providers made claims about durability — for example, that units can withstand category-5 hurricanes — the supporting evidence was often lacking.

"The number-one characteristic that is important and that will get you through any door is that you must have evidence. It's not a matter of how many units you can build and how quickly you can build a unit. If you can do all of that, and there is not demonstrable evidence that a unit can hold up under specific conditions, then you would have lost the plot," Case said. 

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