Every minute is crucial when it comes to competing on The Block. Here’s how some ingenuity by TRUECORE® steel experts helped ensure this season’s contestants were able to claw back several precious hours during construction.
The most successful of partnerships come about through determination, innovation and just the right amount of bravery.
These are precisely the qualities teams on this year’s The Block must bring in abundance if they are to stand any chance of turning a dilapidated Phillip Island holiday villa into a high-end holiday home in under three months.
Fortunately for the five teams competing in this season’s build, they have the advantage of working alongside a long-term sponsor of the series, BlueScope, with its expert advisors working around the clock to aid contestants as they forgo sleep and sanity for their chance to build an auction-topping house.
Facing a tight schedule of just 10 weeks from design development to completion, BlueScope’s onsite team of construction specialist Scott May (BlueScope) and fabricator Peter Blythe (Dynamic Steel Frame) worked closely with project architect Julian Brenchley to devise and implement four critical components essential to hasten the construction process.
The masterstroke move involved placing precision engineered frames made from TRUECORE® steel throughout each home, ensuring teams could fast-track their delivery of a finished room each week without having to compromise on form or function.
Good bones inside and out
Blyth says there are no houses anywhere in Australia that are built at the same speed as The Block. Therefore, the key to ensuring the teams were able to hit the ground running was the development of frames made from TRUECORE® steel exoskeleton.
The frames made from TRUECORE® steel exoskeleton provided a quick solution for the builders to be able to install the windows, wall cladding and roofing made from COLORBOND® steel while allowing the contestants to design and build their internal room layouts.
In addition to freeing up interior space that would otherwise be required for other structural supports, using prefabricated light gauge steel to frame the houses saved contestants and their trades a tonne of time.
This meant the construction teams were not required to waste time straightening them which may have been required for other materials.
“There were some locked walls for bracing, but the majority of the internal walls were non-load bearing,” Blyth says. “The contestants could do whatever they wanted to do internally, as long as they kept the five or six walls that had to be kept in position for bracing purposes. It gave them ultimate flexibility in terms of where they put their toilets and doors and what features they put in.”
Outside the box and into the can
Concerned about ensuring access to the necessary building materials on the isolated site meant May and Blythe had to think outside the box when it came to frame fabrication.
The innovative result was ‘Factory in a Can’, involving a large shipping container placed onsite containing machinery able to pump out bespoke frames made from TRUECORE® steel within hours of building teams submitting their plans.
According to May, being able to custom fabricate framing just metres away from each new residence, proved an absolute game-changer for everyone involved in The Block 2024.
While the Factory in a Can is not suitable for typical residential builds, this expedited process proved an instant success on The Block, resulting in contestants being able to order a wall and have it installed in their home ready for plastering and insulating in less than an hour, rather than waiting days for the pre-fabricated frames to arrive onsite.
Onsite design HQ
In previous series of The Block, contestants completed much of the exterior and interior structural design work in the privacy of their own space. In a significant change-up this year, TRUECORE® steel created a design office onsite.
With a fabrication detailer stationed in the office, contestants were able to walk in to discuss their design plans free from prying eyes and interruptions from trades competing for their attention.
Using a computer aided design program, the detailer was able to pull up the relevant contestant’s plans, discuss their needs and draw their walls, before loading the updated file to a USB. The memory stick would then be taken to the machine and converted into factory-quality frames within minutes.
“The beauty of it was that the contestants were able to design everything with a keyboard, mouse and screen first,” Blythe says.
“Onsite design was a huge time-saving benefit too and while it’s not normal that we do that, it was certainly a very, very cool thing to do.”
Perfect fit
The decision to pre-punch service holes into each frame made from TRUECORE® steel proved another critical time-saving move for the ‘Blockheads’.
It has meant electrician and plumbing teams are able to run their cables and conduits through the pre-punched holes without needing to touch a drill.
“That speeds up the process for trades in that circumstance because they are able to run their wires and pipes where they wanted to,” says May. “The holes were punched in various locations, some of them specifically where the electricians asked for them.”
May says this simple execution also helped restore harmony among the numerous tradespeople working on The Block.
He says it’s not unheard of for one of the TRUECORE® steel team to walk into a room on The Block on a given day and witness 15-plus people working in one bedroom from four different trades.
“It’s important that it is a harmonious build. The opportunity to have service penetrations already done meant that you haven’t got people running around drilling holes everywhere, frustrating other trades and potentially compromising the frame’s integrity because everyone’s in such a rush.”
