Building the Future in Three Hours
A 12m x 4.5m Modfloor steel chassis system undergoes rigorous strength testing, loaded with 15.5 tonnes of concrete blocks—50% more weight than a typical building would carry.
In a Queensland factory, two workers assemble what would traditionally take a team of skilled welders an entire day to build. No sparks fly, no heavy machinery groans—just the methodical click of components slotting into pre-punched tabs. Within three hours, a 12-metre modular chassis emerges, ready for transport.
This is Modfloor's revolution in action, and it couldn't come at a more critical time for Australia's construction industry.
With the prefabAUS roadmap targeting 30% prefabricated construction by 2033—a leap from today's 5%—innovative solutions like Modfloor's are essential to achieving the sector's ambitious $9 billion annual benefit goal. The roadmap identifies key barriers: skilled labour shortages, productivity challenges, and the need for standardisation. Modfloor's welding-free system addresses each directly.
The beauty is in the simplicity of the engineering behind their light-gauge steel chassis. Pre-engineered tabs eliminate measuring and cutting, whilst ZinMag ZM310 steel provides seven to ten times the corrosion resistance of standard galvanised alternatives. Independent testing reveals deflection rates of just 4.1mm—dramatically superior to the 15-20mm typical of welded chassis.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Modfloor chassis weigh 40-50% less than welded equivalents while maintaining superior structural integrity. Pre-punched service holes enable factory installation of plumbing and electrical systems. With warranties extending to 50 years for corrosion and 20 years for structural, the system embodies the roadmap's vision of quality, durability, and affordability.
The genesis came from an unexpected discovery. "We bought this million-dollar machine for another purpose," explains John Davis, whose CAD Steel has been pioneering light-gauge steel framing for over three decades. "As soon as we got it here, we realised what we had." What followed was two years of relentless development—customising tooling, perfecting tolerances, and sending countless prototypes to the scrap dealer until they cracked the code that nobody else had: a light-gauge steel floor system for modular housing.
The breakthrough was achieved through persistence and precision engineering. "We made a million mistakes on the way," Davis admits, but those mistakes led to a system now attracting orders exceeding 500 units from single clients. When one major builder assembled their first Modfloor chassis—with no prior experience—it took two hours to complete what normally requires three days of skilled welding. "That's the biggest challenge we face," Davis notes about industry adoption, "people claim to be doing modern methods of construction, but you go and look at what they're doing—they're still building the way people did it 150 years ago."
As Australia grapples with housing affordability and the need for 1.2 million new homes by 2030, Modfloor represents the practical innovation the industry demands. Modfloor is expanding rapidly: an insulated floor system is launching within weeks, multi-storey capabilities extending to four levels with fire and sound ratings, and a "no-step" NDIS-compliant system for accessible housing are all on the cusp of release. International licensing deals are imminent, with serious enquiries from a 4,600-unit project in Saudi Arabia and major Vietnamese corporations seeking to transform their four-to-five-day chassis manufacturing process.
Sometimes revolution comes not with fanfare, but with the quiet efficiency of components clicking perfectly into place.
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