Would the Hadrian X generate a gross profit on a wall build today?

Hi All

Have been reading various posts with nothing really to contribute til today.

I was in my car listening to talk back (6PR) and heard bricklayer cost per brick in Perth have hit $2.50 per brick?

Assuming this is correct, I thought I would look at the calcs I posted in August last year to see if the Hadrian X could operate today to generate a gross profit for the company. I thought I would post this to initiate discussion on the impact of labour (trade) shortage on decision to roll out the Hadrian (whether it be the "X" or the "109").

I use the description "gross" profit to limit the costs purely to working on a site (including depreciation of the X) and exclude any head office costs. I posted some info last year where I assessed they need to work on getting to sub a 2 day build for overall company profitability but I'm also interested in when they will be in the black at the site level (ie. before incorporating head office costs).

Background Info

My notes indicate The 1st build in Dayton took 3.5 actual days and and totalled 268m2. I calculated the actual build speed (over the 42 hrs) was 6.4m2 per hr. Remember the X only built the internal walls.

The published announcement indicated that a typical house would have about 351 m2 of walls (internal and external) and the market labour rate at the time would be $12,636 (or $36 per m2 or $1.78 per brick). Assuming the same build speed, the estimated build time would be 54 hrs

My assessment of "on site" daily costs would be about $3,800 (where only 2 technicians required) and about $4,300 (where 3 technicians are required. Assuming a conservative number of 3 techs on site, the total build time would need to be 2.93 days or say ~30hrs (assuming a 10hr day rather than 12hr day) to build 351m2 of walls.


Impact of $2.50 laying rate

With this background info in mind and assuming the $2.50 is the current market rate, I wanted to assess how long the X (used in Dayton) could be on site and be in the black.

I assess the revenue would increase from $12,636 to $17,761, which would mean the build time could extend out to ~4 days (40 hrs).

So in order to achieve this, between the time spent in Dayton with the use of the CMU blocks and now:

1. They would need to operate with no more than 3 people on site (remember there was a team of 10+ on site at Dayton);

2. They would have to improved the total speed by 25%;and

3. The coats are assessed are correct.

I would expect they would easily have achieved a 25% improvement in speed between August 2020 and now. Bear in mind the first build was exactly that "a first build" and would be slower.

So my gut feel would be that if they can operate without a team of thousands on site, at $2.50 a brick, FBR is probably ripe to deploy.

Food for thought?