FEATURE AI in construction
THE HOUSE THAT ‘BOT’ BUILT
Powered by AI, welcome to the ‘flat-pack’ of house building
Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called ‘Godfather of AI’, said that in the future, only a few jobs will be safe from artificial intelligence (AI).
In an interview last year, he urged people to consider careers in plumbing or other jobs using complex physical skills. This is because, he said, AI won’t be as good as humans at “physical manipulation” any time soon.
But what if this complex physical work required in the skilled trades is simplified enough so that robots and AI can actually manage it?
What if, in fact, no jobs are safe? This is a reality that has already arrived in the housebuilding industry.
A Reuters report from last year highlighted the Donaldson Timber Systems (DTS) factory in Oxfordshire.
Like a scene from the Jetsons, factory robots powered by AI work to produce timber-framed structures for houses, including walls, roofs and floors.
These pre-made designs are digitally entered using AI and then assembled by robotics and lasers.
28 unite buildingWORKER Spring 2026
The factory makes timber panelling for roughly 100 homes every week.
The pre-assembled structures are then sent to housebuilders to put together on-site to build what are known as modular homes. Call it the ‘IKEA flat-pack furniture of the housebuilding world’.
According to DTS CEO Alex Goodfellow, these timber-framed panels, first produced in a factory and then assembled on site, reduce the time to build a house by 10 weeks compared to using traditional bricks and mortar.
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