How much does it really cost to make buildings with 3D printing? A recent story reveals some truths.
There’s been a ton of hype about construction 3D printing, or 3DCP in recent years. The technology involves extruding concrete through a huge toolhead positioned by a robotic arm or Cartesian gantry. It’s possible to build multi-storey buildings with this technique — or at least the concrete portions of the building. The other parts are built using conventional trade approaches.
One aspect we don’t hear much about is the cost of 3DCP. We do hear that the concrete portion of 3DCP build projects can be much faster than conventional approaches, and that’s good. You probably will save money on labour because of the time savings. But does this lead to lower costs overall?
I have never seen proper costs detailed for a project, but a recent LinkedIn post revealed some information about a recent 3DCP project.
A post by Bob Morris analyzes a story on MySanAntonio that describes the recent 3DCP printing of a small Starbucks outlet in Brownsville, TX.
The story is largely typical of 3DCP mass media stories: “wow, we have a 3D printed building!” That’s true, but there was one very interesting bit at the bottom of the story:
“The building’s construction cost an estimated $1.98 million, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.”
This is for a 1400sf building, which, arithmetic tells us, represents a cost of US$1414 per square foot to build the Starbucks site. That seems like an outrageously high cost compared to traditional building methods.
Morris also saw this issue and did some research:
“That raised an eyebrow, so I dug a little deeper. Turns out, that was a typo. The official figure listed by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is $1,198,000, which still puts the cost at $856 per square foot.”
Morris, a retail brokerage specialist, suggested that a normal price for this type of construction would currently be something between US$275–US$450 per square foot. That means the 3DCP Starbucks project may have cost 2-4X the cost of traditional construction.
Does this suggest that 3DCP projects are more expensive than traditional methods? If so, that would be very bad news for the future of 3DCP technology.
However, this is but one data point. It could be that there were some peculiarities about this project that drove the cost upwards. For example, it may be that this project was financially unsuitable with 3DCP technology, but orders from above said “do it anyway!” In other words, a publicity stunt.
It’s very likely that 3DCP is actually quite effective on certain types of building projects. This is the way most technologies proceed: at first they are only viable on highly niche projects, but over time they gain capabilities and gradually widen their envelope of possibilities.
Perhaps that envelope doesn’t yet include Starbucks.
Via MySanAntonio and LinkedIn
