How robots are taking prefabricated housing construction to a new level for this Vancouver company

By Derrick Penner
The Vancouver Sun
June 23, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada West

Behind the three-storey rolling doors of its prototype factory in Delta, a Metro Vancouver company is fine-tuning an approach to prefabricated construction that it believes could be key to solving Canada’s housing crisis. Intelligent City is using massive industrial robots and advanced techniques in mass-timber construction to produce complete floor and exterior wall sections for a nine-storey apartment building that will be assembled in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. In the middle of the factory, a pair of automated machines on parallel tracks engage in a precisely choreographed dance to the tune of detailed digitized plans, laying down layers of glue and nailing elements together to assemble floor panels. …The time saved by Intelligent City’s method — which is about four to six months over traditional concrete construction — can help governments meet the ambitious targets they are setting for home building.

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