Rise of the robots: Some homebuilders turning to automation to bridge labour shortage

AI-driven robots arms are shown in this handout image at the Canadian artificial intelligence company Promise Robotics 60,000-square-foot warehouse in Calgary. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Promise Robotics. *MANDATORY CREDIT *

At a housing construction site in Gananoque, Ont., Val spends nearly two months laying concrete, used to build 26 stacked townhouse units.

Val’s task is a simple, but crucial part of the project by developer Horizon Legacy, which is slated to open this fall.

Among those on site, the company says Val’s skill set is unique. She can lift over 440 pounds on her own and handle the work of around 20 tradespeople.

Her bosses acknowledge she’s not perfect. They hope that as time goes on, she can work twice as fast and be trained to handle other “menial” tasks she’s never done before.

Val is a robot — built by the developer to handle labour-intensive elements of a construction project to assemble homes faster and more efficiently.

Operated by a crew of three to five technicians and programmers, Val “does most of the heavy lifting, repetitive work,” said Horizon Legacy CEO Nhung Nguyen — or “the parts that people don’t want to do in construction.”

“This has not been done widely before,” said Nguyen.

“We think it could really be a different way to approach the problems that we’ve been experiencing, and a solution that can be scalable to address the housing crisis and the labour shortage crisis in Canada.”

As Canada sets out to build millions of new homes in the coming years, experts say the real estate construction sector will need to be more innovative, including through increased adoption of robotics and other automation tools.

Val is one of a few examples of companies doing just that. The alternative is a more “extensive, complicated process,” said Nguyen, adding if it weren’t for Val, three crews would be needed to lay out the same amount of concrete.

“She can be programmed to do more things later. And that can help make people’s jobs better on construction sites, give young people a reason to come back to construction,” she said.

Up in Sudbury, Ont., researcher Steven Beites and a team of engineers have been working on their own prototype of a homebuilder robot. He said it would be able to pick up a wall panel, move and rotate it, and position it in place.

“It’s all through kind of an automated process, through machine vision,” said Beites, an assistant professor at Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture.

He said the goal is for the system to understand which panel to pick up and where it’s meant to be located in the structure, all while avoiding collisions.

Companies and researchers spearheading the charge toward more use of robotics in construction all point to a common cause.

They say an industry that’s been too slow to incorporate automation in their operations now faces a pressing issue: a labour shortage that is set to worsen at a time Canada already is in desperate need of more housing.

The Canadian Home Builders’ Association estimates 22 per cent of residential construction workers are set to retire over the next decade. An RBC report last year estimated Canada would need more than 500,000 additional construction workers on average to build all the homes needed between now and 2030 to improve affordability.

The problem is felt acutely in regions such as northern Ontario, where a trades shortage and rising labour costs are compounded by construction seasons that are limited by longer winters — all of which are driving up the cost to build homes, said Beites.

“Our construction industry is in very slow decline. We have an aging workforce, and we are not attracting young, tech savvy adults or individuals into the construction industry,” he said.

CHBA CEO Kevin Lee said that unlike the auto sector, which was quicker to embrace robotics, home construction “is not an industry of big players with big, big factories.”

He said because real estate experiences the roller-coaster of boom and bust periods for housing starts, it’s mostly comprised of smaller companies with subcontracted staff, who typically build homes on-site rather than at scale in prefabrication facilities.

“Our industry is set up to ride the waves of the up and down,” said Lee.

“We have some manufactured housing facilities, and we do think that’s a potential for the future, but unless we get some support ... you’re just not going to see industry making huge investments because it’s much too risky.”

But Lee predicted adoption of robotics will pick up as the technology gets cheaper over time.

Some say the industry can’t wait to take that leap.

Last month, Canadian artificial intelligence company Promise Robotics announced the opening of a new 60,000-square-foot warehouse in Calgary that will be home to off-site housing construction powered by AI-driven robots.

Starting this summer, it said the new facility will be able to produce up to 1,000,000 square feet of housing annually. Rather than needing to set up their own factories, homebuilders will be able to access the technology through Promise Robotics' “factory-as-a-service” model, which it also offers at its existing facility in Edmonton.

“This robot is capable of doing tasks that traditionally was really just the domain of humans,” said Promise Robotics co-founder Ramtin Attar. He said the technology can produce walls, floors and stairs, as the robot’s functions range from notching, cutting, nailing, screwing and gluing.

“More importantly, they’re not only doing these tasks, they really understand what is the sequence of tasks to really build a credible component that goes into a house that you live for decades and decades.”

Attar said this model allows elements of a home to be built 60 per cent faster than they would in a traditional build, where up to 20 different trades would be needed on site.

“Something that traditionally has been done in three to four weeks, we complete in two to three days,” he said.

Back at the Gananoque project, Nguyen said she hopes robots like Val can pave the way for lasting change in how homebuilders think about their operations.

She said Val should be seen as a “tool” that makes life easier on a construction site, especially for prospective workers otherwise finding themselves dissuaded from entering the industry.

“Construction has had a difficult time attracting labour, attracting people to the field, because people are smart. They don’t want to do mind-numbing, menial tasks,” she said.

“I have no doubt that this way is the way of the future, and this way can change the equation.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2025.

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press