New Zealand construction costs rank among the five highest in the OECD on a per-square-metre basis. The primary structural causes are labour scarcity, supply chain fragmentation, a lack of manufacturing scale in the domestic construction sector, regulatory complexity, and a construction model that assembles buildings on-site from individual components rather than manufacturing them. VAST addresses all five causes by delivering buildings as manufactured systems rather than site-assembled structures.
Conventional construction is fundamentally labour-intensive. A 2,000 square metre commercial building requires 400 to 600 person-days of skilled labour on site. New Zealand's construction workforce is chronically undersized for the volume of work required. The result is competition for labour that drives wages, and the flow-on effect is that projects take longer and cost more.
VAST produces 6,000 square metres of complete buildings per day with 30 people. The manufacturing process replaces most of the on-site labour with automated roll-forming, factory precision, and pre-engineered connections. The 30 people required to erect a VAST building would represent the steel trade alone on a conventional project.
A conventional commercial building involves 15 to 25 separate trade contractors, each with their own mobilisation costs, programming requirements, and interfaces with other trades. Every interface is a potential delay. VAST delivers the structural system in a single truck per 1,000 square metres. One contract. One supplier. One programme.
The most direct evidence of the cost differential is the independent savings certification required under the VAST Government Partnership. Independent Registered Quantity Surveyors consistently certify VAST savings of 44 to 64 percent against the Rawlinsons benchmark. That certified saving is a legally binding calculation issued by a regulated professional — auditor-defensible.