The shortest honest answer is three to five months from signed contract to occupied building for a standard Class 1a single-module home. The longest honest answer is up to nine months if your site has access issues, your council is busy, or your finance takes time. This article walks through where the weeks actually go so you can plan around them.

Phase 1 — Engineering & council approval (3–8 weeks)

Once you sign and pay the deposit, our drafting team starts on the engineering drawings — site-specific structural calculations, soil class, wind classification, and the bushfire-attack-level (BAL) assessment if your block requires it. For a Class 1a build we lodge these with the building certifier and, depending on your local government area, the council itself.

Variable factor:council turnaround. Some Queensland councils approve within three weeks; some take seven. We can’t promise a faster council than you actually have. If timing matters, ask us before you sign which LGAs we’re currently seeing fastest.

Phase 2 — Manufacturing (4–7 weeks)

Production runs on a queued schedule — your build slot is reserved when the deposit clears. The hard timeline drivers here are:

  • Factory queue. If we’re running a popular configuration, you may sit in queue for two to three weeks before your build starts.
  • Variant complexity. A standard 40ft KM-Expander 3-bedroom is faster than a glass-front Pitched with custom kitchen joinery. We tell you which way your spec pulls before you finalise.
  • Finish materials. Imported claddings and high-grade glass have lead times that occasionally surprise us. We try to flag this up front.

Phase 3 — Freight (2–4 weeks)

Once the building leaves the factory, it’s on ocean freight to the nearest major Australian port (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle), then on a flatbed to your block. Transit time depends on where you are.

  • South-east Queensland: 7–14 days from departure.
  • Sydney / Melbourne / Adelaide: 10–21 days.
  • Perth: 14–28 days plus customs.
  • Remote NT / FNQ: case-by-case.

Phase 4 — On-site commissioning (1 day to 2 weeks)

The crane lift itself takes a single day for a standard module. After that comes utility connection, levelling and weather sealing — the “easy bit” that gets quoted as a fortnight because it depends on the trades you bring in and the certificate of classification being issued.

Common sources of slip

  1. Site access wasn’t verified before the contract. The truck arrives, can’t reach the slab, and we have to arrange a smaller crane or a different unload strategy. A two-page site access checklist avoids this almost completely.
  2. Finance approval takes longer than expected. If you’re relying on bank finance and the bank wants to see the engineering drawings before they sign off, that’s a serial dependency. Talk to your broker early.
  3. Council asks for a revision. Rare, but a redesign request adds two to four weeks.
  4. Cyclone or flooding shuts the port. Acts of God; we’ll keep you informed.

What we commit to

We commit to a specific delivery window in the contract— not a marketing “couple of months.” The window has a stated start and end, and if we slip past the end we tell you why and what the new date is. We don’t bury timelines in fine print.

Want a concrete timeline for your block? A free quoteincludes a delivery window estimate against current production capacity and your LGA’s current approval times.