A prototype house, five days and $400
- Published
- Reading time
- 1 min
- Written by
- MRN
- Filed under
- Reconstruction
Six weeks after the second earthquake, the organisation finished a single house and published what it had cost and how long it had taken.
The prototype was sponsored by the Nepal Education and Cultural Center in Washington DC. It took five days to build and cost $400, with the expectation that mass production would bring the unit cost down to $335. NECC funded at least thirty more houses on the strength of it, and construction in its name began the next day.
Publishing a unit cost that early is a commitment. It gave donors a single number to sponsor, which is why the appeal that ran through the rest of 2015 read: sponsor a transition home for $335.
The design changed over the following months. A procurement manager and a site engineer were added to oversee materials and quality, and the engineers submitted a revised drawing with lintels above door and window openings, which the original model house had lacked. By late September the cost per house had risen to approximately $450, and the organisation said so in the same public way it had announced the first figure.
