Whether you call it prefabrication, offsite construction, modular construction, or industrialized construction, market demand is expected to grow 11 to 33 percent over the next three years. (Figure 1.)
The affordable housing crunch, labor shortages, shrinking margins, increasing health and safety concerns, and a general desire for change in the way construction is done are driving the popularity and sustainability of prefab construction.
"Modular (or prefabricated) construction is not a new concept, but it is receiving renewed attention and investment due to changes in the technological and economic landscape," McKinsey said in a 2020 report.
In this article, learn how some of the largest companies in the industry - both established and startups - are using prefabrication methods and technologies to transform their business models, disrupt markets, and stay ahead of the competition.
Projected growth in the use of prefabrication and permanent modular construction over the next three years, by percentage reporting using prefabrication on 10% or more of their projects in the past three years and projecting that level of use in the next three years
Example 1)
Swimming against the tide of change year after year, Clarke Pacific has grown to become a future-focused, innovative company, making it a rare breed in the construction industry. since its beginnings as a pre-caster in 1963, Clark Pacific has made purpose and problem-solving for its customers part of its corporate DNA.
"When we move from project to product, we can have six to eight different vendors providing work for the entire façade solution."
Mark Palmer, estimating manager, says that applying these values internally "allows us to constantly look at how we can do things differently to provide better service and products to our customers, while also developing our relevance and value to the market."
With this mindset, Clark Pacific expanded its business to become a full-fledged designer, manufacturer, and contractor of prefabricated buildings and façade systems. "We realized that the more we could integrate into the system, the easier it would be for everyone.
Prefabrication is a natural progression because it lends itself to integrating systems outside of the factory." "Customers can now move more of their scope offsite," says Palmer.
This approach has been so successful that Clark Pacific's roadmap includes expanding into more products and services to grow its presence in the market. Angela Jackson, Marketing Manager, says, "We talk a lot about the offsite continuum and how customers can benefit from prefabrication. the further down the continuum a project goes, the more customers can benefit from cost and accurate air, less waste, and less site impact."
Clark Pacific: How to drive success from project to product strategy
There's a trap that estimators can easily fall into when communicating project costs to owners: providing a preliminary cost analysis and assessment that doesn't take into account the offsite construction savings that owners can realize through prefabrication.
At one point, it was nearly impossible to accurately compare prefabricated systems to traditional construction methods for estimating purposes. So Clark Pacific commissioned construction consultants Faithful+Gould to conduct a cost study of its entire prefabricated student housing fleet. The results allowed Clark Pacific to go beyond what it knew anecdotally and come up with concrete numbers to use in estimating and sales discussions, as well as quantify the value that prefabrication brings to a project's whole-life costs.
Simplify with a single source solution
"With a single-solution approach, design teams have a single point of contact to streamline the design process and contractors have a single point of contact to simplify site management. "And from the owner's perspective, there is now only one point of contact for warranty."
Tell stories with technology
On a 10-story building project in downtown Sacramento, California, USA, Clark Pacific was able to convert a model created in SketchUp into a structural model within Tekla to find opportunities for improvement, such as broken panels. "We used that model to tell the story to the owner. we brought the model back to the factory and acted as a kind of design assistant, demonstrating how we could solve schedule and safety issues through prefabrication," says Grant Guerrieri, Senior Project Engineer. "Nobody likes rework, and that's how we work now, and it's saving our clients time and money."
"Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to iterate as quickly as we do now," Palmer says, "and the ability to sketch something out and say, 'If we do this, it's going to look like this,' and be able to visually guide us has been a huge help."
Moving to market successfully
One of the benefits of shifting from a project-based approach to a product-centric approach is the ability to offer more complete solutions and services to the market. while Clark Pacific has enjoyed success on the West Coast, recent partnerships have allowed us to now offer Infinite Facades™ nationwide. clark Pacific's Infinite Facade™ technology is a standardized frame and connection system with factory-installed fire safety and insulation. this technology allows designers and owners to utilize the benefits of prefabrication while still having complete design flexibility.
Continuous integration
"As we shift to focusing on products, we're constantly looking for ways to integrate more systems into our solutions," says Jackson. a recent project at Stanford involved erecting panels that included both structural and cladding systems and windows. by performing most of the building construction offsite, Clark Pacific was able to integrate these systems and manufacture them in a quality-controlled environment.
"Modular construction will continue to grow, especially as the AEC industry becomes more comfortable with prefabricated design and procurement methods," says Gary.
"One of the areas we are currently focusing on is adding radiant tubing to the floor system. By integrating the system off-site, we can achieve significant cost and schedule savings compared to working on-site. It also requires smaller mechanical units, which not only saves on building construction costs, but also on operating costs."
"We recommend starting a preproduction strategy before you start a project. Once you do, you'll be able to look at all future projects with fresh eyes and take advantage of the benefits of modular production." - Angela Jackson, Marketing Manager, Clark Pacific
