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One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC

One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. In most growing American metros, a major constraining factor on housing supply is the lack of these skilled tradesmen. In contrast, drywall, painting, and landscaping tend to be lower-skilled and easier to draw from the general labor pool. You can have a high-productivity manufacturing center start with a pre-fab "core" built out of a modular shipping container, and pre-fab roof trusses. In parallel, you prep the site including any lot development and laying the concrete foundation. You then install the core and trusses on site, and can finish up the drywall and paining very quickly. The core contains all the complex plumbing, electrical work, HVAC and kitchen work. The finished house looks indistinguishable from regular construction, and you can stand up single family homes or duplexes in under two months.

tw04 6y ago
> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. To what end? As a country we're already struggling to create enough middle-class jobs and you're suggesting we try to gut another whole sector. So that owners/executives of prefab factories can pocket the money? If you think it's going to reduce cost or benefit the consumer, you're crazy. I notice you downvoted without responding. I presume you've got a plan to recreate those jobs vs. just transferring wealth upwards and are keeping it a secret. It astounds me people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact is somehow a righteous goal to strive for. Yet you can't even answer what the benefit is to society other than making some really rich dude a little bit richer at the expensive of hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs. And most likely an end product for consumers that's LOWER quality.
- seibelj 6y ago
  This is the fallacy - The Fallacy - that is always made by those who don’t understand economics. Why did we build the car when it put all of the horse tradesmen out of business? Why do we use elevator buttons and put the doormen out of a job? Why did we create the Internet when perfectly good newspaper printers could pass information to us? You are making an age-old argument that we need to reduce productivity in order to save jobs. If you spent your whole life scrubbing a floor with a tooth brush when right next to you is a mop, just so you can ensure more of your time was spent washing, wouldn’t you feel like your life was wasted?
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    This is potentially very much like saying, "we burned this little bit of fuel, and all that happened was the fire got brighter because it spread to more fuel! It can never go out!". There's no reason to expect the job-generation cycle to last forever. In fact there's every reason to believe it can't. The question is whether it ends on a scale more like decades or centuries. To blindly assume that things will continue as they have is foolish. (To be clear, I think the solution looks more like UBI than Luddism.)
    - marcusverus 6y ago
      I agree that the job-generation cycle may not last forever. But in order to oppose new tech as a bad thing right now, you have to make the case that the job-generation cycle is broken right now. Arguing against new tech now because of some inevitable eventual breakdown of the job-generation cycle is just luddism with extra steps.
      - andrewflnr 6y ago
        Sure, it's the blind faith that everything will magically be fine that pisses me off. We need to be preparing for a post-work economy.
  - ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
    I think your example isn't completely off the mark, but I do think the article itself actually answers this: there is a shortage in trade labour in the non-commercial construction sector in (North) America. We are also at a cross-roads with regards to having a housing crisis. There are many places now (Bay Area, Boulder) where housing is skyrocketing not because the value is naturally increasing, but is instead being artificially inflated due to a shortage in homes. One "radical" solution to this: build more homes. However, given the amount of labour and time needed to do so, we may not be able to avoid the housing crisis. One way the market is responding is moving to pre-fab construction, and trying to reduce time / costs that way. The article does seem to claim that the projects cost about the same, even if pre-fab is faster in terms of time. This _does_ identify a problem with pre-fab, namely, how come they can't fulfill this promise of being cheaper & faster. Seems strange that you save time but still cost the same when what you're proposing is taking away a significant chunk of higher-skilled labour from the equation. Some of this is regulatory capture (wasted time / money trying to convince cities of the process), some of this is nascent technology sucking (see top parent comment, sometimes pre-fab doesn't get it right), and some of this seems to just be a lack of experience on behalf of the companies trying to "disrupt" construction.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  >> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. > To what end? To the end that you can get your house built on a schedule that you want. A neighbour is a general contractor who has a good reputation: he, and the specialty teams he uses, are booked at least a year out. This isn't too say we shouldn't train more skilled trades, but having a spectrum of of people available helps those you can't afford to pay top dollar for top talent to also get quality results. It should also be noted that not everyone is gifted enough to be a top or even decent trade, yet we want as many people as possible to be productively employed. There will some percentage of the population that may be most productive simply following what the computer tells them to do: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  No company exists to create jobs and nobody ought to wish any product particularly a vital resource like housing that everyone needs cost more in order to transfer money to the middle class workforce. If you want to do that just be straightforward about it and directly raise that money via taxes and give it to families. It will be increasingly obvious as increasing automation kills jobs that ultimately probably wont ever be fully replaced that we need a solution that isn't deliberate inefficiency to maintain jobs.
- solarmist 6y ago
  You’re comments come across to me as condescending, argumentative (without being productive), actively hostile to other users, and so one-sided you sound almost completely uninformed on the topic. All of which is unacceptable behavior on HN. That said you’re not totally off the mark, but comments like “It astounds me that people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact” is why you’re getting down voted. How do you know now I or anyone else hasn’t given this thought? If you browse though old stories you’ll see tons of discussion on this topic. My point of view on this is “It’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle and no amount of trying to avoid job losses is going to be productive.” Instead we need to work towards making our gross economic output support everyone. If basic necessities are all provided for (such as though UBI or some other idea) then no one will care if jobs are lost because then people can focus on figuring out how to productively use their time rather than worrying about finding a shitty, or even non-shitty, job so their family can eat and stay out of the weather. And without that we’ll continue hemorrhaging jobs until we reach a critical point where there will be an honest to god revolution in the USA and things will be violently reset (not corrected).
ako 6y ago
That sounds very much like the promise of low-code: use our pre-fab components to quickly assemble your software apps. You'll be able to this with lower skilled people, and no longer be limited by the lack skilled software engineers...
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Offhand thought is the advantage to using lower skilled labor probably benefits Bone Structure more than it benefits the builder. Two choices pay bone structure a premium for custom cut metal framing or pay a premium for skilled framers. Note unskilled tends to come with a lot of other negatives.

tw04 6y ago

> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. To what end? As a country we're already struggling to create enough middle-class jobs and you're suggesting we try to gut another whole sector. So that owners/executives of prefab factories can pocket the money? If you think it's going to reduce cost or benefit the consumer, you're crazy. I notice you downvoted without responding. I presume you've got a plan to recreate those jobs vs. just transferring wealth upwards and are keeping it a secret. It astounds me people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact is somehow a righteous goal to strive for. Yet you can't even answer what the benefit is to society other than making some really rich dude a little bit richer at the expensive of hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs. And most likely an end product for consumers that's LOWER quality.

seibelj 6y ago
This is the fallacy - The Fallacy - that is always made by those who don’t understand economics. Why did we build the car when it put all of the horse tradesmen out of business? Why do we use elevator buttons and put the doormen out of a job? Why did we create the Internet when perfectly good newspaper printers could pass information to us? You are making an age-old argument that we need to reduce productivity in order to save jobs. If you spent your whole life scrubbing a floor with a tooth brush when right next to you is a mop, just so you can ensure more of your time was spent washing, wouldn’t you feel like your life was wasted?
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  This is potentially very much like saying, "we burned this little bit of fuel, and all that happened was the fire got brighter because it spread to more fuel! It can never go out!". There's no reason to expect the job-generation cycle to last forever. In fact there's every reason to believe it can't. The question is whether it ends on a scale more like decades or centuries. To blindly assume that things will continue as they have is foolish. (To be clear, I think the solution looks more like UBI than Luddism.)
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    I agree that the job-generation cycle may not last forever. But in order to oppose new tech as a bad thing right now, you have to make the case that the job-generation cycle is broken right now. Arguing against new tech now because of some inevitable eventual breakdown of the job-generation cycle is just luddism with extra steps.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      Sure, it's the blind faith that everything will magically be fine that pisses me off. We need to be preparing for a post-work economy.
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  I think your example isn't completely off the mark, but I do think the article itself actually answers this: there is a shortage in trade labour in the non-commercial construction sector in (North) America. We are also at a cross-roads with regards to having a housing crisis. There are many places now (Bay Area, Boulder) where housing is skyrocketing not because the value is naturally increasing, but is instead being artificially inflated due to a shortage in homes. One "radical" solution to this: build more homes. However, given the amount of labour and time needed to do so, we may not be able to avoid the housing crisis. One way the market is responding is moving to pre-fab construction, and trying to reduce time / costs that way. The article does seem to claim that the projects cost about the same, even if pre-fab is faster in terms of time. This _does_ identify a problem with pre-fab, namely, how come they can't fulfill this promise of being cheaper & faster. Seems strange that you save time but still cost the same when what you're proposing is taking away a significant chunk of higher-skilled labour from the equation. Some of this is regulatory capture (wasted time / money trying to convince cities of the process), some of this is nascent technology sucking (see top parent comment, sometimes pre-fab doesn't get it right), and some of this seems to just be a lack of experience on behalf of the companies trying to "disrupt" construction.
throw0101a 6y ago
>> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. > To what end? To the end that you can get your house built on a schedule that you want. A neighbour is a general contractor who has a good reputation: he, and the specialty teams he uses, are booked at least a year out. This isn't too say we shouldn't train more skilled trades, but having a spectrum of of people available helps those you can't afford to pay top dollar for top talent to also get quality results. It should also be noted that not everyone is gifted enough to be a top or even decent trade, yet we want as many people as possible to be productively employed. There will some percentage of the population that may be most productive simply following what the computer tells them to do: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
michaelmrose 6y ago
No company exists to create jobs and nobody ought to wish any product particularly a vital resource like housing that everyone needs cost more in order to transfer money to the middle class workforce. If you want to do that just be straightforward about it and directly raise that money via taxes and give it to families. It will be increasingly obvious as increasing automation kills jobs that ultimately probably wont ever be fully replaced that we need a solution that isn't deliberate inefficiency to maintain jobs.
solarmist 6y ago
You’re comments come across to me as condescending, argumentative (without being productive), actively hostile to other users, and so one-sided you sound almost completely uninformed on the topic. All of which is unacceptable behavior on HN. That said you’re not totally off the mark, but comments like “It astounds me that people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact” is why you’re getting down voted. How do you know now I or anyone else hasn’t given this thought? If you browse though old stories you’ll see tons of discussion on this topic. My point of view on this is “It’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle and no amount of trying to avoid job losses is going to be productive.” Instead we need to work towards making our gross economic output support everyone. If basic necessities are all provided for (such as though UBI or some other idea) then no one will care if jobs are lost because then people can focus on figuring out how to productively use their time rather than worrying about finding a shitty, or even non-shitty, job so their family can eat and stay out of the weather. And without that we’ll continue hemorrhaging jobs until we reach a critical point where there will be an honest to god revolution in the USA and things will be violently reset (not corrected).

ako 6y ago

That sounds very much like the promise of low-code: use our pre-fab components to quickly assemble your software apps. You'll be able to this with lower skilled people, and no longer be limited by the lack skilled software engineers...

Gibbon1 6y ago
Offhand thought is the advantage to using lower skilled labor probably benefits Bone Structure more than it benefits the builder. Two choices pay bone structure a premium for custom cut metal framing or pay a premium for skilled framers. Note unskilled tends to come with a lot of other negatives.