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There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest g

There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. Those startups are pretty much all roadkill. The construction industry's fundamental constraint is that it manufactures products that are too big to fit in highway lanes. That means they can't be shipped from a centrally-located factory to their final destinations. So they need to be built at the site, which means they need to be built with more labor-intensive methods (since it's too expensive to build a capital-intensive factory for just one unit of output). Building components that are small enough to fit in highway lanes, on the other hand, are manufactured in centrally-located, capital-intensive factories and shipped to their final destinations, just like cars or electronics. Think: boilers, doors, windows, air handlers, etc. And, like cars and electronics, these building component products are manufactured by a small number of big companies, rather than a large number of small companies. The equilibrium capital investment and company size is much different when the product is small enough to be manufactured in a central location and shipped.

giantg2 3y ago
"That means they can't be shipped from a centrally-located factory to their final destinations." There are modular homes that are shipped on highways, usually in sections.
cosmic_quanta 3y ago
That's an interesting perspective. I wonder then why pre-fabricated homes (e.g. https://www.profab.ca/en/ https://www.profab.ca/en/) never really took off?
- notfromhere 3y ago
  They depreciate in value like a car and have a stigma associated with the poor
  - 015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
    That is true of "manufactured homes", a.k.a. "trailers", but not of "prefab" or "modular" homes, which are built using the same components as conventional homes.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      They're the same components but not. If you would frame a building and then build the wall assemblies traditionally your ability to integrate parts of the structure and seal it is different than when you put together assemblies and try to seal the thick boundaries between them. You also don't have any quality control - whatever shows up on site is installed.
  - kasey_junk 3y ago
    The loan to buy them also isn’t dramatically subsidized by the government and turning them into real property is a legal pain.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    All house structures depreciate in value over time. The land they sit on is what appreciates, usually dramatically more than the depreciation of the structure. The prefabs associated with poverty are prefab structures on rented land, so the only thing you own is the depreciating structure, not the appreciating land.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  It’s interesting - in Sweden, the vast majority of new homes are apparently prefab [1]. Aside from customer expectations for customizability in the US (and other countries) I believe regulations also contribute, with prefab homes actually requiring more robust construction than conventionally built homes. [1] https://builtoffsite.com.au/emag/issue-05/sweden-became-home-prefab/ https://builtoffsite.com.au/emag/issue-05/sweden-became-home...
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Does that make them cheaper/better?
    - rgmerk 3y ago
      Sorry, to clarify, I think US regulations require this, with the net result that prefab becomes more costly than conventional construction in the USA.
- 015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
  Typically these are called "modular homes" in the US. They've been around for quite a while and do make up a certain portion of the new home construction, though not the majority. This approach is not quite as efficient as it initially appears: First, it does nothing for the site construction (grading, excavation, utilities, paving, septic, well, etc.) Those tasks, which make up a decent portion of the project, are done in exactly the same way as in conventional construction. Second, the modular boxes are either A) the width of shipping containers, which severely constrains the house layout, or B) somewhat wider than shipping containers, which makes them oversized loads that require escort vehicles, highway permits...increasing cost. Third, you have to hire a crane to set the boxes, and then make all of the connections between the boxes, and install various mechanical and electrical components, complete the finishes, install staircases, etc. This costs quite a bit and still involves the hiring of various local subcontractors, just like in conventional construction. When you add everything up, modular sometimes saves a little money and often reduces the project timeline (unless there are delays at the factory). But it's not a massive improvement, which is why modular hasn't taken over everything.
unwind 3y ago
Uh, I'm not in the industry at all, but obviously (?) the concept of prefabricated (modular) houses exists, and has done so for many years. Perhaps this is a regional/national thing (I sometimes get the feeling that "prefab" is a condescending term in the US sometimes). For reference, here's a page showing the selection from one of Sweden's main house manufacturers [1]. It's in Swedish, but I just wanted to share the pictures. Also it's hard to say exactly what proportion of a house is pre-built, but I expect the majority of the structural things (walls, floors, roof) to be. [1]: https://www.eksjohus.se/husmodeller/ https://www.eksjohus.se/husmodeller/
- twic 3y ago
  I believe prefab is also more common in Germany. I became aware of this when a UK TV show showed someone having a a Huf Haus installed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus According to this random web page, there are quite a few manufacturers: https://medium.com/blue-future-partners/our-9-favourite-german-prefab-companies-e1546474b5bf https://medium.com/blue-future-partners/our-9-favourite-germ...
vel0city 3y ago
People seem to have forgotten the boom of prefab/modular houses in the 1960s/1970s. It turns out after the cost of delivery and final assembly on location you lose out a good chunk of the efficiency of the factory line production. The biggest innovations to construction are probably to be had in better/faster/easier plumbing and electrical connections, making it faster and more reliable to install all the fixtures. Being able to plumb and install a whole bathroom in a couple of hours instead of most of a day while reducing the odds of needing rework would be a decent boost. We've seen some improvement in this already though with things like PEX and Wago, I imagine even more modular designs can improve this even more. The challenge with this is actually getting adoption and approval for some of this stuff.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Wago is a mixed blessing.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Wago is better than sliced bread, the only people upset with them are just butthurt that their knowledge of how to use a wire nut is no longer a competitive moat.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      What a silly response. No, Wago has in some cases higher contact resistance than other means of splicing hard copper wire. And in those cases it can lead to an increase in temperature, arcing and possibly fire. It is much more convenient and I highly doubt anybody that can splice a couple of wires sees that ability as a means to keep the competition out. But there are drawbacks and you should be aware of them. When doing high current and tri-phase connections I will use a wire nut, otherwise I use a Wago.
      - aidenn0 3y ago
        Just because you seem to have a lot of experience, any thoughts on the old-style grey Wago vs the new-style clear ones?
themerone 3y ago
There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. Those startups are pretty much all roadkill. This is the same problem that plagues electric car startups. Most of these folks don't know what they don't know. Tesla has had great engineering from day one, but almost went under because it couldn't figure out large scale manufacturing and logistics. Problems that old school companies have been solving for a century.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  It's just the same "I figured out something complicated so I'm smart and something I consider a problem in a completely unrelated area of knowledge must be because the people involved are too dumb to fix it so I will" mentality that seems to infect so many people that learn a programming language.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    This is called the curse of knowledge and it affects everyone.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Has it been studied whether it effects everyone equally?
- JimtheCoder 3y ago
  "Problems that old school companies have been solving for a century." In the end (current time), didn't they (Tesla) find a better way? I am truly ignorant here, but based on what I have read, Teslas manufacturing process now is much more efficient/better than the standard GM/Ford, etc...
- cwp 3y ago
  Eh, I'm not sure about that. Tesla started from scratch and developed large-scale manufacturing and logistics from first principles. It was hard, but it's put them in a hugely advantageous position today. It turns out old-school manufacturing for ICE vehicles doesn't translate directly to EVs. Yes, Ford (for example) can build EVs, but they're not cost competitive with Tesla, because they're optimized for something else. Tesla produces 100x as many EVs as anybody else. Now, was Tesla surprised by the difficulty of manufacturing, because they didn't know what they didn't know? Maybe, I have no idea. But in retrospect, it wasn't a mistake to ignore the accumulated wisdom of the car industry. It turns out the old-school companies don't know what they don't know either.
thelastgallon 3y ago
This. Brian Potter has some articles: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-economies-of https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-... Does construction ever get cheaper? https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-construction-ever-get-cheaper https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-construction-eve...
tjmc 3y ago
This isn’t entirely correct. Modular construction is definitely an option and is particularly well suited to projects like hotels and apartments with lots of repeating layouts. Here’s a 4 storey hospital extension that I worked on in Melbourne that was put together over a weekend: https://www.modscape.com.au/commercial/the-avenue-hospital-extension/ https://www.modscape.com.au/commercial/the-avenue-hospital-e.... Having said that, it definitely has limitations. There’s a lot more structure in the modules which means more material overall and makes it harder to fit in services. You’re also limited architecturally.
- 015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
  See my other comment. Modular is somewhat better in some cases, but not dramatically better, which is why it has gained a certain share of the market but not the majority of it. Modular is mature technology and would have taken over the whole industry decades ago if it was actually a lot better.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > would have taken over the whole industry decades ago if it was actually a lot better. I think it would have taken over if it was cheaper. But for larger size buildings it isn't and that's what I think stops larger scale adoption. But they are faster to deploy.
  - themerone 3y ago
    There are also social stigmas holding back the development of modular housing. There are a lot of people who don't want their friends to know their McMansion was delivered on a bunch of trailers.
    - brk 3y ago
      All McMansions are ultimately delivered on a bunch of trailers. It's just a matter of how much of it is pre-assembled. But I understand what you are saying, it looks more impressive to have it built onsite instead of having a handful of large pieces trucked in and dropped in place.
Gordonjcp 3y ago
> There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. And therein lies the problem. The guys that work in construction aren't "dumb". They're most likely way way *waaaay* smarter than you, particularly about construction, but maybe not so much about the computer industry. Guess what? Construction is absolutely nothing like the computer industry, and nothing the techbros know about it remotely maps onto construction.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Nothing about computers maps to anything else. Computers are unique for many reasons, like the undo button, the fact that manual dexterity is not a factor, the lack of any concept of wear, strength, or durability, and the ability to copy something perfectly an unlimited number of times with no raw material input. Building a bookshelf is SO much harder than software, and that's WITH clamp on guides, power tools, and pocket screws, giving myself every possible advantage. Things like painting, skateboarding, or guitar are an order of magnitude beyond even that, I can't even imagine what it would be like to be able to do those. Software can easily become kind of a useless toy or hyper niche thing, unless the whole field can be changed to make it work like software does(Like how money and shopping is done, where every process has been changed to work with the software). Once you change the whole field, stuff gets easy, otherwise, you're just spending all your time translating between paper notes and digital files, which are useless because there's no management system to do anything with the files, so they just sit there till someone has to run to the computer to check them.....
- naijaboiler 3y ago
  You can say that about just every industry tech bros intrude on with hubris.
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    Yeah exactly, like the car industry. Christ, can you imagine if one of those cloud-cuckoolander morons decided they wanted to start a car company? You'd have kinda cool-looking cars that were surprisingly affordable but all the switches would be replaced by a big touchscreen that's too bright to look at when you're driving at night, and all the important safety systems would be written in node.js or some damn thing.
bluedino 3y ago
The houses they are building around here are usually put together from pre-fabricated walls. The siding is even on them. They arrive on a truck and most of the house (as far as the outside goes) is put up in a day. Just like the trusses.
- zacharyaustin11 3y ago
  link?
anovikov 3y ago
To add to that, construction is heavily regulated (which is by the way, probably a window of opportunity for some startups that will aim at finding innovative ways of working around regulations to build cheaper without breaking the law), and heavily unionised too. Most attempts to seriously innovate in it will be shot down quickly as it will threaten jobs and union power.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  It honestly feels weird to hear people talk in generalities about “regulation” and “innovation” in the wake of the whole Titan submersible thing. Like, didn’t we just have an object lesson in why certain industries need to be more tightly regulated than others? I would not want to live in a house whose builders took an “innovative” approach to dealing with “regulation”. Building codes are often written in blood.
  - anovikov 3y ago
    Neither would anyone else, but it's about making money.
  - scythe 3y ago
    >the wake of the whole Titan submersible thing. The Titan submersible didn't violate "regulations", though, it violated industry standards. Standards that are updated more often than regulations. In so doing, it it was denied a certification. Since it operated in international waters only, there were no applicable regulations to evade. Regulatory bodies which are poorly funded may write overly restrictive rules because they don't have the resources to do a more comprehensive assessment. In particular, many HUD rules are split into "single-family houses" and "everything else", with little consideration for small apartment buildings, townhouses and other "missing middle". The requirements for houses are much less strict than for apartments, and construction costs per square foot are correspondingly lower for detached single-family homes. If you live in a detached SFH built after 1970, it's arguable that you already live in a structure where the builders took an "innovative" approach to dealing with regulations, because it was built to the lower house standards and not the stricter apartment standards. And if it was built before the 1970s, the regulations were probably very lax. Nonetheless, I think the solution must be to reexamine the regulations, rather than evade them. But this "written in blood" is a thought-terminating cliche that prevents progress.
mihaaly 3y ago
Various levels of offsite construction (below the highway lane size limit components of course) exists for decades, in many contries, since at least the 60s, some died, some flourished. Of course this is still requiring considerable amount of onsite assembly and finishing off but still, manufacture component and delivery on trailers is a traditional concept already, the resons for less (as there are some) startups in construction need to be looked for elsewhere than onsite/offsite reasons. Should you look at the fragmented composition of participating professions, fragmented nature of players and organizations involved, the fragmented and fluid supply chain, all combined with the long realization phase and complicated responsibility (legal) relationships of the actors perhaps? Generic contracting is more like a conductor role for the numerous groups involved, be it joined or independent ventures, than a subject of startup 'disruption'. Management, including financial. Sub tasks will see some unicorns, but not much though, mostly in software area. The opensystemslab.io comes to mind as one construction adjacent one concerning the structral components mostly, but with systematic vision and novel mentality.
CalRobert 3y ago
For what it's worth, my house was shipped on the back of two lorries and the individual walls were built in a factory offsite. Though what I learned in the process is that getting the frame assembled is only one part of having a house built and the other stuff (foundations, etc adds up quick)
theluketaylor 3y ago
Stuff like SIPs (structural insulated panels) and CLT (cross laminated timber) are kind of changing the game on prefabrication offsite for homes. The components are small enough for trucking but assembling each lego blocks onsite gets you far closer to a completed house per unit time compared to stick framing. I've even seen some smaller SIP houses that don't need a crane onsite. You also don't end up with the modular house stigma. It's still a small % of houses built, but it's very cost effective and getting better (and more common)
- zacharyaustin11 3y ago
  I think there are a few niches for construction that haven't been solved, CLT and CMU can go up 16 stores and should be able to deliver "infinite" apartment buildings european companies will build prefab exterior enclosure to retrofit old construction without displacing residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378778819318626 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787... New construction: Integrated Project Delivery - AI could solve the problem of aligning stakeholders possibly Applying scrum/lean to construction - BIM - there is a lot of data in a building and BIM standards are putting everything into one file, digital twins: lidar and cameras and ai are all getting better where high accuracy scans can create as built digital twins while referencing BIM file to build it. lifecycle analysis and building automation: precooling and preheating spaces, I believe we should have better rubric for valuing existing properties eg a window is an asset and a liability (many owners do not account for replacement costs leading to buildings in disrepair) skilled labor - mixed reality education: if there is a digital twin then worker could use augmented reality to see preferred methods to make that happen while being credentialed and upskilling (crazy brick facades become possible) Hadrian robot competitors: crane placing concrete blocks autonomously
- Giorgi 3y ago
  I feel CLT is way more promising and super beautiful to look at too.
epicureanideal 3y ago
For a factory on site, see HadrianX, a large robot that builds houses.
solatic 3y ago
You'd think there'd be a novel application along the lines of programming Boston Dynamics robots to construct cookie-cutter template houses, no? Have humans in the loop to clear the land and drive construction materials to the site, but build the rest with robots that can work through the night and faster than any human, constructing the same template again and again in different lots? Sure, bureaucracy is a major bottleneck, but it's not like human construction finished within a month...
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  There is this https://www.mudbots.com/ https://www.mudbots.com/
  - sterlind 3y ago
    The tiny house they have a gallery of is aggressively ugly, with lots of bizarre curved walls seemingly just to demo their method. And the shelves and fixtures look precarious and unsafe, straight out of Arrested Development. Given the build quality, I'd be afraid the roof would come down on me if I sneezed.
  - ratmice 3y ago
    I have Also heard of https://www.14trees.com/ https://www.14trees.com/ and terran robotics doing this... Edit: I imagine though, that in locations where building is regulated under the international residential code. There has been less investment, it only in the last few years added an appendix for mud/cob construction... So you can add regulatory cost on top of the actual robotics involved.
- alach11 3y ago
  Boston Dynamics robots are still nowhere close to as dexterous, flexible, or capable as human laborers. Getting them to build houses is a massive and expensive R&D project, not a startup, for now.
  - solatic 3y ago
    If you built the houses the same way as with human labor, sure. But perhaps they would be built differently with robots, in a way which didn't require that level of dexterity. After all, most industrial robots don't have opposable thumbs. I'm not saying it's a simple problem to solve, nor one whose solution I have fully mapped out in my head. Just that it's a problem whose solution strikes me as being within the realm of feasibility.
londons_explore 3y ago
> The construction industry ... manufactures products that are too big to fit in highway lanes. This is why I believe the future of construction is portable 3d printing. Imagine a 3D printer which fits on a truck, yet can be assembled in an hour and can print something the size of a large house from fiber-embedded cement. The printer would have nozzles for paint, foam, tar, electrical wire and PET plastic. It would also have a scoop to remove soil. A team would drive the truck to the worksite, assemble the printer, start it going, and come back in 2-3 days when it was done. The printer would dig foundations, lay a fiber-cement foundation, damp proofing tar layer, build double skinned walls with foam between, paint the inside and out, install wiring and pipes, and build a foam, cement and tar roof. The house would have premade cupboards, bathtub, washbasin, etc. Humans would come back to fit carpets, electrical outlets+fusebox, appliances, windows, vacuum formed liners in the bath/washbasins, etc.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  You mean like ICON?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Yes, but I think their printer design could be improved. I would go for the printer being far less weight by making the whole thing a cable truss and winch structure. That should cut the hardware cost in half or better, like the way a travelling circus tent can be assembled entirely without a crane, yet packs into a tiny box. The downside is you can no longer assume a rigid structure, so you need cameras and alignment marks for precise positioning - but you probably needed them anyway. You also can't make any accelerations above 1G, but that should be fine for housebuilding. And obviously, their design only makes the walls, but I would want to do foundations, roof, insulation, plumbing and electricals all with the same machine.
    - eightysixfour 3y ago
      The hardware costs are minimal compared to other costs. It packs into a container.
throw0101a 3y ago
> The construction industry's fundamental constraint is that it manufactures products that are too big to fit in highway lanes. That means they can't be shipped from a centrally-located factory to their final destinations. As a whole, yes. But there are a number of companies that are building segments (walls) in a factory and then shipping those to be craned-in like Lego® blocks. Some factory tour videos: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E
- thechao 3y ago
  I'm can't watch these videos, but there's thousands of 1–2.5mm$ homes being built west of Austin, Tx (who's buying them!? I DON'T KNOW!) I like ti watch these houses go up: the walls & roof trusses are all laminate and come in to the job site in segments. It's takes a crew of 2–4 (depending on the size of the house) about 4 days to assemble the exterior. The interior is about 50% 'modular', and the rest is traditionally framed. It's pretty insane.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  Pre fabricated assemblies exist all over but are highly constraining if standardized or need to be custom ordered to fit which becomes expensive. You still have to assemble and seal everything on site so you don't necessarily save anything and it limits you in other ways. Building wall assemblies isn't the hard or expensive part of construction.
krys1010 3y ago
Tell that to my single, double, and triple wide.
moooo99 3y ago
> There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. Those startups are pretty much all roadkill. Slightly OT, but I feel like this is a general trend and definitely not limited to construction. There are many companies and founders aiming to 'disrupt' an industry, and a starting out with what only can be defined as arrogance. Seeing some of the startup companies in the sector i'm familiar with trying to explain how the world works to some of the most experienced and established players has been hilarious and infuriating at the same time. At this point, I finally understood where the derogatory meaning of 'techbro' comes from. The main thing that concerns me is that people still believe technology (primarily software) is the solution to any problem we encounter. Yes, technology solved many problems in the past, but it also created a lot and failed in spectacular ways. If you need a solution to an acute problem, waiting for a technology to hopefully be developed isn't the right call. However, more and more people, governments and companies are buying into that idea. I can't fail to notice many people who where technology skeptic years ago now turned towards a "I don't want to change my behavior, technology will find a problem that solves the issues I cause with it". Autonomous cars are my prime topic that comes to mind, but many other things also come to mind.
- eldavido 3y ago
  I used to feel this way. But then I realized this is the natural push/pull of conservatism against progress. Incumbents get old and conservative. New companies crop up and try to do things differently. Sometimes the new ideas are stupid, and incumbents are right--the tried and true really is best. Other times, the incumbents have become so bureaucratic, slow, and out of touch with what matters (customers), that a new company can come in, do things dramatically better, and burn an old competitor down. Macro-wise, I think we should be glad for this. It's very hard to tell what will and won't work at the beginning. VCs get paid a lot of money for trying to guess this and even they can't get it right. I myself have been surprised many, many times when an idea I thought was incredibly stupid, turned out to have legs. One way to change your mind on this, write down your predictions about what companies/approaches/techniques will/won't work 10 years from now. If you do this say, once/year, and you're honest, you'll see how hilariously bad you, and more or less everyone else actually is, at predicting the future and knowing what will and won't work. Sometimes you really do just have to try it, and see what happens.
kokanee 3y ago
I spent 5 years working on one of these startups. I'm not sure that the highway lane constraint is fundamental to the reality that contech startups tend to fail, but I think the assessment about the hubris of contech startups is fair. The first lesson to learn is that construction doesn't happen behind a laptop or on a phone. From your user's perspective, time spent fiddling with your app is time not spent on real work. So naturally you focus on selling to the "office workers" who spend more time on planning and administration. The problem with that segment is that the tools they already have are good enough. Construction projects always take far longer and cost far more than expected because of what's happening in the field, not because of what's happening in the office, so software simply isn't a bottleneck in this industry. The fact that your tool was specifically designed for their use case, or has an AR feature that allows them to walk the site virtually, or whatever -- it's cool, and you can get a few sales that way, but it's not going to result in better project economics, so it's not going to revolutionize anything.
- throwaway14356 3y ago
  just unlocking the phone and starting an app takes waaaaay to much time. You have 10 people standing there looking at you for 3 minutes. Then bill the customer 25 for opening an app??? Better write things on paper.
- giantg2 3y ago
  I see the AR usecase as being a huge potential win in the inspection process. Instead of inspectors having to drive site to site, just give them a tour. You could probably pull up permit/schematic/etc info as you're viewing the property and stuff. But I assume something like this already exists.
- 2pointsomone 3y ago
  Excellent point. When I think of a foray into construction, I plan to use all software off-the-shelf and focus my process improvements entirely on-field.
- mym1990 3y ago
  A general question to anyone in the industry: how come after so much experience with over budget/over timeline projects, the industry still vastly underestimates those variables?
orzig 3y ago
Detailed book length treatment of one such startup: SAM, one robot, a dozen engineers in the race to revolutionize the way we build (https://www.audible.com/pd/1797102168 https://www.audible.com/pd/1797102168) It does not really support your hypothesis, instead giving a bunch of examples of inertia, which collectively make it extremely difficult to demonstrate a return on investment
chakintosh 3y ago
> Building components that are small enough to fit in highway lanes, on the other hand, are manufactured in centrally-located, capital-intensive factories and shipped to their final destinations, just like cars or electronics. Think: boilers, doors, windows, air handlers, etc. The elaborate on your idea, there are a couple startups that do work in "real estate" if you can even call it that, they ship ready-made prefab aimed at people looking for separate mancave/home office from the actual home.[1] Those are things you can ship in highways and load in with a crane. But that's about it. These startups had their boom during COVID but you don't hear much about them now. [1] https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-home-office-accessory-dwelling-units-efab1374 https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-home-office-accessory-d...
matwood 3y ago
One of my favorite sayings when trying to take something over is "they are never as dumb as you thought, and you're never as smart as you hoped".
dougmwne 3y ago
From your description, the solution seems obvious. The factory needs to come to the building site, rather than the other way around. So the opportunity essentially becomes one of providing better tools to builders. This has already happened in some ways since air nailers are a nice productivity gain over hammers and have taken over. If you could deliver automated tools that could fit on a tractor trailer, say a robotic arm/crane with a few attachments, you might have a winner.
BurningFrog 3y ago
So maybe the invention needed is "cargo blimps" that can deliver oversized components to anywhere?
tytso 3y ago
It might be worth taking a look at Bensonwood (https://bensonwood.com https://bensonwood.com). They do some very impressive, high-end pre-fab homes, and they solve the "must fit in highway lanes" by shipping walls that have windows, electrical wiring, plumbing, etc., all already pre-installed in their factory in New Hampshire. When we investigated using them 3 years ago, they didn't support pre-installed CAT 5 wiring or Optical Fiber, but I wouldn't be surprised if they can do that now. :-) This is all done using computer-controlled manufacturing equipment, much of which is imported from Europe, where they are much more advanced on this front than in the U.S. One of the advantages of having computer controlled nail guns and vaccuum operated "wall flippers" is that the construction tolerances are far tighter than if you have humans nailing in the shingles, sometimes while on a ladder 15 feet above the ground. The downside, of course, is that they only today have their one factory in New Hampshire, and while the walls can be shipped trucks on highways, if you want to build a large, luxury pre-fab home in Arizona, the trucks have to travel a long way, and that adds to the cost. This hasn't stopped some of their customers, though. Take a look at their web site for some example houses that they have built --- it's a far cry from what most people think of when they hear about "pre-manufactured houses". These are not trailer park homes!

giantg2 3y ago

"That means they can't be shipped from a centrally-located factory to their final destinations." There are modular homes that are shipped on highways, usually in sections.

cosmic_quanta 3y ago

That's an interesting perspective. I wonder then why pre-fabricated homes (e.g. https://www.profab.ca/en/ https://www.profab.ca/en/) never really took off?

notfromhere 3y ago
They depreciate in value like a car and have a stigma associated with the poor
- 015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
  That is true of "manufactured homes", a.k.a. "trailers", but not of "prefab" or "modular" homes, which are built using the same components as conventional homes.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    They're the same components but not. If you would frame a building and then build the wall assemblies traditionally your ability to integrate parts of the structure and seal it is different than when you put together assemblies and try to seal the thick boundaries between them. You also don't have any quality control - whatever shows up on site is installed.
- kasey_junk 3y ago
  The loan to buy them also isn’t dramatically subsidized by the government and turning them into real property is a legal pain.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  All house structures depreciate in value over time. The land they sit on is what appreciates, usually dramatically more than the depreciation of the structure. The prefabs associated with poverty are prefab structures on rented land, so the only thing you own is the depreciating structure, not the appreciating land.
rgmerk 3y ago
It’s interesting - in Sweden, the vast majority of new homes are apparently prefab [1]. Aside from customer expectations for customizability in the US (and other countries) I believe regulations also contribute, with prefab homes actually requiring more robust construction than conventionally built homes. [1] https://builtoffsite.com.au/emag/issue-05/sweden-became-home-prefab/ https://builtoffsite.com.au/emag/issue-05/sweden-became-home...
- mavhc 3y ago
  Does that make them cheaper/better?
  - rgmerk 3y ago
    Sorry, to clarify, I think US regulations require this, with the net result that prefab becomes more costly than conventional construction in the USA.
015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
Typically these are called "modular homes" in the US. They've been around for quite a while and do make up a certain portion of the new home construction, though not the majority. This approach is not quite as efficient as it initially appears: First, it does nothing for the site construction (grading, excavation, utilities, paving, septic, well, etc.) Those tasks, which make up a decent portion of the project, are done in exactly the same way as in conventional construction. Second, the modular boxes are either A) the width of shipping containers, which severely constrains the house layout, or B) somewhat wider than shipping containers, which makes them oversized loads that require escort vehicles, highway permits...increasing cost. Third, you have to hire a crane to set the boxes, and then make all of the connections between the boxes, and install various mechanical and electrical components, complete the finishes, install staircases, etc. This costs quite a bit and still involves the hiring of various local subcontractors, just like in conventional construction. When you add everything up, modular sometimes saves a little money and often reduces the project timeline (unless there are delays at the factory). But it's not a massive improvement, which is why modular hasn't taken over everything.

unwind 3y ago

Uh, I'm not in the industry at all, but obviously (?) the concept of prefabricated (modular) houses exists, and has done so for many years. Perhaps this is a regional/national thing (I sometimes get the feeling that "prefab" is a condescending term in the US sometimes). For reference, here's a page showing the selection from one of Sweden's main house manufacturers [1]. It's in Swedish, but I just wanted to share the pictures. Also it's hard to say exactly what proportion of a house is pre-built, but I expect the majority of the structural things (walls, floors, roof) to be. [1]: https://www.eksjohus.se/husmodeller/ https://www.eksjohus.se/husmodeller/

twic 3y ago
I believe prefab is also more common in Germany. I became aware of this when a UK TV show showed someone having a a Huf Haus installed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus According to this random web page, there are quite a few manufacturers: https://medium.com/blue-future-partners/our-9-favourite-german-prefab-companies-e1546474b5bf https://medium.com/blue-future-partners/our-9-favourite-germ...

vel0city 3y ago

People seem to have forgotten the boom of prefab/modular houses in the 1960s/1970s. It turns out after the cost of delivery and final assembly on location you lose out a good chunk of the efficiency of the factory line production. The biggest innovations to construction are probably to be had in better/faster/easier plumbing and electrical connections, making it faster and more reliable to install all the fixtures. Being able to plumb and install a whole bathroom in a couple of hours instead of most of a day while reducing the odds of needing rework would be a decent boost. We've seen some improvement in this already though with things like PEX and Wago, I imagine even more modular designs can improve this even more. The challenge with this is actually getting adoption and approval for some of this stuff.

jacquesm 3y ago
Wago is a mixed blessing.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Wago is better than sliced bread, the only people upset with them are just butthurt that their knowledge of how to use a wire nut is no longer a competitive moat.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    What a silly response. No, Wago has in some cases higher contact resistance than other means of splicing hard copper wire. And in those cases it can lead to an increase in temperature, arcing and possibly fire. It is much more convenient and I highly doubt anybody that can splice a couple of wires sees that ability as a means to keep the competition out. But there are drawbacks and you should be aware of them. When doing high current and tri-phase connections I will use a wire nut, otherwise I use a Wago.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      Just because you seem to have a lot of experience, any thoughts on the old-style grey Wago vs the new-style clear ones?

themerone 3y ago

mrguyorama 3y ago
It's just the same "I figured out something complicated so I'm smart and something I consider a problem in a completely unrelated area of knowledge must be because the people involved are too dumb to fix it so I will" mentality that seems to infect so many people that learn a programming language.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  This is called the curse of knowledge and it affects everyone.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Has it been studied whether it effects everyone equally?
JimtheCoder 3y ago
"Problems that old school companies have been solving for a century." In the end (current time), didn't they (Tesla) find a better way? I am truly ignorant here, but based on what I have read, Teslas manufacturing process now is much more efficient/better than the standard GM/Ford, etc...
cwp 3y ago
Eh, I'm not sure about that. Tesla started from scratch and developed large-scale manufacturing and logistics from first principles. It was hard, but it's put them in a hugely advantageous position today. It turns out old-school manufacturing for ICE vehicles doesn't translate directly to EVs. Yes, Ford (for example) can build EVs, but they're not cost competitive with Tesla, because they're optimized for something else. Tesla produces 100x as many EVs as anybody else. Now, was Tesla surprised by the difficulty of manufacturing, because they didn't know what they didn't know? Maybe, I have no idea. But in retrospect, it wasn't a mistake to ignore the accumulated wisdom of the car industry. It turns out the old-school companies don't know what they don't know either.

thelastgallon 3y ago

This. Brian Potter has some articles: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-economies-of https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-... Does construction ever get cheaper? https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-construction-ever-get-cheaper https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-construction-eve...

tjmc 3y ago

This isn’t entirely correct. Modular construction is definitely an option and is particularly well suited to projects like hotels and apartments with lots of repeating layouts. Here’s a 4 storey hospital extension that I worked on in Melbourne that was put together over a weekend: https://www.modscape.com.au/commercial/the-avenue-hospital-extension/ https://www.modscape.com.au/commercial/the-avenue-hospital-e.... Having said that, it definitely has limitations. There’s a lot more structure in the modules which means more material overall and makes it harder to fit in services. You’re also limited architecturally.

015UUZn8aEvW 3y ago
See my other comment. Modular is somewhat better in some cases, but not dramatically better, which is why it has gained a certain share of the market but not the majority of it. Modular is mature technology and would have taken over the whole industry decades ago if it was actually a lot better.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > would have taken over the whole industry decades ago if it was actually a lot better. I think it would have taken over if it was cheaper. But for larger size buildings it isn't and that's what I think stops larger scale adoption. But they are faster to deploy.
- themerone 3y ago
  There are also social stigmas holding back the development of modular housing. There are a lot of people who don't want their friends to know their McMansion was delivered on a bunch of trailers.
  - brk 3y ago
    All McMansions are ultimately delivered on a bunch of trailers. It's just a matter of how much of it is pre-assembled. But I understand what you are saying, it looks more impressive to have it built onsite instead of having a handful of large pieces trucked in and dropped in place.

Gordonjcp 3y ago

> There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. And therein lies the problem. The guys that work in construction aren't "dumb". They're most likely way way *waaaay* smarter than you, particularly about construction, but maybe not so much about the computer industry. Guess what? Construction is absolutely nothing like the computer industry, and nothing the techbros know about it remotely maps onto construction.

eternityforest 3y ago
Nothing about computers maps to anything else. Computers are unique for many reasons, like the undo button, the fact that manual dexterity is not a factor, the lack of any concept of wear, strength, or durability, and the ability to copy something perfectly an unlimited number of times with no raw material input. Building a bookshelf is SO much harder than software, and that's WITH clamp on guides, power tools, and pocket screws, giving myself every possible advantage. Things like painting, skateboarding, or guitar are an order of magnitude beyond even that, I can't even imagine what it would be like to be able to do those. Software can easily become kind of a useless toy or hyper niche thing, unless the whole field can be changed to make it work like software does(Like how money and shopping is done, where every process has been changed to work with the software). Once you change the whole field, stuff gets easy, otherwise, you're just spending all your time translating between paper notes and digital files, which are useless because there's no management system to do anything with the files, so they just sit there till someone has to run to the computer to check them.....
naijaboiler 3y ago
You can say that about just every industry tech bros intrude on with hubris.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  Yeah exactly, like the car industry. Christ, can you imagine if one of those cloud-cuckoolander morons decided they wanted to start a car company? You'd have kinda cool-looking cars that were surprisingly affordable but all the switches would be replaced by a big touchscreen that's too bright to look at when you're driving at night, and all the important safety systems would be written in node.js or some damn thing.

bluedino 3y ago

The houses they are building around here are usually put together from pre-fabricated walls. The siding is even on them. They arrive on a truck and most of the house (as far as the outside goes) is put up in a day. Just like the trusses.

zacharyaustin11 3y ago
link?

anovikov 3y ago

To add to that, construction is heavily regulated (which is by the way, probably a window of opportunity for some startups that will aim at finding innovative ways of working around regulations to build cheaper without breaking the law), and heavily unionised too. Most attempts to seriously innovate in it will be shot down quickly as it will threaten jobs and union power.

Uehreka 3y ago
It honestly feels weird to hear people talk in generalities about “regulation” and “innovation” in the wake of the whole Titan submersible thing. Like, didn’t we just have an object lesson in why certain industries need to be more tightly regulated than others? I would not want to live in a house whose builders took an “innovative” approach to dealing with “regulation”. Building codes are often written in blood.
- anovikov 3y ago
  Neither would anyone else, but it's about making money.
- scythe 3y ago
  >the wake of the whole Titan submersible thing. The Titan submersible didn't violate "regulations", though, it violated industry standards. Standards that are updated more often than regulations. In so doing, it it was denied a certification. Since it operated in international waters only, there were no applicable regulations to evade. Regulatory bodies which are poorly funded may write overly restrictive rules because they don't have the resources to do a more comprehensive assessment. In particular, many HUD rules are split into "single-family houses" and "everything else", with little consideration for small apartment buildings, townhouses and other "missing middle". The requirements for houses are much less strict than for apartments, and construction costs per square foot are correspondingly lower for detached single-family homes. If you live in a detached SFH built after 1970, it's arguable that you already live in a structure where the builders took an "innovative" approach to dealing with regulations, because it was built to the lower house standards and not the stricter apartment standards. And if it was built before the 1970s, the regulations were probably very lax. Nonetheless, I think the solution must be to reexamine the regulations, rather than evade them. But this "written in blood" is a thought-terminating cliche that prevents progress.

mihaaly 3y ago

Various levels of offsite construction (below the highway lane size limit components of course) exists for decades, in many contries, since at least the 60s, some died, some flourished. Of course this is still requiring considerable amount of onsite assembly and finishing off but still, manufacture component and delivery on trailers is a traditional concept already, the resons for less (as there are some) startups in construction need to be looked for elsewhere than onsite/offsite reasons. Should you look at the fragmented composition of participating professions, fragmented nature of players and organizations involved, the fragmented and fluid supply chain, all combined with the long realization phase and complicated responsibility (legal) relationships of the actors perhaps? Generic contracting is more like a conductor role for the numerous groups involved, be it joined or independent ventures, than a subject of startup 'disruption'. Management, including financial. Sub tasks will see some unicorns, but not much though, mostly in software area. The opensystemslab.io comes to mind as one construction adjacent one concerning the structral components mostly, but with systematic vision and novel mentality.

CalRobert 3y ago

For what it's worth, my house was shipped on the back of two lorries and the individual walls were built in a factory offsite. Though what I learned in the process is that getting the frame assembled is only one part of having a house built and the other stuff (foundations, etc adds up quick)

theluketaylor 3y ago

Stuff like SIPs (structural insulated panels) and CLT (cross laminated timber) are kind of changing the game on prefabrication offsite for homes. The components are small enough for trucking but assembling each lego blocks onsite gets you far closer to a completed house per unit time compared to stick framing. I've even seen some smaller SIP houses that don't need a crane onsite. You also don't end up with the modular house stigma. It's still a small % of houses built, but it's very cost effective and getting better (and more common)

zacharyaustin11 3y ago
I think there are a few niches for construction that haven't been solved, CLT and CMU can go up 16 stores and should be able to deliver "infinite" apartment buildings european companies will build prefab exterior enclosure to retrofit old construction without displacing residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378778819318626 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787... New construction: Integrated Project Delivery - AI could solve the problem of aligning stakeholders possibly Applying scrum/lean to construction - BIM - there is a lot of data in a building and BIM standards are putting everything into one file, digital twins: lidar and cameras and ai are all getting better where high accuracy scans can create as built digital twins while referencing BIM file to build it. lifecycle analysis and building automation: precooling and preheating spaces, I believe we should have better rubric for valuing existing properties eg a window is an asset and a liability (many owners do not account for replacement costs leading to buildings in disrepair) skilled labor - mixed reality education: if there is a digital twin then worker could use augmented reality to see preferred methods to make that happen while being credentialed and upskilling (crazy brick facades become possible) Hadrian robot competitors: crane placing concrete blocks autonomously
Giorgi 3y ago
I feel CLT is way more promising and super beautiful to look at too.

epicureanideal 3y ago

For a factory on site, see HadrianX, a large robot that builds houses.

solatic 3y ago

You'd think there'd be a novel application along the lines of programming Boston Dynamics robots to construct cookie-cutter template houses, no? Have humans in the loop to clear the land and drive construction materials to the site, but build the rest with robots that can work through the night and faster than any human, constructing the same template again and again in different lots? Sure, bureaucracy is a major bottleneck, but it's not like human construction finished within a month...

brodouevencode 3y ago
There is this https://www.mudbots.com/ https://www.mudbots.com/
- sterlind 3y ago
  The tiny house they have a gallery of is aggressively ugly, with lots of bizarre curved walls seemingly just to demo their method. And the shelves and fixtures look precarious and unsafe, straight out of Arrested Development. Given the build quality, I'd be afraid the roof would come down on me if I sneezed.
- ratmice 3y ago
  I have Also heard of https://www.14trees.com/ https://www.14trees.com/ and terran robotics doing this... Edit: I imagine though, that in locations where building is regulated under the international residential code. There has been less investment, it only in the last few years added an appendix for mud/cob construction... So you can add regulatory cost on top of the actual robotics involved.
alach11 3y ago
Boston Dynamics robots are still nowhere close to as dexterous, flexible, or capable as human laborers. Getting them to build houses is a massive and expensive R&D project, not a startup, for now.
- solatic 3y ago
  If you built the houses the same way as with human labor, sure. But perhaps they would be built differently with robots, in a way which didn't require that level of dexterity. After all, most industrial robots don't have opposable thumbs. I'm not saying it's a simple problem to solve, nor one whose solution I have fully mapped out in my head. Just that it's a problem whose solution strikes me as being within the realm of feasibility.

londons_explore 3y ago

> The construction industry ... manufactures products that are too big to fit in highway lanes. This is why I believe the future of construction is portable 3d printing. Imagine a 3D printer which fits on a truck, yet can be assembled in an hour and can print something the size of a large house from fiber-embedded cement. The printer would have nozzles for paint, foam, tar, electrical wire and PET plastic. It would also have a scoop to remove soil. A team would drive the truck to the worksite, assemble the printer, start it going, and come back in 2-3 days when it was done. The printer would dig foundations, lay a fiber-cement foundation, damp proofing tar layer, build double skinned walls with foam between, paint the inside and out, install wiring and pipes, and build a foam, cement and tar roof. The house would have premade cupboards, bathtub, washbasin, etc. Humans would come back to fit carpets, electrical outlets+fusebox, appliances, windows, vacuum formed liners in the bath/washbasins, etc.

eightysixfour 3y ago
You mean like ICON?
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Yes, but I think their printer design could be improved. I would go for the printer being far less weight by making the whole thing a cable truss and winch structure. That should cut the hardware cost in half or better, like the way a travelling circus tent can be assembled entirely without a crane, yet packs into a tiny box. The downside is you can no longer assume a rigid structure, so you need cameras and alignment marks for precise positioning - but you probably needed them anyway. You also can't make any accelerations above 1G, but that should be fine for housebuilding. And obviously, their design only makes the walls, but I would want to do foundations, roof, insulation, plumbing and electricals all with the same machine.
  - eightysixfour 3y ago
    The hardware costs are minimal compared to other costs. It packs into a container.

throw0101a 3y ago

> The construction industry's fundamental constraint is that it manufactures products that are too big to fit in highway lanes. That means they can't be shipped from a centrally-located factory to their final destinations. As a whole, yes. But there are a number of companies that are building segments (walls) in a factory and then shipping those to be craned-in like Lego® blocks. Some factory tour videos: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-RTlbv84T8 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeHkVeJO6PE * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3QZVG-18E

thechao 3y ago
I'm can't watch these videos, but there's thousands of 1–2.5mm$ homes being built west of Austin, Tx (who's buying them!? I DON'T KNOW!) I like ti watch these houses go up: the walls & roof trusses are all laminate and come in to the job site in segments. It's takes a crew of 2–4 (depending on the size of the house) about 4 days to assemble the exterior. The interior is about 50% 'modular', and the rest is traditionally framed. It's pretty insane.
LegitShady 3y ago
Pre fabricated assemblies exist all over but are highly constraining if standardized or need to be custom ordered to fit which becomes expensive. You still have to assemble and seal everything on site so you don't necessarily save anything and it limits you in other ways. Building wall assemblies isn't the hard or expensive part of construction.

krys1010 3y ago

Tell that to my single, double, and triple wide.

moooo99 3y ago

> There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. Those startups are pretty much all roadkill. Slightly OT, but I feel like this is a general trend and definitely not limited to construction. There are many companies and founders aiming to 'disrupt' an industry, and a starting out with what only can be defined as arrogance. Seeing some of the startup companies in the sector i'm familiar with trying to explain how the world works to some of the most experienced and established players has been hilarious and infuriating at the same time. At this point, I finally understood where the derogatory meaning of 'techbro' comes from. The main thing that concerns me is that people still believe technology (primarily software) is the solution to any problem we encounter. Yes, technology solved many problems in the past, but it also created a lot and failed in spectacular ways. If you need a solution to an acute problem, waiting for a technology to hopefully be developed isn't the right call. However, more and more people, governments and companies are buying into that idea. I can't fail to notice many people who where technology skeptic years ago now turned towards a "I don't want to change my behavior, technology will find a problem that solves the issues I cause with it". Autonomous cars are my prime topic that comes to mind, but many other things also come to mind.

eldavido 3y ago
I used to feel this way. But then I realized this is the natural push/pull of conservatism against progress. Incumbents get old and conservative. New companies crop up and try to do things differently. Sometimes the new ideas are stupid, and incumbents are right--the tried and true really is best. Other times, the incumbents have become so bureaucratic, slow, and out of touch with what matters (customers), that a new company can come in, do things dramatically better, and burn an old competitor down. Macro-wise, I think we should be glad for this. It's very hard to tell what will and won't work at the beginning. VCs get paid a lot of money for trying to guess this and even they can't get it right. I myself have been surprised many, many times when an idea I thought was incredibly stupid, turned out to have legs. One way to change your mind on this, write down your predictions about what companies/approaches/techniques will/won't work 10 years from now. If you do this say, once/year, and you're honest, you'll see how hilariously bad you, and more or less everyone else actually is, at predicting the future and knowing what will and won't work. Sometimes you really do just have to try it, and see what happens.

kokanee 3y ago

I spent 5 years working on one of these startups. I'm not sure that the highway lane constraint is fundamental to the reality that contech startups tend to fail, but I think the assessment about the hubris of contech startups is fair. The first lesson to learn is that construction doesn't happen behind a laptop or on a phone. From your user's perspective, time spent fiddling with your app is time not spent on real work. So naturally you focus on selling to the "office workers" who spend more time on planning and administration. The problem with that segment is that the tools they already have are good enough. Construction projects always take far longer and cost far more than expected because of what's happening in the field, not because of what's happening in the office, so software simply isn't a bottleneck in this industry. The fact that your tool was specifically designed for their use case, or has an AR feature that allows them to walk the site virtually, or whatever -- it's cool, and you can get a few sales that way, but it's not going to result in better project economics, so it's not going to revolutionize anything.

throwaway14356 3y ago
just unlocking the phone and starting an app takes waaaaay to much time. You have 10 people standing there looking at you for 3 minutes. Then bill the customer 25 for opening an app??? Better write things on paper.
giantg2 3y ago
I see the AR usecase as being a huge potential win in the inspection process. Instead of inspectors having to drive site to site, just give them a tour. You could probably pull up permit/schematic/etc info as you're viewing the property and stuff. But I assume something like this already exists.
2pointsomone 3y ago
Excellent point. When I think of a foray into construction, I plan to use all software off-the-shelf and focus my process improvements entirely on-field.
mym1990 3y ago
A general question to anyone in the industry: how come after so much experience with over budget/over timeline projects, the industry still vastly underestimates those variables?

orzig 3y ago

Detailed book length treatment of one such startup: SAM, one robot, a dozen engineers in the race to revolutionize the way we build (https://www.audible.com/pd/1797102168 https://www.audible.com/pd/1797102168) It does not really support your hypothesis, instead giving a bunch of examples of inertia, which collectively make it extremely difficult to demonstrate a return on investment

chakintosh 3y ago

> Building components that are small enough to fit in highway lanes, on the other hand, are manufactured in centrally-located, capital-intensive factories and shipped to their final destinations, just like cars or electronics. Think: boilers, doors, windows, air handlers, etc. The elaborate on your idea, there are a couple startups that do work in "real estate" if you can even call it that, they ship ready-made prefab aimed at people looking for separate mancave/home office from the actual home.[1] Those are things you can ship in highways and load in with a crane. But that's about it. These startups had their boom during COVID but you don't hear much about them now. [1] https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-home-office-accessory-dwelling-units-efab1374 https://www.dwell.com/article/prefab-home-office-accessory-d...

matwood 3y ago

One of my favorite sayings when trying to take something over is "they are never as dumb as you thought, and you're never as smart as you hoped".

dougmwne 3y ago

From your description, the solution seems obvious. The factory needs to come to the building site, rather than the other way around. So the opportunity essentially becomes one of providing better tools to builders. This has already happened in some ways since air nailers are a nice productivity gain over hammers and have taken over. If you could deliver automated tools that could fit on a tractor trailer, say a robotic arm/crane with a few attachments, you might have a winner.

BurningFrog 3y ago

So maybe the invention needed is "cargo blimps" that can deliver oversized components to anywhere?

tytso 3y ago

It might be worth taking a look at Bensonwood (https://bensonwood.com https://bensonwood.com). They do some very impressive, high-end pre-fab homes, and they solve the "must fit in highway lanes" by shipping walls that have windows, electrical wiring, plumbing, etc., all already pre-installed in their factory in New Hampshire. When we investigated using them 3 years ago, they didn't support pre-installed CAT 5 wiring or Optical Fiber, but I wouldn't be surprised if they can do that now. :-) This is all done using computer-controlled manufacturing equipment, much of which is imported from Europe, where they are much more advanced on this front than in the U.S. One of the advantages of having computer controlled nail guns and vaccuum operated "wall flippers" is that the construction tolerances are far tighter than if you have humans nailing in the shingles, sometimes while on a ladder 15 feet above the ground. The downside, of course, is that they only today have their one factory in New Hampshire, and while the walls can be shipped trucks on highways, if you want to build a large, luxury pre-fab home in Arizona, the trucks have to travel a long way, and that adds to the cost. This hasn't stopped some of their customers, though. Take a look at their web site for some example houses that they have built --- it's a far cry from what most people think of when they hear about "pre-manufactured houses". These are not trailer park homes!