Modular construction potential?

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Monkeymoniker:

Is anyone familiar with the potential of modular construction? If I wanted to learn more can anyone point me in the right direction. Thanks

Not to be a dick, but google it. There is tons of info out there.

Monkeyed around with modular on a few projects, but could never make it happen. Annoyingly many towns/cities won't allow it mainly due to loss of union/local labor according to one city council member I talked to. The more well known modular builders are also hardly a bargain, in the end it's mainly just an upgrade in quality.

It's probably the future though, the idea of stick building a project when you can spit it out in a factory and ship it is an easy decision.

Modular construction has been around for decades, and the technology is essentially mature at this point. It has achieved a certain market share, particularly in the cheaper end of the single-family residential sector, but if it were going to take over the whole construction industry it would have done so by now.

I've looked into this a bit, including visiting modular factories and reviewing layouts with modular company reps. The approach has some issues:

1. Transporting the modular boxes is a significant undertaking. They’re typically larger than standard shipping containers, meaning that they’re oversized loads that must be carried by flatbeds and often require escort vehicles as well as the truck. Special permits may be required in each of the states the trucks need to pass through (and the factory may be three or four states away from your site).

2. The modular approach makes the most sense when you design your room layouts to work with the box dimensions. That makes it hard to do larger rooms, which is probably why modular has more market share in the residential sector, where rooms tend to be smaller. If you reduce the boxes to standard shipping container size to avoid problem (1) above, your plan layout flexibility will be even more severely constrained.

3. You’ll still need to do plenty of work at the site. Excavation, foundation work, utilities, grading, and landscaping will be the same either way. You need a crane to set the boxes, and there may be a fair amount of work involved in connecting them and totally finishing the building.

I think that when you factor in the shipping cost and hassle, the cost savings is not really enough to justify the loss of design flexibility, so adoption has been limited. There’s a role for it, but I doubt modular will be the technology that causes a step function increase in construction productivity. Maybe panelization combined with robotic fabrication, 3D printing, or something else.