What You Should Know Before Starting Up a New Offsite Factory

Starting a new offsite construction factory is exciting—maybe too exciting. There is something powerful about standing in an empty building, looking at a set of plans and imagining production lines, finished modules rolling out the door, builders calling for more homes, and a company that finally helps solve the housing problem everyone keeps talking about.

I understand the attraction. You may have identified a genuine need in your market because local builders cannot obtain dependable factory capacity or housing demand is growing faster than conventional builders can respond. Perhaps you have spent years watching existing factories miss deadlines, deliver homes with too many problems, or treat customers as though they should be grateful for whatever they receive.

You may honestly believe you can do it better, and you might be right. Before ordering the equipment, hiring the first production manager, or signing a lease on a building that looks perfect from the interstate, however, you should take enough time to determine whether the opportunity is as strong as it appears.

I am not suggesting that every new factory is headed for trouble. Offsite construction needs new ideas, stronger leadership, better factories, and people willing to take calculated risks. The industry will not grow if everyone remains on the sidelines waiting for someone else to solve its problems.

The danger is that many prospective owners do not fully understand what they are starting. They are not simply creating construction companies; they are creating manufacturing companies that happen to build homes. That distinction has swallowed more good intentions, investor capital, and promising startups than most people in the industry care to admit.

Fresh Eyes on Modular By: Jorie Wisnefski

I learned about Wright’s Law this week from Regan Robertson, and I immediately saw how it applies to modular construction.

Someone else has already tested the idea inside a modular construction factory.

Wright’s Law describes a simple relationship: as cumulative production increases, the resources required to produce each additional unit tend to decrease. People learn. Processes improve. Technology gets refined. Mistakes get eliminated.

Those of us who are parents call it, Learning by Doing.

A 2023 study, Identification of Learning Effects in Modular Construction Manufacturing, analyzed production data from an actual modular factory. Researchers found that production time generally decreased as cumulative production increased. In the factory they studied, production time dropped from more than 190 days to around 120 days during the mass production of 149 modular units.

That's a great example of learning through repetition.

Doing something repeatedly isn't necessarily the same as learning from it.

We learn when something doesn't work.

A delay. A material shortage. A scheduling problem. A workaround everyone has just accepted. A module sitting in a yard because the next step in the process isn't ready.

Those moments create friction.

And we tend to try to eliminate friction.

But we should also see friction as information.

Innovation lives in friction.

However, recognizing a problem doesn't change a single thing. There has to be awareness that a change is needed, a willingness to change it, knowledge of the right innovation, application of that knowledge, and tenacity for the new approach.

Learning doesn't become innovation until it changes what happens.

That's an interesting lesson for modular construction because friction doesn't happen in just one place.

A purchasing decision can create a production problem. A production decision can create a transportation problem. A transportation delay can affect the jobsite. A foundation issue can waylay a finished module.

Everyone may understand their own piece of the process well, but are we capturing what the friction is teaching us about the whole process?

Modular has an enormous opportunity right there.

If we're going to scale the industry, we shouldn't just focus on building more. We should be getting better at turning experience into knowledge and, therein, knowledge into better processes.

What we’re learning from those problems is part of the thinking behind the conversation Gary Fleisher and I are putting together for our October summit in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. We’re bringing together people who understand different points across the process—from ERP and purchasing through manufacturing, transportation, foundations and the jobsite—to talk honestly about what drives them crazy in their own part of the process, how they’ve worked around it, and where they’re still looking for better answers.

The idea isn’t that no one has the definitive solution. It’s that someone else in the room may have seen the problem from a different angle, tried something that could help, or have an idea worth exploring. We’re hoping to create a space where people can troubleshoot and think through the problems together.

The goal isn't to talk about innovation in the abstract.

It's to look at the friction, understand what the fire is telling us, and see what we can learn from it.

Because if Wright's Law is right, experience should make us better.

And we have to make sure we're really learning from it.

Jorie Wisnefski

** Repetition can make us better, but only if we learn from the problems we encounter. In modular construction, friction between different parts of the process can reveal opportunities to improve. Gary Fleisher and Jorie Wisnefski’s October summit will bring modular construction people together to share those problems, compare what they've tried, and brainstorm better solutions.

Can Bioplastics Move Beyond Packaging and Into Construction? with Video

Plastic has become one of construction’s most useful—and troublesome—materials.

It appears in insulation, vapor barriers, plumbing, flooring, roofing membranes, window components, sealants, siding, packaging, and countless other products. Its durability makes it valuable inside a building, but that same durability becomes a problem when the material is discarded and remains in the environment for decades or centuries.

Bioplastics are often presented as the greener answer. They can be produced partly or entirely from renewable materials, and some are designed to biodegrade or be composted under specific conditions.

That sounds promising. It also requires more explanation than the word “bioplastic” usually receives.

Not every bioplastic is biodegradable. Not every biodegradable plastic is plant-based. Even compostable materials may require an industrial facility and carefully controlled conditions before they break down.

As construction searches for lower-impact materials, bioplastics deserve serious attention—but preferably without pretending they are all the same or ready to replace conventional building plastics everywhere.

Most companies judge their websites by appearance. They ask whether the design looks modern, the photographs are attractive, and the pages display properly on a phone.

Those things matter, but they do not answer the most important question:

Is the website actually doing its job?

That is why I developed the Website Effectiveness Index—or WEI—an extensive, independent website evaluation, report, and numerical rating system created specifically for companies serving the construction and real-estate industries.

WEI is available for:

Offsite factories
Traditional builders and contractors
Building-product and equipment manufacturers
Construction professional services
Construction and real-estate software companies

Each evaluation examines how effectively the website explains the company, builds credibility, reaches its intended audiences, and turns visitors into qualified prospects.

More Than a Quick Website Review

WEI is not a brief checklist or automated website scan. It is an extensive examination of the entire website from the perspective of the people the company wants to reach.

Depending on the business, that could include homebuyers, builders, developers, architects, engineers, contractors, dealers, distributors, investors or potential employees.

The evaluation considers areas such as:

Brand clarity and professionalism
Products and services
Customer and project focus
Industry credibility
Photographs, videos and project portfolios
Technical and educational information
Calls to action
Lead-generation opportunities
Recruiting visibility
B2B and B2C effectiveness

The company receives a detailed written report, strategic observations, and specific opportunities for improvement. The goal is not simply to identify weaknesses. It provides practical, actionable information the company can use.

A Confidential Numerical Rating

Every WEI evaluation also includes a numerical rating showing how effectively the website performs and where it ranks compared with other websites in its industry category.

The rating provides a measurable benchmark—not simply one person’s general opinion. It helps a company understand whether its website is leading the market, performing competitively, or falling behind in important areas.

Individual company reports and ratings are strictly confidential. A company receives its own results and comparative position, but WEI never discloses the names, reports, or ratings of other companies.

Completely Independent

WEI is not affiliated with a website designer, marketing agency, SEO consultant or website-development service.

That independence matters.

An evaluation should not be a sales proposal disguised as an objective review. I don't evaluate a website and then try to sell the company a replacement website or a package of marketing services.

The company can take the findings to its current website creator, internal marketing team, or any professional it chooses. The company makes the final decisions—and any resulting work remains entirely with it.

What Industry Leaders Are Saying

Craig Landri of Signature Building Systems called his evaluation “thorough, objective, and most importantly, actionable.” He added that it introduced ideas with real merit and identified specific opportunities for improvement.

John Colucci of Westchester Modular Homes described his evaluation in just three words:

“Extensive and WOW.”

Those comments capture exactly what WEI is intended to deliver: an honest, comprehensive assessment that goes far beyond whether a website simply looks good.

A company’s website may be the first salesperson, showroom, recruiting office and source of credibility a prospective customer encounters. It works around the clock, but that does not necessarily mean it is working effectively.

WEI provides an independent answer, a confidential industry benchmark and a practical path forward.

Learn more about the Website Effectiveness Index:

Click here: Inquiry

Solving What We Can’t Solve Alone

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

After my weekly call with Gary Fleisher, I couldn’t stop thinking about throughput.

Not production speed or how the factory works, but throughput.

Let me explain the difference as I see it.

We can make a factory faster at cutting, assembling, or finishing modules and still fail to move more product through the system.

Where ERP Fits In

A factory doesn’t operate in isolation. Think about the journey…order → planning → ERP → purchasing → inventory → production → quality control → staging → transportation → foundation at the jobsite.

Every handoff is an opportunity for the system to slow down.

If the ERP doesn’t accurately communicate what needs to be built, the factory starts with bad information. If inventory isn’t synchronized with production, an efficient production line can sit waiting for material. If production gets ahead of staging or transportation, we may have simply moved the bottleneck somewhere else, as I’ve written about before.

Transportation is particularly interesting in modular. The finished product itself creates constraints that don’t exist in conventional manufacturing. A module can be completed, inspected, and ready to go, but if it’s sitting in a yard waiting for a truck, it isn’t fully through the system.

The construction industry says it needs approximately 349,000 additional workers in 2026 just to meet current demand. In 2027, that number is projected to jump to about 456,000 as spending on infrastructure and manufacturing begins growing again.

Those are not small numbers. They are large enough to delay projects, raise construction costs, and make an already serious housing shortage even more difficult to solve.

The usual explanation is that America has run out of people willing or able to work in the skilled trades. I became curious about that explanation because the country also has millions of unemployed people.

How can we have a shortage of hundreds of thousands of workers while millions of working-age Americans are unemployed?

Maybe the problem is not simply a shortage of people. Maybe it is a shortage of training, access, and coordination.

A modular factory can estimate every stud, sheet of drywall, length of wire, and hour of labor required to build a project. It can add overhead, include a reasonable profit, and produce what everyone believes is an accurate quote.

Then the project begins—and the profit starts disappearing.

That does not necessarily mean the estimator made a mistake. The problem is that a factory quote reflects what everyone knows when it is prepared. The project may not enter production for several months, and plenty can change between those two dates.

Transportation costs increase. Permits take longer than expected. The site is not ready. An inspector wants something different. The builder changes a specification. A supplier cannot deliver the material originally quoted.

Individually, these changes may not appear serious. Together, they can turn a profitable project into one the factory is simply trying to finish without losing too much money.

Inspiration – Preparation – Perspiration – Dedication – Celebration

I was thinking recently about the words we use to describe starting a business. We talk about vision, innovation, disruption and all the other things that sound impressive in a presentation. But when I tried to reduce the journey to words that actually describe what a startup owner must go through, I came up with five: inspiration, preparation, perspiration, dedication and celebration.

They sound pretty good together. You could put them on the wall of a new factory, print them in an investor presentation or use them as the theme of a grand opening speech. However, the words only mean something if you are willing to do the work between them.

For someone starting an offsite construction business, that work begins long before the first module or panel leaves the building.

Offsite Straight Talk

What You Should Know Before Starting Up a New Offsite Factory

Learning from Fires That Friction Creates