A $99 Investment in Your Factory’s Future

Join the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable on October 28 in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

What can $99 buy your offsite construction company today? Perhaps a few supplies, part of a service call, or lunch for a handful of employees. On October 28, that same $99 registration fee buys something that could last much longer: a seat at the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with breakfast and lunch included.

Hosted by Gary Fleisher and Jorie Wisnefski at the Inn at Lewisburg, this gathering brings factory owners, managers, production leaders, engineers, and sales professionals together to explore practical ideas for improving their businesses. Builders and developers are welcome, too, because better factory performance and better project execution depend on understanding both sides of the relationship.

Three Companies Bringing Ideas Worth Discussing

Ben Hershey of 4Ward Solutions will bring his factory management perspective to the discussion. For companies looking at their operations and wondering where improvements should begin, this is an opportunity to ask questions about the challenges that show up between the morning production meeting and the last unit moving down the line.

Max Quinn and Blaine Comeiore of Ground Up will introduce their company’s approach and tools for the offsite industry. Attendees can explore where those tools might fit their businesses, ask how they work, and discuss what adopting something new would mean for their teams.

Daryl Snader, Heath Sartini, and Eric Scott of Uni-Frame Carriers will discuss a system that integrates the transportation function into the module’s permanent structure. The first public demonstration carrying a full module is planned for the Roundtable, giving attendees a chance to connect the explanation with something they can see.

Bring Your Questions—and Your People

The Roundtable is designed around conversation, with short presentations and extended opportunities for questions. If you have ever listened to a speaker and wished you could spend another twenty minutes asking how an idea would work inside your own factory, you understand the value of this format.

It also helps to bring someone who sees your operation differently. Your production manager may ask about workflow, your engineer may consider integration, and your sales manager may think about explaining the benefits to builders. Those conversations can continue long after everyone returns home.

Registration is $99 each for up to four attendees. Breakfast will be available until 9:00 a.m., and lunch is included. With October 28 approaching, now is the time to reserve your seats and decide which questions you want answered.

Gary’s Observation

I have always believed one useful conversation can justify the time it takes to get into the room. Sometimes it introduces a new solution. Sometimes it helps you recognize a problem you have been working around for years. Sometimes it simply connects you with someone who understands exactly what you are facing.

For $99, you can learn, compare notes, and return to your company with fresh ideas. I hope you will join us in Lewisburg.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE OCTOBER 28 ROUNDTABLE

Who’s Building Your “Good Idea”?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

A great idea for a development is only the beginning.

A developer finds a property and starts imagining what it could become. Maybe it’s an apartment building, a hotel, or a new housing community. Modular construction seems like a promising way to bring that vision to life.

But I’m learning that choosing the right modular factory can take months of research, redesigns, and back-and-forth between developers and manufacturers.

By then, a promising idea may become much more complicated and expensive.

Max Quinn, Co-Founder & CEO @GroundUp

Max Quinn saw this challenge firsthand while working in modular real estate development. In his experience, developers came to the table with big ideas, but they didn’t always have the information needed to understand what was feasible before moving forward.

They would start by finding a property and envisioning its potential, but they didn’t always understand how that vision aligned with a modular factory’s capabilities.

Investing in a Factory Makes More Sense When You Bring the Projects With You

 

Propertize Ventures’ investment in Shell Pros raises an important question for offsite construction: What if the investor can bring both capital and customers?

Have you ever wondered why some investors become fascinated with the machinery inside an offsite factory before spending much time asking what will keep it running? The equipment is impressive, the production possibilities are exciting, and the housing shortage makes the opportunity sound almost irresistible. Somewhere in that enthusiasm, however, somebody needs to explain where the actual orders will come from.

A factory needs work that is ready to build, customers who can pay, and enough continuity to keep employees productive. Those requirements don’t photograph quite as well as a new automated production line, but they deserve a prominent place in the investment discussion.

That is why the recently reported investment by Propertize Ventures in Shell Pros caught my attention. The link between development activity and manufacturing deserves closer scrutiny.

Your Factory Cannot Manufacture Its Way Around an Unfunded Project

I’ve often wondered how many modular factory business plans begin with a description of America’s housing shortage. Near the front, usually before we get to payroll, an impressive explanation shows how many homes the country needs and how much faster a factory could build them. By the time you finish reading it, you might wonder why there isn’t a line of developers outside the factory door.

Then you talk to the person responsible for filling the production schedule. The developer is still working with the bank, another project is waiting for permits, and the customer who wanted forty homes has decided to start with four. Unfortunately, the electric company has shown very little interest in accepting national housing statistics as payment.

That is where the difference between needing housing and ordering housing becomes painfully clear. A factory can have the right product, capable employees and an efficient production line while the projects it expected to build remain financially unable to proceed.

Why Would Anyone Put Money Into a Modular Factory?

There are many good reasons. “The country needs more houses” isn’t enough.

I’ve been asking myself a question that probably won’t get me invited to every modular factory investment presentation: Why would private investors put their money into one? Before anyone takes away my offsite construction membership card, let me explain. I believe in modular construction and in the people who know how to build good homes inside a factory. What gives me pause is the assumption that putting those people inside a large building with expensive equipment automatically creates an attractive investment.

A factory can build a beautiful house and still lose money. Build enough houses that way, and you haven’t solved the problem. You’ve simply become more efficient at losing money. Yet sensible reasons to invest in modular manufacturing exist, and understanding them starts with looking past the ribbon-cutting ceremony and asking what happens on an ordinary Tuesday.

The Questions That Could Change Your Factory Start in Lewisburg, PA on October 28

Three innovative companies. One room full of industry experience. A day devoted to helping offsite construction move forward.

I have spent enough years around modular factories to know that the next good idea doesn’t always arrive when you need it. Sometimes it shows up during a conversation with another owner. Sometimes a production manager asks a question nobody else thought to ask. And sometimes you have to step away from your own operation long enough to see what others are doing.

That is why Jorie Wisnefski and I are hosting the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at the Inn at Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

We are bringing together speakers from 4Ward Solutions, Ground Up, and Uni-Frame Carriers for a day focused on the practical challenges and opportunities facing offsite construction. Breakfast will be available until 9:00 a.m., and lunch is included, giving everyone time to meet, talk, and continue conversations beyond the presentations.

GroundUp: Helping Better Projects Find Their Way to Your Offsite Company

A familiar conversation in offsite construction often begins with, “I have some land, and I’m thinking about putting modular homes on it.” What follows can involve weeks of questions, preliminary drawings, pricing discussions, and explanations about what the factory can actually build. Sometimes that work produces a customer. Other times, everyone discovers the property, budget, and building system never matched.

That is the kind of early uncertainty GroundUp is designed to address. According to its website, the AI-supported platform helps evaluate development sites, create conceptual plans, and compare suitable factories, preliminary economics, and delivery considerations. It brings those pieces together before a developer makes a major commitment. For an offsite company, the potential benefit is a better-informed conversation much earlier in the process.

Your Factory Needs a Decision Schedule Before It Needs a Production Schedule

How Missed Owner and Design Decisions Become Shortages, Rework, and Idle Labor

Walk through almost any modular or offsite factory that is falling behind and someone will eventually point to the production schedule. The line is moving too slowly. One station is backed up. A crew is waiting for material. Another crew is trying to correct something that should have been settled weeks earlier.

Management gathers around the schedule and asks the predictable question: How do we get production back on track?

That may be the wrong place to begin. The production schedule often becomes the place where earlier indecision finally becomes visible, but it is rarely where that indecision started. The real problem may have begun when an owner delayed choosing windows, when an architect revised a wall after engineering had started, when nobody confirmed the HVAC layout, or when the factory was selected after the building had already been designed around another manufacturing system.

By the time those unresolved decisions reach the factory floor, they no longer look like design problems. They look like missing materials, rework, labor inefficiency, quality failures, and late deliveries.

That is why every offsite factory needs a decision schedule before it relies on its production schedule.