Panelization Is Having a Moment. Now It Has to Deliver.

Better buildings, fewer jobsite headaches, and a serious rethink of how we put everything together.

Construction has a strange relationship with inconvenience. We complain about missing workers, wasted materials, weather delays, and schedules that read like a creative writing assignment. Then we start the next project using almost exactly the same process.

At some point, “that’s how we’ve always done it” becomes an expensive subscription nobody remembers signing up for.

That is why panelization deserves a serious conversation. Moving portions of wall, floor, and roof construction into a controlled manufacturing environment creates opportunities to make building more predictable. Components can arrive measured, assembled, labeled, and ready for a planned installation sequence. Depending on the system, insulation and other envelope components can come with them.

The appeal is easy to understand. The execution takes more thought. People like Charles Leahy of Eco-Panels and Gregory J. Leja of Gorilla Composites are contributing different—and useful—ideas about how much a panel can actually accomplish.

First, Let’s Get the Vocabulary Straight

“Panelized modular construction” gets used as though it describes one product. It doesn’t. Panelization and volumetric modular construction belong to the broader offsite construction family, but they deliver different things.

Volumetric modular construction delivers three-dimensional building sections. Panelization delivers two-dimensional components that assemble into a building. The two can also work together.

Even within panelization, the differences are substantial. An open wood-framed wall panel leaves much of the enclosure work for the site. A closed panel can incorporate insulation and additional layers before shipment. Structural insulated panels, commonly called SIPs, combine structural facings with an insulating core. Other composite panels use different core materials and structural arrangements.

The Department of Energy describes SIPs as prefabricated structural elements used in walls, ceilings, floors, and roofs. They are one category within a much larger panelized construction landscape.

That distinction matters when somebody promises faster installation or lower labor costs. A truckload of framed walls and a truckload of integrated envelope panels don't leave the same amount of work for the builder.

The Opportunity Is Real. The Boom Needs Context.

Before we declare that panelization has taken over construction, let’s check the numbers.

NAHB’s October 2026 analysis of Census data found that modular and panelized methods together accounted for approximately 3% of completed U.S. single-family homes in 2025, unchanged from 2023 and 2024. Of roughly 30,000 homes in that combined category, approximately 16,000 were panelized or pre-cut. NAHB also notes that broader industry definitions yield higher panelization estimates.

Those figures don't capture every commercial, industrial, or institutional application. They do, however, challenge the idea that growing attention automatically means widespread adoption.

I see opportunity in that gap. Builders can recognize a problem long before they change purchasing habits, train their crews, or persuade their project partners to try a different approach. Panelization still has to earn those changes through completed projects and repeat orders.

A market forecast cannot install a wall. A prepared crew with the right system can.

Charles Leahy: Make the Envelope Work as a System

Charles Leahy, founder of Eco-Panels, has focused attention on the relationship between building performance and construction complexity.

In Bill Murray’s January 2026 Offsite Innovators interview, Leahy emphasized that insulation, air sealing, windows, ventilation, and HVAC sizing need to work together. He argued that a high-performing building depends on the completed assembly, not an impressive specification for one component.

As he put it: “people do not live in a panel — they live in an assembly of panels.”

That observation gets to the heart of panelization. Every connection becomes part of the product. Corners, openings, roof transitions, and foundation interfaces must carry the performance the panel promises.

Eco-Panels uses an injected closed-cell polyurethane foam core, integrated cam-lock connections, and a one-piece corner panel. The company presents these features as ways to combine structural and insulating functions, simplify assembly, and reduce thermal interruptions at corners. These are manufacturer-described features and benefits; the design and completed installation still determine project performance.

Leahy’s contribution is especially relevant to builders facing a complicated sequence of envelope tasks. Each added layer brings installation details, scheduling requirements, and another chance to miss something. Combining functions can make the process easier to manage when the system is properly designed.

In the same interview, he advised planning ahead and resolving details before construction. That is probably less exciting than a wall going up in a time-lapse video, but considerably more useful when the truck arrives.

Gregory J. Leja: Rethink What the Panel Is Made Of

Gregory J. Leja brings another dimension to this discussion through Gorilla Composites, where the company identifies him as CEO and CTO.

His published background includes adhesives, resin systems, structural honeycomb, manufacturing plant design, and composite processing. The company credits him with continuing to develop honeycomb cores, curing systems, laminating processes, and assembly methods. That experience connects materials development to the practical question of how to manufacture a product repeatedly.

Gorilla Composites describes its current panel technology as a structural composite system using a proprietary honeycomb core bonded to skins. It says it focuses on strength-to-weight performance, manufacturing flexibility, and applications in housing, ADUs, and other manufactured products. This differs from the foam-core approach associated with conventional SIPs.

For builders and manufacturers, that opens a useful line of questioning. What functions can the engineered panel perform? Which skins fit the application? How will connections, penetrations, finishes, and repairs work?

Leja’s contribution highlights the importance of considering the materials and manufacturing process together. Developing a promising panel also means developing a dependable way to produce, handle, and assemble it.

That does not make every composite panel suitable for every building. It does expand the choices worth evaluating. A panel’s structural capability, thermal performance, and fire performance are separate questions, each requiring evidence for the proposed assembly.

The Labor Conversation Needs an Upgrade

Panelization can move repetitive work into a factory and reduce certain site tasks. But “less onsite labor” needs a more thoughtful explanation than “we won’t need skilled people.”

Someone still has to translate the design into manufacturing information. Someone checks dimensions, manages production, controls materials, and verifies quality. At the site, people still need to understand layout, lifting, bracing, connections, and weather protection.

As skills shift, training has to follow.

I would rather see a company explain exactly how a new employee learns to assemble and inspect its system than announce that almost anybody can do it. Clear instructions, practiced procedures, and accessible supervision make a system more approachable. Assuming that a simpler product makes training unnecessary creates a different kind of labor problem.

This also creates an opportunity for younger workers. Well-organized production and assembly work can offer visible progression: learn a task, demonstrate competence, understand the quality checks, and move to the next responsibility. That is a stronger invitation than handing somebody a tool and hoping they figure out the industry.

Quality Control Starts Before the Truck Leaves

A factory provides useful conditions for repeatability. Workstations can be organized around defined tasks. Materials can be protected. Checks can happen at planned stages. Document problems before components disappear behind finishes.

Still, a factory can repeat a mistake extremely efficiently.

The value comes from the quality system operating inside the building: approved drawings, controlled revisions, material checks, inspection records, and clear responsibility for correcting defects.

For SIP construction, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Building America guidance stresses detailed plans, coordination with trades, trained installers, accurate foundations, protected storage, and properly sealed seams. It also emphasizes checking air sealing before finishes conceal the connections. Those details illustrate how factory preparation and field execution depend on one another.

The last panel leaving the factory is a milestone. The assembled building meeting its requirements is the result that matters.

Faster Walls Need a Faster Overall Plan

Panel erection videos are satisfying. By lunchtime, a building seems to appear where there was only a floor that morning. It's easy to see why people share those clips.

But the project schedule includes design, approvals, manufacturing, foundations, shipping, assembly, utilities, finishes, and inspections. Saving time at one stage helps only if the next stage is ready.

Consider a hypothetical project that saves eight days erecting its enclosure but waits ten additional days for a missing approved detail or an unavailable trade. The installation crew may have performed beautifully while the overall project gained nothing.

My advice is to build the schedule backward from occupancy. Identify what controls each handoff, and make the panel package fit that sequence. Confirm who unloads it, where it goes, what equipment is required, and which crew follows.

Speed becomes commercially useful when it carries through the project.

Different Buildings Need Different Answers

The opportunity extends beyond detached houses, but the requirements change with the building.

For a residential developer, repeatable details and an efficient envelope may lead the discussion. A school addition may place greater emphasis on limiting activity around an occupied campus. An industrial project may require specific durability, span, or environmental performance. Multifamily and institutional buildings introduce their own combinations of fire, acoustic, accessibility, and service requirements.

These are applications to evaluate individually. Success in a small house does not establish suitability for a multistory apartment building or a school.

The supplier should help the design team identify the applicable test reports, engineering, installation requirements, and approval pathway early. That conversation makes adoption easier.

Nobody needs to discover during procurement that the exciting panel presentation skipped the assembly their project actually requires.

Follow the Cost All the Way Through

A panel quote can look expensive beside a lumber package when the two include different amounts of work.

The comparison needs a consistent finish line. Include what remains for framing, insulation, sheathing, connections, lifting, installation, and weather protection. Account for design and engineering, freight, crew training, and any project-specific requirements.

Then measure the outcome. How many labor hours were used? What was discarded? What needed correction? How quickly did the enclosure become ready for subsequent work?

Waste reduction deserves the same honesty. Organized cutting and material handling can reduce offcuts and damage, but moving waste into a factory does not make it disappear. Material choices, manufacturing scrap, transport, durability, and end-of-life options all belong in the environmental assessment.

“Factory-built” tells us where something happened. The records tell us whether it happened more efficiently.

Gary’s Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

What interests me about panelization is the chance to execute construction more consistently.

Charles Leahy’s work puts attention on integrated envelope performance and assembly details. Gregory J. Leja’s work brings composite materials and manufacturing processes into the conversation. Their approaches differ, giving the industry more than one direction to explore.

We should welcome that variety while asking practical questions. Show us the approved details. Explain the training. Account for the remaining site work. Track the completed cost and performance.

Panelization does not need another promise that every building will suddenly become cheap, fast, and effortless. It needs more projects where the people doing the work can say the process made sense—and where the owner can see the benefit afterward.

That is the kind of progress I can get behind. Give a capable crew a well-designed system, settle the decisions before production, and let the results do some of the talking.

Four Unconventional Reasons to Start a Modular Home Factory

Whenever someone tells me they want to open a modular home factory, I can usually guess what’s next. Construction takes too long. Skilled labor is hard to find. Building indoors makes sense.

Those are all reasonable starting points. But they don’t tell me why a builder or developer will buy from this particular factory, how often they’ll order, or whether the factory can make money filling those orders.

A housing shortage is not a purchase order. Neither is an enthusiastic meeting with a mayor, a developer, or an investor who thinks modular construction is overdue for its big moment.

What interests me is the founder who approaches the business from a different direction. Someone who has identified a specific problem, figured out who will pay to solve it, and designed a factory around that relationship.

Here are four unconventional reasons to open a modular home factory that deserve a closer look.

1. Build a Business Around the Changes You Won’t Make

Imagine opening a modular home factory and telling potential customers that you offer six home designs, a limited selection of finishes, and very little room for structural changes.

Some people would leave the meeting. That might be the first useful thing your business model accomplishes.

Our industry likes to talk about customization as though every additional choice automatically makes a company more competitive. Move this wall. Stretch that bedroom. Change the roofline. Substitute those windows. Surely the factory can handle it.

Often, it can. The question is whether the selling price covers everything that change touches.

A window substitution can reach purchasing, engineering, inventory, production, and installation. A floor plan revision can create another round of drawings and approvals. Multiply those requests across enough homes, and the factory begins spending a great deal of time managing exceptions.

The unconventional opportunity is to find customers willing to buy a well-developed product as-is.

That could be a builder developing a repeatable home series, a community owner ordering several compatible models, or a developer whose buyers value a good layout more than unlimited choices. These customers still need attractive homes. They simply don’t need to redesign the manufacturing process with every order.

The hard part is holding the line when sales are slow. A prospective buyer arrives with a sizable order and “just a few changes.” Suddenly, the discipline that defined the business looks negotiable.

I would want those boundaries established before the first salesperson makes the first promise. What can change? What cannot? What does an exception cost, and who has the authority to approve it?

A factory that knows precisely what it builds—and has found enough customers who want that product —has a business case.

2. Make Dependability Something Customers Will Pay For

If I were sitting across from a developer considering modular construction, I’d want to know what uncertainty was costing them.

How often do delivery dates move? How much time does their staff spend chasing answers? What happens when the site superintendent schedules crews around a commitment that doesn’t hold?

Those questions can reveal an opportunity that a price-per-square-foot comparison misses.

A factory could be built around providing dependable commitments: clear specifications, understandable pricing, realistic production dates, and early notice when something threatens the schedule.

That sounds like basic good business. It is. Delivering it consistently takes a great deal of discipline.

The sales team cannot promise a production slot without knowing whether engineering, purchasing, and manufacturing can support it. The factory cannot treat an incomplete order as ready to build. The customer cannot keep changing the home while expecting the original price and delivery date to stay the same.

Both sides need rules they understand.

Picture a builder who receives a clear order checklist, a firm design deadline, an agreed process for changes, and regular updates tied to actual production progress. That builder can make better decisions about foundations, cranes, subcontractors, and customer expectations.

Dependability has value because other people have to organize their businesses around the factory’s performance.

Of course, no factory controls everything. Permits, site conditions, transportation, and weather can complicate even a well-managed project. The factory’s job is to define what it can commit to, explain the dependencies, and communicate problems while there is still time to respond.

I would be cautious about promising the fastest home in the market. I would be much more interested in building a reputation for keeping our promises.

3. Give Smaller Builders a Factory They Can Share

A smaller builder may understand the advantages of modular construction perfectly well and still struggle to make it work.

Perhaps their order volume is too small to command much attention. Perhaps available factories don’t offer the right product. Perhaps they’ve had enough trouble getting answers that they’ve returned to the construction methods they know.

Meanwhile, several other builders in the same region may face similar problems.

That raises an interesting possibility: could a group of builders support a factory together?

Each builder would retain its local identity, customer relationships, and responsibility for site work. The factory would supply an agreed family of homes through a common manufacturing operation.

One builder might not provide enough volume to support the business. A group with credible, coordinated purchasing commitments might.

The word “coordinated” matters. Ten builders wanting homes during the same three months do not automatically create a balanced annual production schedule.

Shared ownership doesn't automatically create agreement.

Who gets priority when capacity is tight? Can an owner demand a special design? What happens when a participating builder fails to order the homes it committed to buying? Who pays when the factory needs more working capital?

Those are questions to settle before buying equipment or signing a building lease.

The operation would need experienced management with the authority to run it. Ownership should not give every builder permission to become the plant manager on the days their homes are being produced.

What appeals to me is the chance to start with a defined customer base. The factory could be organized around known products, service expectations, and delivery territories.

But those relationships must become enforceable business commitments. A room full of builders agreeing that a shared factory sounds wonderful is still a long way from a production schedule.

4. Start With an Employer That Needs Housing to Grow

Sometimes the most revealing housing conversation begins with the person trying to fill a job.

A hospital needs nurses and technicians. A manufacturer wants to add a shift. A university needs to recruit staff. Jobs may be available, but suitable housing may be too expensive, too far away, or too hard to find.

A factory founder could start by understanding that problem and building a repeatable housing response.

That does not necessarily mean the employer buys a factory or becomes a developer. The arrangement could involve an experienced housing developer, a landowner, financing partners, and an employer willing to make a meaningful commitment.

The employer might participate through a funded housing initiative, a leasing arrangement, or another structure that gives the project a credible basis to move forward. The details would need careful development. The key point is that someone must translate the recruiting problem into a real housing project.

For the factory, this could provide a focused starting market: defined residents, a limited range of home types, identifiable sites, and a delivery plan tied to funded development.

There is also an obvious danger. A founder hears that an employer needs hundreds of workers and assumes that means hundreds of modular home orders are coming.

It doesn’t.

Workers still need homes they can afford and want to live in. Land needs to be suitable. Infrastructure, approvals, financing, and project management still have to come together.

One employer’s project may help launch a factory, but the business also needs a plan for what follows. A plant built around a single development can face a very quiet production floor when the final home ships.

I would pursue this approach because it starts with an identifiable economic problem and potential partners who have a reason to help solve it. I would commit to factory capacity only after those partners had committed to something equally concrete.

Gary’s Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

What I like about these four ideas is that each forces the founder to answer difficult questions before opening the doors.

Who will accept a limited product line? Who values dependable delivery enough to support the systems required to provide it? Which builders will make real purchasing commitments? Which employers and development partners can turn a housing need into funded orders?

The answers may point toward a new factory. They may also point toward partnering with an existing manufacturer first. I would find that useful, especially before spending millions learning the same lesson.

A modular home factory needs equipment, people, space, and working capital. It also needs customers whose expectations match how the business operates.

Before you show me the building you want to buy, show me who plans to buy the homes—and what they have committed to.

Are We Thinking Inside the Wrong Box?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

This week, Chad Crosby shared a post on LinkedIn showing a home built by Northstar Systembuilt making its way from the factory in South Dakota to its destination in Colorado. It made me pause.

I was trying to decide if this was unusual of modular construction or if the industry is doing things like this more often.

Chad’s post sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I love that about having Fresh Eyes on an industry. One question leads to another, and before long, I’m understanding things a little differently.

Modular construction offers a different way to build. Instead of framing a house stick by stick on a jobsite, much of the work can happen in a controlled factory.

It’s a different way to think about building, but I wonder if we judge modular by how well it fits the conventional way of doing things, rather than considering what might be possible if we approached a project differently.

As I started investigating, I found examples of architects designing distinctive custom homes around modular construction, builders using it on challenging mountain sites, and designers combining modules in ways that create something more than a stack of standardized boxes.

I’m not suggesting every project should be modular, or that there aren’t constraints involving transportation, cost, and installation. There are.

I’m just curious about where those constraints end and our assumptions begin.

Fresh Eyes on Modular

Jorie Wisnefski

Chad, I’d love to hear your perspective. Was the Northstar shipment an unusual undertaking, or is it representative of what modular builders can do today? What about this project might surprise someone who is learning about modular construction and transportation?

And for those designing, manufacturing, or transporting modular buildings, what are you doing differently that the rest of us might not know about?

I’m still learning, and I know a lot is happening in this industry that I haven't seen yet. That's why I follow these questions wherever they lead.

That’s the point of Fresh Eyes. I notice something, get curious, and follow the thread to see what I learn.

Modular doesn’t have to compete with the conventional way of building.

But perhaps we’ve been thinking about the possibilities inside the wrong box all along.

Your Company Has a Story. Let’s Get It in Front of the Industry.

I’ve spent enough years around the offsite construction industry to know that some very good companies are also very good at keeping themselves a secret. They build quality homes, develop useful products, and solve problems that other factories are still wrestling with. Then they wonder why more people haven’t heard of them.

Usually, it isn’t because they have nothing to say. They’re simply too busy running the business to spend much time telling their story. That’s why I put together an advertising package on Offsite Straight Talk for $799 a year, with two bonuses that give companies more than just an ad.

Visibility, Plus Something Useful

The package includes an ad featured more than 60,000 times a month on Offsite Straight Talk. That’s repeated exposure throughout the year, giving readers more chances to notice your name and become familiar with what you offer.

But getting someone’s attention is only part of the job. What happens when they click through to your website? Can they quickly understand what you do, who you serve, and how to take the next step?

That’s where the first free bonus comes in: a full Offsite Factory Website Efficiency Index report. It’s a chance to see whether your website helps tell your story or leaves visitors with questions you should already be answering.

The second free bonus is an Offsite Straight Talk article about your product or factory. An ad introduces your name. An article gives us room to explain what you do and why someone in this industry should pay attention.

Gary’s Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

I’m not going to tell you that buying an ad will suddenly fill your production schedule. Anyone who's spent time in this business knows earning a customer takes more than one visit.

What I am offering is a year of visibility, a useful look at your website, and an article that helps introduce your company—all for $799. If you’ve been meaning to do a little more marketing but keep putting it behind everything else on your desk, this is a practical place to start.

Contact me to put your company in the Offsite Straight Talk spotlight.

The Break Room Knows Before Management Does

Employees often see trouble coming. The challenge is making it comfortable for them to tell you before it arrives.

Somewhere in your factory, three employees are eating lunch and discussing why the new production procedure won’t work. One knows the material cart cannot fit where the drawing says it belongs. Another knows the instructions leave out a step. The third tried mentioning both problems last Tuesday, but nobody followed up.

Meanwhile, management is preparing an announcement about the successful rollout. Welcome to the break room, where the coffee may be questionable, but the information can be surprisingly good.

I’ve always believed the people doing the work see things that never quite make it into a production report. They know which tool needs a little persuasion, which instructions require an interpreter, and which dependable employee has started talking about “trying something different.” The challenge is learning what they know without making lunch feel like an undercover investigation.

The Information Is Already There

In an offsite factory, employees experience the difference between how work is planned and how it actually happens. A supervisor sees a completed wall panel. The person building it knows the nail gun jammed six times, the drawing conflicted with yesterday’s revision, and someone borrowed the only functioning tape measure again.

Who Checks on the Person Everyone Else Depends On?

Every factory has someone people turn to when things get difficult. It might be the owner, the general manager, or the operations executive who seems to carry the production schedule around in their head. When a supplier misses a delivery, a customer threatens to cancel, or payroll arrives before a payment does, everyone knows whose door to knock on.

We expect that person to have an answer, or at least enough confidence to make us believe an answer is coming. But I wonder how often anyone stops at that same door without a problem to unload and asks, “How are you doing with all of this?”

Then stays long enough to hear the answer.

Building from the Inside Out

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski 

When Candice Delamarre moved from France to attend Stanford for graduate school, she spent her days studying Sustainable Design and Construction inside the university’s high performance Y2E2 building, a benchmark of energy efficiency and smart solar shading. Her off campus rental apartment offered a sharp contrast though. Its drafty, single-pane windows made her bedroom walls frosty at night. 

The paradox caught her attention. In the heart of the Bay Area, the knowledge to build high performing environments clearly existed, but everyday housing didn’t always benefit from it.

Candice became fascinated by the puzzle and wondered what invisible constraints were keeping attainable housing so difficult to modernize. 

Industry veterans have learned the rules, understand the constraints, and have found ways to work around the problems. Workarounds become so familiar we don’t question them. 

Sometimes it takes someone with Fresh Eyes to ask why. 

Making a change means understanding why things work the way they do and listening to the people doing the work. It’s important to figure out where a different approach might help. 

Candice and her cofounder, Armelle Coutant, didn't set out to solve every problem in housing. With Kit Switch, they focus specifically on interiors—chipping away at one problem. 

Kit Switch delivers ready-to-install kitchen, bath, and storage systems for multifamily housing. The idea is to make these parts of a home easier to manufacture, coordinate, and install for new construction, renovations, or adaptive reuse. 

That focus was deliberate. 

Candice recognized that some people might see interiors as too small a piece of the construction process to make a meaningful difference, but she and Armelle saw opportunity in concentrating on one part of the problem and doing it differently. 

It's a practical lesson for anyone looking to change an established industry. You don't need to reinvent the entire process. You can make a meaningful difference by rethinking one piece and how it works better alongside everything else. 

Prefabrication offered one solution. By manufacturing components before they reach the jobsite, teams can make installation more predictable. That doesn't eliminate every construction challenge, but it creates an opportunity to work differently. 

And different doesn’t mean complicated. 

Kit Switch’s approach is proven by the people putting it into practice on-site. They work closely with manufacturing partners to push beyond traditional limits, while designing installation workflows alongside tradespeople to make assembly intuitive, safe, and significantly faster. Several general contractors actively build with Kit Switch because the systems remove friction at the site.   

That’s huge. A new idea only goes so far on paper. When the people responsible for making it work see value and want to keep working with you, the idea has real potential. 

Anyone in construction knows it’s a relationship industry. If a different approach creates more headaches, it’s unsustainable. 

In an industry as complex as construction, the hardest part of early growth is resisting scope creep. Candice and Armelle realized that staying true to their vision meant learning to say no—turning down projects that offered quick revenue to protect their focus on scalable and mission driven industry partnerships.  

There's no shortage of reasons why something might not work. Experience helps people recognize legitimate constraints, and it makes familiar limitations harder to question. 

Having Fresh Eyes doesn’t guarantee better answers, but they can open doors to opportunities others have stopped searching for. 

Kit Switch delivered interiors for more than 70 housing units this year and signed $2.4M in supply agreements since the completion of these deliveries. Those numbers show clear traction, with developers, contractors, and architects adopting their prefabricated interior systems from design through delivery. 

The company still has plenty to learn, as every growing business does, but it’s moved beyond the concept stage. 

I love when someone understands a system well enough to see where it falls short, but is still willing to ask, “Why not do it another way?” Candice didn't come into construction thinking she knew better than everyone else. She listened, found a problem worth solving, and worked with the people in the field to come up with a solution they could actually use. 

The answer isn't obvious to everyone. Folks loved candlelight until Edison thought of a better way, but someone willing to flip the switch can make all the difference. 

A fresh set of eyes can help us see a better way forward. 

 

Jorie'sSummary: 

Jorie Wisnefski, joriefaith@hotmail.com

Solving a big problem takes Fresh Eyes and a willingness to question how things have always been done. Candice Delamarre and her cofounder are rethinking how interiors are designed and built in order to build more housing and preserve affordability. 

Kit Switch is looking for project and capital partners for their current fundraise and next stage of growth. Candice welcomes conversations and partnership inquiries. 

Bitchin’ Doesn’t Fix a Factory. Neither Does Ignoring the Problem.

 

Walk through an offsite construction factory, and you will hear complaints. Somebody is waiting for material. Someone else has drawings that don’t match what's on the production line. A supervisor wonders who approved a change, while the person doing the work wonders why nobody told the supervisor.

If you have spent enough time around factories, you know that complaining is practically an unofficial department. It doesn’t have a budget, although it can certainly help explain where some of the money went.

My first reaction when somebody starts bitchin’ is to wonder whether they want to solve something or simply find an audience. But making that judgment too quickly is dangerous. The loudest person might be pointing to a problem management should have addressed three weeks ago.

Here is the approach I believe makes sense: “Bitchin’ doesn’t fix a factory. But neither does ignoring the person who spotted the problem. Tell me what’s wrong, bring an idea if you have one, and let’s figure out what we can do about it.”

That puts responsibility on both sides. Employees need to explain what they are seeing. Management needs to do something useful with the information.