A Woman’s Touch in Construction

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

I never expected to find myself in the construction industry. It was never on my radar.

I started my career as a teacher because it suited my personality. I like helping and working with people, and I don't regret that career choice, but it was also a path I was kind of expected to take.

Construction was something my husband Mike understood. He’s the wood nerd who sees a truck going down the highway and marvels at the load of lumber it’s carrying. I used to ignore him. Now I pull out my phone to take pictures.

I get it.

Once you learn a little about how things are made and what it takes to turn a building from an idea into a finished product, it's hard not to get interested. And the people you meet along the way make it even more worthwhile.

That's something I appreciate about this industry. It's a relationship business, and I've been fortunate to meet some remarkable women along the way.

I've known Edie Dillman of B.PUBLIC Prefab for several years through the sustainability community. She's helping bring high-performance panelized building systems to market. When we had a chance to talk more recently, we discovered another connection. We're both from the Chicago area, and her cousin was a friend of mine in college. Love this small, big world!

It's the kind of connection I might never have discovered outside an industry where relationships matter so much.

Dafna Kapkan, Founder of Cassette

Dafna Kaplan is another woman who's taken time to talk with me about her work and help me understand different ways of approaching modular construction. As the founder of Cassette, she's exploring how standardized, factory-produced housing can change the way we build. I appreciate people who are willing to share what they've learned, especially when I'm still figuring out how all the pieces fit together.

Merrick Macomber, Modular Maven

I’ve read about Merrick Macomber, whose work focuses on people, something that can easily get overlooked when we talk about factory automation. Through Modular Maven and her experience with companies like Autovol, she's helped highlight the importance of factory culture, workforce development, and the human side of automation.

And women like Amy Marks have helped bring industrialized construction into much bigger conversations about how we build. Known as the “Queen of Prefab”, she's held leadership roles at XSite Modular and Autodesk and continues to influence the industry's approach to offsite construction.

These women aren't all doing the same thing, and that's my point.

At BCMC, I spoke with an executive from an Austrian lumber company who told me how many women work throughout his organization, including in traditionally male-dominated roles. He said women have better safety records, in his experience, and he’s always interested when a woman applies.

I can't speak to whether that holds true across the industry, but I found his perspective interesting.

I'm encouraged to see more women wearing hardhats, working in manufacturing, managing production, and running factories. They're not just supporting the business from the office. They're helping build it.

That's also part of what inspired my LinkedIn livestream, Leveling the Lumber Field. I wanted to create a place for honest, informative conversations. Lumber veterans Dena Cordova-Jack, Matt Layman, and Joy Robles will explore the challenges and opportunities shaping the industry from their different perspectives. The goal is to share what they know, learn from one another, and bring more voices into the conversation.

The lumber, modular, and construction industries have plenty of technical expertise, but the human capital is just as important. The people willing to share what they know, listen to a different point of view, ask questions, and help someone else understand the business are the ones who help move it forward.

I think women have a lot to contribute to those conversations. And I'm encouraged to see more men embracing that same collaborative approach. This isn't an us-versus-them conversation. It's about making the industry stronger by getting more people involved.

Fresh Eyes on Modular

Jorie Wisnefski

I still have a lot to learn. That's probably never going to change. In some ways, I'm still a teacher. I just have a different classroom.

I enjoy that there's always something new to discover in the construction sector, someone willing to explain it, and someone else who might benefit from hearing the conversation.

A Fresh set of Eyes can help those who make room for another voice.

Six Modules Came Off the Line. When Can We Bill for Them?

Imagine it’s Thursday afternoon at a modular factory. The production manager tells the owner that all six modules in the first batch came off the line on schedule. The controller has a question. “Can I send the invoice today?” Five modules have signed inspection reports. Somebody remembers seeing the plumber in the sixth one that morning. Nobody in the room knows whether he finished the pressure test.

I’d want that question answered before everyone went home. Under this particular contract, the customer owes a progress payment once all six modules pass inspection. One open test can hold up the draw on a whole batch. And if the lender reviews payment requests on Friday mornings, an hour spent finding the answer on Thursday could cost the factory a week.

That little scene is hypothetical, but it explains why, if I ran a modular company, the controller would have a seat at my production meeting. It also explains where I’d spend my first dollar on factory tracking technology.

Before I promise a slot on the line

What Would You Do to Get a 100-Module Order From a New Customer?

Suppose a developer calls three modular factory owners on a Monday morning. He needs 100 modules and wants to know who can build them. The first owner pulls up the production schedule and asks, “When will the first foundation be ready?” The second asks, “Is this one building, or is it the first of several?” The third covers the phone and tells the sales manager, “Whatever it takes, don’t let this guy get away.”

If you work in sales, you might enjoy working for that third owner. If you handle payroll, you probably have a few more questions.

I can think of nine attitudes that show up in decisions like this. An owner can hold several at once and, depending on how empty next month’s production schedule looks, change attitudes before lunch. Three lend themselves to steady growth. Three can help a factory grow quickly. The last three can put a good operation in real trouble.

BOXABL Went Public. Now Comes the Hard Part.

BOXABL seems quieter these days. For a company that attracted so much attention around folding homes and the possibility of changing how housing gets built, that quieter profile invites a reasonable question: What is actually happening inside the business?

There is activity. Project announcements, a large potential purchase agreement, changes in financial leadership, and another mechanism for raising capital. What remains difficult to establish from the information reviewed is whether those developments are producing a dependable flow of completed, revenue-generating deliveries.

Ben Hershey Wants the Offsite Factory to Work as Well as the Sales Pitch

Connecting people, production, and information is the real challenge.

Walk into an offsite construction factory, and you can usually find someone who knows why production is behind. Walk into the office, and you may find someone with an entirely different explanation. Sales has another version, purchasing is waiting for answers, and the general manager is trying to determine which problem needs attention before lunch.

Everybody is working. Getting all that work to move in the same direction is where things become interesting.

That is the territory Ben Hershey and 4Ward Solutions Group have chosen to work in. Their business brings together manufacturing advice, design support, workforce resources, automation, factory planning, and software. For an industry where a decision in one department can create three problems in another, that combination deserves a closer look.

The Modular Factory Building for the Day Everything Else Stops Working

Most modular factories build homes, classrooms, apartments, hotels or workforce housing. Their customers are usually thinking about schedules, mortgage payments, operating costs, and how soon they can move in.

A single factory serves customers asking a very different question: What happens when the power goes out, communications fail, civil order breaks down, or the outside air is no longer safe to breathe?

Atlas Survival Shelters manufacture prefabricated steel shelters designed for customers commonly described as preppers. Their products may be buried underground, protected by heavy steel doors and equipped with specialized air-filtration systems, but their manufacturing model is surprisingly familiar.

Steel sections are cut and welded inside a controlled factory. They install electrical, plumbing, and ventilation systems before shipment. Customers select interior packages, completed units are transported by truck, and installation crews prepare the site and place the structure.

Strip away the survival branding, and these companies are specialized offsite manufacturers. Their customers are purchasing factory-built living spaces—just with far more unusual performance requirements.

Atlas Survival Shelters Turns Fear Into a Manufactured Product

120 Modules in a Landfill—And Everyone Should Be Pissed Off

 

With over 1,000 modules already on a major project, 120 are now headed to the landfill after severe water damage.

The project took place in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, at a massive social housing development in the suburb of Woree. It was intended to deliver hundreds of affordable housing units using modular construction, with more than 1,000 factory-built modules contributing to roughly 490 homes in what was described as one of the region's largest projects of its kind.

The demolition stemmed from severe weather exposure during construction. Heavy rain hit modules that were not fully sealed or protected, allowing water to penetrate interiors, damage materials, and cause mold contamination. The deterioration was so severe that many units were deemed beyond repair, forcing demolition and disposal rather than remediation. 

Not repaired. Not reworked. Just gone.

And while there may be more to the story, I want to know how this could have been avoided. I'm sure you want to know also!

Tossing the Modular Rulebook

Fresh Eyes on Modular by Jorie Wisnefski 

Last week’s Fresh Eyes article started when I saw Chad Crosby’s LinkedIn post. He shared about transporting exceptionally large modular buildings over considerable distances. It’s not a routine haul, and the challenges involved led me down a rabbit hole of exploring the realities of moving modular construction.

I tagged Chad in my post and asked him a question. He responded immediately that he was happy to chat.

Huge win for me!

Chad Crosby

Our conversation began with Halo Halo, Chad’s logistics business, and turned into a broader discussion about the factories he visits and the companies he’s encountered that are doing things differently.

The theme that kept resurfacing was a willingness to throw out the rulebook.