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!

A Contract That Ignored Reality

The project was structured as FOB factory gate, with modules shipped without roofs or ceilings per the contract. That may satisfy legal language, but it ignores a basic truth—once those units leave the factory incomplete, they’re vulnerable. Contracts don’t stop rain, and they don’t protect product.

The GC’s Risky Assumption

At some point, the General Contractor had to believe everything would go smoothly on site. But taking delivery of partially open modules without a guaranteed, immediate weatherproofing plan isn’t management—it’s hope. And hope is not a strategy in construction.

The Factory’s Quiet Compliance

Yes, the factory built to spec. But experienced manufacturers know exactly what happens when water gets into unfinished modules. Shipping them anyway, without stronger pushback or safeguards, may meet the contract requirements, but it falls short of protecting the product and the industry.

Wrapping Isn’t Waterproofing

Most factories wrap modules for transport, but there’s a difference between protecting against road debris and protecting against prolonged exposure to rain. If these units were wrapped, it clearly wasn’t enough for the conditions they faced.

The Industry Fallout

If this happened in the U.S. or Europe, it would ripple far beyond one project. Developers, lenders, and builders would question modular all over again. One failure like this reinforces every outdated fear about offsite construction—and we’re still working too hard to overcome those doubts.

Ownership Changes Outcomes

Had the factory been responsible for set and finish, the outcome likely would have been very different. When you own the result, you don’t leave modules exposed or assume someone else will protect them. Responsibility changes behavior—and in this case, it might have prevented the loss entirely.

This Was a Decision Failure

Yes, heavy rain played a role. But this wasn’t really about weather—it was about decisions. Decisions that assumed someone else would handle the risk. Decisions that followed the contract but ignored the consequences.

And now 120 modules are paying the price.

Modcoach Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

If you think this couldn’t happen to you, that’s when you’re most vulnerable. These failures don’t come from ignorance—they come from assumptions.

Before you sign the next contract, ask the hard questions. Challenge the risks. Protect the product.

Because once those modules leave the factory, it’s no longer about what the contract says—it’s about what happens next.

CLICK HERE to read the entire Built Offsite article

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.

Chad knows something about that himself. After serving in the military, he was curious about the trucking business because of a family member’s involvement, but as he began working with modular transportation, he recognized that conventional trailers weren’t truly designed to support the structures they were hauling in the best way.

Rather than accept those limitations, he developed his own trailer system. It’s bigger, heavier, and more expensive than typical alternatives, but he believed in the solution. Chad knew the goal and wasn’t afraid to take a different path.

That experience has given him an appreciation for others who approach problems the same way—by thinking differently.

Since logistics is Chad’s business, it takes him inside manufacturing facilities. He sees what happens before products ever hit the road. He also gets to see how well the decisions about processes, materials, and finished structures hold up when things leave the factory.

It’s an outsider’s inside perspective. Modular construction is often touted through the lens of design, cost, and speed, but the person transporting those structures also gets to experience how well they’re built.

Chad shared examples of companies that don’t work around the usual limitations. They’re questioning the processes themselves and coming up with different answers.

MMY US is approaching affordable housing by rethinking how homes are produced and delivered. Through modular construction, the company is making housing more accessible and creating opportunities for local employment. Its work in Kentucky, and now expansion into Ohio, demonstrate how a different approach to building can address more than one challenge at a time. 

Remo Homes approaches innovation by challenging conventional expectations of how a home should function. Its resilient, net-zero approach questions some of the assumptions we’ve come to accept as standard in residential construction. 

Where MMY is rethinking the delivery of housing, Remo is rethinking the home itself.

These examples illustrate how thinking differently doesn’t mean solving the same problem in the same way. These companies aren’t accepting that things have to be done a certain way just because that’s how it had always been done.

Different doesn’t always mean easier.

Chad’s trailer system is a good example of innovation not always being the cheapest or simplest solution, but the investment of time, collaboration, and a confidence to pursue something others might question is what turns an idea into a reality.

Offsite construction has plenty of challenges. It’s easy to become accustomed to working around them. It’s harder to step back and ask whether the process itself needs to change.

The companies Chad admires seem willing to do that, and he recognizes that mindset because he’s applied it to his own business.

I’m still learning about this industry, but I know from my own life, it’s valuable to look beyond the obvious. Great insights come from people who experience the same challenges from a different angle.

Dare to be different. Question whether the rules help us move forward at all. As an English teacher, I used to tell my students that you have to know the rules before you can break the rules.

Fresh Eyes see things differently, and success comes from being willing to do something different with what they see.

Fresh Eyes on Modular

Jorie Wisnefski

A fresh perspective can reveal opportunities to challenge the way things have always been done. Chad Crosby and the companies he admires show how questioning the rules and being willing to try something different can lead to better solutions.

Lustron’s 1948, $37.5 Million Housing Dream—and the Lesson Factories Still Haven’t Learned

"A housing shortage. A factory promising to build homes like automobiles. Government money intended to help a bold idea reach production. Thousands of potential customers waiting for something better."

If that sounds like a pitch you heard last week, pull up a chair. In 1948, Lustron was already trying to make it happen. Two years later, its housing revolution was headed through foreclosure and bankruptcy. The uncomfortable part is how familiar that story still sounds.

Lustron deserves more than a spot on a list of failed housing experiments. It built real homes, some of which have outlasted generations of supposedly more sophisticated business plans. Its failure offers a lesson every factory owner, investor, and public official should understand: a durable house and a durable business require different kinds of engineering.

A Steel House for Postwar America

Time to Get Off Your Ass and Learn What Younger Builders Actually Want

 

Here’s a wake-up call: Boomers and older Millennials running offsite factories and B2B companies are dangerously out of touch with what the next generation of builders and developers actually wants. You can have a 150,000-square-foot factory, a million-dollar robot, and a shiny new website, but if you can’t connect with the people who will be signing purchase orders ten years from now — you’re already falling behind.

The uncomfortable truth? They don’t think the way you do. They don’t buy the way you do. And they sure as hell don’t have the patience to sit through your hour-long sales pitch that hasn’t changed since 2005.

They Don’t Want to Hear About Your Factory. They Want to See What It Can Do for Them.

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

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.

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.