Five Ways to Spot a Consultant with Real Factory Experience

 

When it comes to offsite construction, a consultant’s résumé can look polished, but polished doesn’t mean practical. If you’re hiring someone to help improve your production line, you want to know they’ve actually been in the trenches. Here are five ways to vet whether they’ve had true hands-on experience at the factory level—or if they’re just repeating industry buzzwords.

1. Ask for Specific Factory Roles They’ve Held

Anyone can say they’ve “been in modular for 20 years,” but that line is about as useful as saying they’ve “been around cars” and expecting you to hand them the keys to a NASCAR team. A true veteran should be able to name the exact roles they held inside a factory—whether that was running a production line, serving as a quality control manager, overseeing scheduling, or even sweating it out as a line supervisor. These roles carry weight because they involve real decision-making, hands-on troubleshooting, and accountability for results. If they can’t provide titles and responsibilities, chances are they’ve been orbiting the industry, not living in it.

2. Request Concrete Examples of Past Projects

Hands-on consultants can give you stories that stick. They might tell you about how they reorganized a framing station to shave an hour off cycle times, or how they helped a factory scale from producing six to twelve modules per week without sacrificing quality. They know the numbers, the processes, and the headaches that came with each change. In contrast, a consultant with little factory experience will fall back on generic language about “streamlining operations” or “improving efficiency,” which could mean anything from installing software to handing out motivational posters. Push for details—if they can’t describe specific wins in factory terms, you’re dealing with theory, not practice.

3. Test Their Knowledge of Codes and Logistics

Factories live and die by codes and logistics. Ask them about the differences between HUD-code homes and IRC modular requirements, or how they’ve handled tough inspectors with three different rulebooks in their back pocket. Drill into shipping and set logistics—did they ever coordinate trucks, cranes, and crews under pressure? Can they explain how freight width limits change the build plan? Someone with factory experience will lean into the gritty details, because they’ve lived through them. If their answers sound more like a Wikipedia entry than a shop-floor memory, you’ve got yourself a red flag.

4. Look for Problem-Solving Stories, Not Just Outcomes

Anyone can say they “improved production” or “increased efficiency,” but the truth of their background lies in the problems they’ve faced and how they fixed them. Ask about the biggest production disaster they ever dealt with. Did a shipment of trusses arrive mis-sized? Did a crane break down on set day? Was there a material shortage that forced them to re-engineer a floor system on the fly? These war stories reveal how they think under pressure, whether they’re adaptable, and whether they’ve actually rolled up their sleeves in a factory. If all you hear are polished, happy-ending stories with no grit, they’ve probably been more of an observer than a doer.

5. Verify Through Industry References

At the end of the day, talk is cheap. Ask for references—but make sure they’re not just other consulting clients. The strongest proof comes from people who’ve seen them in action on a factory floor: plant managers, supervisors, owners, or even set crews who worked alongside them. A legitimate consultant won’t hesitate to give you those names. If they dodge the request, or the references sound like business acquaintances instead of factory colleagues, it’s a good sign they’ve never had their boots on the factory floor.

The Bottom Line

Factories don’t run on theory, they run on sawdust, sweat, and problem-solving under pressure. When you bring in a consultant, you’re not paying for someone to give you another PowerPoint; you’re paying for someone who’s already lived through the chaos you’re trying to control. If they can’t prove they’ve stood on the factory floor when the line was behind schedule, the inspector was circling, and the trucker was waiting at the dock, then they’re not the guide you need. Hire the people with grease under their fingernails—because they’ll always work in your best interest, not just their own.