The Hidden Cost of Diesel on Modular Construction

Fresh Eyes By Jorie Wisnefski

The cost of moving things keeps getting harder to ignore.

U.S. diesel prices have now surpassed $6 per gallon for the first time, with Reuters reporting that a global diesel shortage could extend into 2027. Tight inventories and supply disruptions are putting additional pressure on an industry that relies heavily on trucks to move homes, materials, equipment, and people.

So rather than asking only how we can transport materials more efficiently, we should ask where we can find opportunities to reduce the cost and complexity of getting them from the factory to the jobsite.

Thinking outside the box can lead to some interesting places.

Uni-Frame is one example. Instead of just trying to make the existing transportation process more efficient, its system approaches the problem differently by looking at the floor and transportation system together, changing what happens between the factory and the foundation.

Atelier Lune’s Camping House offers an intriguing vision of movable living—and a manufacturing question worth asking.

I have always enjoyed a housing design that makes me stop and take a second look. Camping House, an A-frame concept from U.S. design studio Atelier Lune, certainly does that. Recently featured in New Atlas, it combines a familiar cabin silhouette with the promise of a structure that travels compactly and opens at its destination. New Atlas reports that it received a 2026 Red Dot Design Concept award.

My next thought was probably the same one many people in the offsite industry would have: Who will be building it?

That question deserves attention because the available coverage describes a concept. Neither the New Atlas article nor the studio’s project release identifies a production manufacturer, purchase price, or commercial delivery schedule. That leaves the manufacturing story open.

Modular housing professionals will gather in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 28, for the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable, a day focused on factory operations, transportation innovations, and the industry’s next steps.

Hosted by Gary Fleisher in the heart of Pennsylvania’s modular housing region, the event will give attendees a chance to sit down with peers, ask practical questions, and explore new approaches to familiar business challenges. Open discussion will be central to the gathering, allowing participants to consider how the ideas presented could apply to their own operations.

Ben Hershey of 4Ward Solutions will discuss approaches to improving factory operations. Representatives from Uni-Frame will introduce the company’s module shipping system and discuss its potential to reduce transportation costs, including how savings could vary with a factory’s shipping volume and current practices.

The Roundtable is designed for industry professionals who want to look beyond a presentation and ask detailed questions about implementation, costs, and potential benefits. Attendees will have opportunities to exchange experiences and discuss what it takes to put new ideas to work.

The event runs from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM on Wednesday, October 28, in Lewisburg, PA.

Contact Modcoach@gmail.com for more information.

Before You Order Your First Modular Home, Find a Factory That Will Help You Become a Better Builder

At some point, a builder considering modular construction begins to see the possibilities. Walking through a factory, watching homes move through production, and seeing work completed under one roof can make the next step seem simple: choose a floor plan, get a price, and place an order.

I would suggest slowing down just enough to ask a different question: How well will this factory help me build my first modular home?

For a builder entering modular construction, choosing a manufacturer is one of the most consequential decisions in the business. You are choosing a production system, a communication process, and a group of people whose decisions will affect your schedule, reputation, and ability to serve your customer. The house matters, but so does everything required to get it from the drawing board to an occupied home.

Find a Factory That Fits Your Business

Before comparing prices, explain the business you intend to build. Are you planning modest homes on individual lots, highly customized houses, or several repeatable designs in a small development? How many homes can you realistically sell, manage, and complete?

For Millennials taking the reins of established modular companies, the future depends on making independent homebuilding a business worth entering—and staying in.

I keep coming back to a question that should concern anyone preparing to lead an established modular home factory: Who will buy your homes when some of your best builders retire?

For a Millennial moving into ownership, management, or a larger leadership role, that question has immediate consequences. You may be inheriting experienced employees, a respected company name, and decades of knowledge about building houses. You may also be inheriting a customer network whose future is much less certain than its history suggests.

A factory can look familiar from the production floor while the business supporting it changes considerably. The same builders may still call. The same territories may appear on the sales map. But if fewer of those builders are placing orders, and fewer new ones are becoming productive, the next generation of management has a problem that better manufacturing alone cannot solve.

I believe older modular factories can have a strong future. I also believe that the future requires a more deliberate approach to the people and businesses responsible for turning factory production into occupied homes.

I have to wonder how many conversations about buying a new home end before anyone ever asks how that home will be built. A family can appreciate factory construction, better quality control, and a shorter construction schedule. But when the lender shows them the monthly payment, those advantages may never get a chance to influence the decision.

That is the challenge facing offsite construction as mortgage rates hover around 7%. For factories serving the single-family market, the concern reaches beyond what buyers pay to borrow money. Property taxes, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, and development fees all compete for a place in the same household budget. Every additional dollar can make it harder to turn interest in a new home into an actual order.

For perspective, Freddie Mac reported a 7.03% average for a 30-year fixed mortgage on September 24. A 7.11% loan rate illustrates the pressure buyers can face, although individual quotes vary. The industry needs to understand what happens when that rate meets everything else required to put a family into a finished home. www.freddiemac.com

An upcoming launch puts the connection between factory production and home delivery squarely in the spotlight.

I have always believed some of the best opportunities in offsite construction are sitting right outside the factory door. We spend a great deal of time discussing what happens inside the plant—better equipment, better processes, better ways to build a home. But once that home reaches the end of the production line, another part of the business takes over, and it deserves just as much innovation.

That is why I am excited about Uni-Frame getting ready to launch its new approach to shipping offsite and modular homes. The company is tackling a practical challenge with implications across the industry: connecting the structure being built with the system used to move it. For manufacturers, transporters, and builders, that is a development worth watching closely.

A Fresh Look Under the Home

Uni-Frame’s approach brings the structural floor system and transportation system together. Its concept uses an integrated steel frame with front and rear dollies, creating an alternative to moving a module on a separate conventional carrier. The goal is to make transportation part of the home’s design from the beginning.

The company’s public updates offer a tangible example: a custom 15-by-40-foot steel frame engineered for NorthStar Systembuilt and designed to serve as the complete floor system for a modular home. Uni-Frame describes the approach as connecting factory production, transportation, and final installation through an integrated system.

What appeals to me is the thinking behind it. A factory-built home has to perform as a building, but before anyone moves into it, that building has to move. Bringing those two requirements into the same engineering conversation opens the door to improvements that are easy to overlook when production and transportation are planned separately.

Another possibility that really catches my attention is Uni-Frame’s ability to accommodate up to 2½ feet of additional vertical height in the module. That is as much as 30 inches of added design potential, opening opportunities for higher ceilings and interior spaces that feel more open and spacious. For manufacturers and builders, it introduces another dimension to the conversation about what a factory-built home can offer. I see that as an exciting opportunity to bring transportation planning and home design together, with the available height on a given project depending on its design and shipping requirements.

Giving Factories More Room to Move

Ask a factory manager about shipping, and the conversation can quickly turn to carrier availability, equipment maintenance, storage space, and return timing. Each issue has a practical consequence. Equipment waiting in one location may be needed elsewhere, while completed homes occupy space the next production run will soon need.

Uni-Frame’s opportunity is to reduce dependence on that separate carrier cycle. For factories adopting a compatible system, that could mean greater flexibility in how they organize outgoing homes and transport equipment. It also creates a useful reason to examine the entire delivery process and ask where time, space, and money are being consumed.

I see real promise in that. A factory manager needs confidence that the work coming off the line has a clear path forward. Shipping improvements can protect the value of production improvements already made, giving the business a better chance to turn manufacturing progress into completed deliveries.

Looking Beyond the Factory Gate

The potential benefits also reach the builder. Builders coordinate foundations, site access, installation crews, inspections, and customer expectations around delivery. A more manageable transition from factory to jobsite could make that coordination easier and help everyone work from a more dependable plan.

Uni-Frame also promotes its combined floor and transportation systems as a way to streamline offloading, describing an approach that avoids a crane and cribbing.[2] That is an intriguing part of the concept. Offloading and final placement are distinct steps, and the installation plan still needs to fit the particular home and site. Even so, simplifying a major handling step offers an appealing opportunity for the companies responsible for delivering homes.

From my viewpoint, this is where practical innovation earns its value. Every improvement that makes a handoff easier gives the next person in the process a better starting point. A thoughtfully designed shipping system can influence far more than the trip down the highway.

An Opportunity to Plan Growth Differently

When manufacturers consider expansion, the discussion naturally turns to additional production capacity. More floor space, another shift, or new equipment may all fit into that plan. Shipping capacity deserves a seat at the same table, because increased output creates increased demand for everything that happens afterward.

An alternative transportation approach gives manufacturers another option to evaluate as they plan that growth. The questions become constructive ones: How would this fit our floor designs? How would our yard operate? What equipment would circulate between the plant and the jobsite? How could our builders benefit?

Those are the kinds of conversations I want to hear more often in this industry. They connect an interesting product to everyday decisions and help manufacturers identify where a new approach could add the most value in their own operations.

A Formal Introduction in Lewisburg

Uni-Frame will make its formal presentation at my East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable on October 28, 2026, at the Inn at Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. I am excited to bring this development in home transportation to a room full of people who can put new ideas to work—factory managers, production leaders, engineers, builders, and developers.

CLICK HERE to register for this event

That is exactly the kind of conversation I want this Roundtable to encourage. Attendees will have an opportunity to hear about Uni-Frame’s approach, ask practical questions, and consider how it could fit their operations. For anyone looking for a fresh way to connect factory production with home delivery, this presentation will be a compelling reason to join us in Lewisburg.

Gary’s Observation

I am enthusiastic about Uni-Frame because it is bringing fresh thinking to a part of offsite construction that directly affects the factory, the builder, and ultimately the homebuyer. Getting a home built is an achievement. Giving that home an efficient path from the production line to its destination makes the achievement more valuable.

As Uni-Frame prepares for launch, I see an encouraging opportunity for the industry to take another step forward. Integrating structural design with transportation is a practical idea with the potential to improve how companies plan, move, and deliver their homes. I look forward to seeing manufacturers and builders explore what it can do for them—and to seeing more good homes get moving.

See It. Own It. Fix It.

Fresh Eyes on Modular Construction By Jorie Wisnefski

At BCMC, I noticed a floor mat sticking out into the aisle of a booth.

I stopped, bent down, and fixed it.

It took three seconds, and I didn't think much of it.

Regan Robertson did.

She mentioned that my stopping to fix it had everything to do with being a good leader. I’d never thought of something so simple—or so much a part of the way my brain works—as a useful leadership skill. It’s just me. When I see something that’s off, my first instinct is to do something about it. If I can fix it myself, I do. If I can’t, I figure out who can and ask for their help.

So, with Fresh Eyes, I started digging into what makes a good leader different.

The more I investigated how organizations find or develop good leaders, the more education I found. Companies are building systems around impressive leadership.

McKinsey's latest manufacturing research found that continuous improvement works when insight gets connected to action. In a survey of more than 100 manufacturing COOs, McKinsey found that 74% said their companies had a global production system, but only 29% said it was fully implemented across all sites. To be effective, improvement must be part of the daily rhythm and “owned by people at every level.”

Kind of like the floor mat.

Longer lives could add pressure to an already strained housing market. Meeting that need will require smarter regulations, more housing choices, and a practical expansion of factory-built construction.

I have been thinking about a question that rarely enters our discussions about affordable housing: What happens if Americans begin living two years longer? We talk about interest rates, labor shortages, land prices, and the cost of lumber, but we spend considerably less time considering what longer lives could mean for the homes we need. Those additional years would be something to celebrate. They would also require an affordable, appropriate place to live.

For those of us getting older, this is hardly an abstract discussion. We want independence, familiar surroundings, and the ability to remain connected to our families. Younger generations want homes of their own, often while helping aging parents. If more people need housing for longer, we should respond by creating more choices for everyone. That becomes difficult when adding even a modest home is expensive, unpredictable, and slow.

I keep coming back to a question that more Gen X and Millennial families will have to answer: What happens when Mom or Dad needs to live closer, but moving into the spare bedroom doesn't work for anyone? Before the conversation turns entirely to senior communities and care facilities, I believe another possibility deserves a serious look. There may be room for a parent's next home right beside the family's existing one.

An Accessory Dwelling Unit, or ADU, can be an addition attached to the main house or a separate, standalone home on the same property. It provides independent living space while keeping family nearby, an opportunity recognized by the American Planning Association in its overview of ADUs. For me, that combination is what makes the idea so compelling.

At my age, I can appreciate wanting help close enough to reach without surrendering every small freedom that makes a home your own. Having your own front door, your own coffee pot, and somewhere to sit without feeling like a guest can mean a great deal. An ADU gives families a way to provide support while preserving those everyday choices.

You spend a lot of time making sure your factory produces a quality product. But when a builder, developer, or homebuyer visits your website, do they see the reasons they should work with you? I’ve looked at enough offsite construction websites to know that what a company can deliver and what its website communicates are sometimes miles apart.

That’s why I developed the Offsite Factory Website Effectiveness Index (OFWEI). For only $349, you receive an independent evaluation of how effectively your website serves both business customers (B2B) and consumers (B2C), with separate ratings, an executive summary, and an extensive analysis of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

What Factory Leaders Are Saying

Craig Landri of Signature Building Systems described his evaluation as “thorough, objective, actionable…”

John Colucci of Westchester Modular Homes responded with “Extensive and WOW.”

Those reactions reflect what I want this evaluation to deliver: a useful look at your website that gives your team something concrete to work with.

The purpose is straightforward: help you understand what visitors are learning, what they may be missing, and what could keep them from taking the next step. You receive practical recommendations to share with your management team and the people responsible for your website.

I don’t sell website repairs or redesigns, so my evaluation isn’t a sales pitch for another project.

Gary’s Observation

Your website often gets the first opportunity to explain your business before your salespeople ever hear from a prospect. If it leaves important questions unanswered, you may never know who walked away. For $349, OFWEI gives you an outside perspective on whether your website helps people understand your company—and gives them a reason to contact you.

Contact Modcoach@gmail.com to request your $349 evaluation.

Manufactured Housing Is Ready for a Bigger Role. Are Our Communities Ready to Let It?

I keep coming back to a simple question whenever the conversation turns to affordable housing: How many workable answers are we willing to overlook while waiting for something better? Manufactured housing deserves a serious place in that discussion, particularly when the objective is getting people into new homes they can reasonably afford.

A recent Moneywise article examines why manufactured housing remains underused despite its potential. It describes an industry still dealing with outdated perceptions, financing obstacles, and resistance to allowing its homes into more neighborhoods. To me, that raises a practical question for everyone involved in housing: What good is a lower-cost home if the buyer cannot find a workable path to owning it?

I have no problem with using American-made materials to build American homes. Supporting our manufacturers, keeping people employed, and strengthening domestic production are worthwhile goals. But when pursuing those goals slows the construction of housing people desperately need, I think we have earned the right to ask a few uncomfortable questions.

That is the dilemma surrounding Build America, Buy America, the domestic sourcing law Congress enacted in 2021. Its requirements apply to certain federally funded construction projects, including affordable housing. Developers have reported difficulty finding qualifying products and securing waivers, leading to delays and added costs. Associated Press reporting

For an industry already trying to make difficult projects financially possible, this adds another consideration before construction can move forward. Finding a product that meets the plans, satisfies the building code, and fits the budget may no longer finish the purchasing conversation. Someone also has to establish whether it meets the applicable domestic sourcing requirements.

I keep looking at the housing offered to young adults and wondering how we arrived here. An individual bed or sleeping pod, shared bathrooms and showers, a communal kitchen, and a lounge where everyone works on laptops or watches television. For some Gen Z members trying to establish themselves in California and other expensive cities, that arrangement provides a foothold they can actually afford.

A New Name for Shared Living

Usually called co-living, this housing ranges from a bed in a shared sleeping room to a private bedroom with shared household facilities. Those are very different levels of privacy, even when the advertising uses the same label. In many ways, we are revisiting the boardinghouse idea, with Wi-Fi, shared workspaces, and a different marketing approach.

Fresh Eyes on Modular Construction By Jorie Wisnefski

Last week, Gary Fleisher wrote about humanoid robots entering the modular housing factory, and I thought about my own history with robotics and wanted to learn more.

So, I started investigating with Fresh Eyes.

A factory seems like the perfect application for robots. Unlike a jobsite, a factory is controlled. The work is repetitive. The materials are in one place. The process can be mapped out.

But the more I dug, the more I realized that "controlled" doesn't necessarily mean "predictable."

Take lumber variability as an example.

For years, we have talked about residential and commercial modular construction as though they were two departments within the same industry. Both build inside factories, both transport large components to job sites, and both depend on engineering, code approvals, skilled labor, transportation, cranes, and field completion. From the outside, the similarities appear greater than the differences.

Inside the industry, however, the distance between the two business models is growing.

Commercial modular construction is increasingly becoming an integrated project-delivery system. More advanced companies form relationships with developers, architects, general contractors, institutional owners, lenders, and major suppliers long before the first module enters production. Residential modular factories, meanwhile, often continue operating primarily as product manufacturers serving independent builders, dealers, and individual homebuyers.

That difference affects almost everything: sales, engineering, production scheduling, purchasing, financing, risk, transportation, field coordination, and even how factory capacity is valued.

What appears externally as a small niche within the larger construction industry is becoming a market in which project economics are being rewritten. Factory-controlled production can compress schedules that conventional field construction struggles to match. Supply-chain integration is becoming a competitive differentiator, not merely a purchasing function. Developers and contractors that secure dependable manufacturing relationships early can offer schedule and cost certainty their competitors may not match.

The factories that understand this shift are moving beyond selling modules. They are selling control over time, risk, labor, and project delivery.

I keep coming back to a question that deserves more attention whenever housing affordability comes up: How serious are we about making room for the homes people can afford? We can encourage factory investment, improve production and promote better designs, but eventually every home needs an address. That is where the conversation moves from what the industry can build to what a community will accept.

A recent Governing article by Pew’s Dennis Su and Rachel Siegel examines how states can expand manufactured housing through changes to zoning, financing and other policies. Their argument deserves the attention of everyone in offsite construction: improving the home itself only goes so far when the rules around its placement and purchase remain obstacles. Read the Governing article.

For me, this raises a practical challenge for public officials. Before commissioning another housing study, take a proposed manufactured home through your own approval process. Find out where it can go, what the buyer must do, and how much uncertainty that buyer faces before anyone can schedule delivery.

I have to wonder what we are measuring when we celebrate another affordable housing development. Are we counting completed apartments, or asking whether the people who need them most can actually move in? An Associated Press report published by ABC15 describes more than 4,500 apartments classified as affordable sitting vacant in Austin while people with extremely limited incomes struggle to find shelter. That should make everyone involved in housing pause before announcing the next success story.

The report identifies a mismatch between the incomes many subsidized developments serve and what the poorest renters can pay. It also describes developers whose mortgage and operating costs make deeper rent reductions difficult without additional assistance. Those two realities deserve to be considered together. Blaming a developer does little good if the property cannot cover its expenses, but calling an apartment affordable offers little comfort to someone whose monthly income cannot cover the rent.

For those of us in offsite construction, this raises a question I believe belongs in every discussion about housing innovation: affordable for whom? Before we debate factory capacity, production speed, or the next building system, I want to know the intended resident’s income and the monthly housing payment the project must achieve. That gives the construction team a meaningful target. Otherwise, we risk congratulating ourselves for solving a production problem while leaving the affordability question unanswered.

I would like every affordable housing announcement to explain who can realistically live there, what residents will pay, and what assistance is needed to make those payments possible. Those questions should shape the project from the beginning. A ribbon cutting marks an accomplishment, but I believe the more meaningful test comes afterward, when a resident receives the keys and can afford to keep them.

CLICK HERE to read the entire ABC15 article

Gary’s Observation

I remain convinced that offsite construction has an important role in the housing conversation, but we should be precise about what we promise. A better way to build deserves serious consideration; it also needs a financial plan that connects the finished home to the intended resident. My question for the next affordable housing panel is simple: show me how the person with the smallest paycheck gets through the front door. If we can answer that clearly, we have something worth celebrating.

Bring Your Questions to the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable

Gary Fleisher, the Modcoach, and Jorie Wisnefski invite you to the East Coast Factory Innovation Roundtable on October 28, from 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. at the Inn at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Sponsored by Uni-Frame and 4WardSolutions, this one-day event includes breakfast and lunch.

This will be more than another meeting where speakers simply tell you what they can do for your company. Attendees will have more opportunities than ever to ask questions, challenge ideas, and discuss the real issues facing offsite construction.

Companies may bring up to four people, and we strongly encourage management, engineering, production, and sales professionals to attend. Builders, developers, factory teams, suppliers, and people from across the offsite construction community are invited to join the conversation.

China Isn’t Just Exporting Products Anymore—It’s Exporting Houses

For years, the words “Made in China” brought to mind electronics, appliances, furniture, and countless consumer products shipped worldwide. Today, that same manufacturing reach is moving into housing, as Chinese companies increasingly promote prefabricated and modular homes to international buyers seeking faster construction, lower labor requirements, and more predictable pricing. What was once viewed as a niche export is becoming part of a much larger global housing conversation.

Chinese manufacturers seem to understand something many American offsite companies still struggle to accept: the international market does not always want another factory—it wants a finished building system that can be purchased, shipped, and assembled. By combining standardized designs, industrial-scale production and established export networks, these companies can offer homes, classrooms, offices, worker accommodations and emergency housing to buyers thousands of miles from the factory. A single production line can turn out 50 housing modules a day.

That does not mean every imported modular house will meet the building codes, climate demands, financing requirements, or consumer expectations of every country.

Buyers must still examine structural standards, fire resistance, energy performance, transportation costs, foundations, utility connections, installation responsibilities, and long-term service. An attractive factory price can quickly lose its appeal when the building reaches a port, and everyone begins asking who will obtain approvals, complete the site work, and stand behind the warranty.

Even with those challenges, China’s growing presence in the global prefabricated-housing market should attract the attention of every American modular and offsite manufacturer. Chinese producers are not waiting for the world to discover them. They are displaying their products internationally, refining standardized designs and presenting factory-built housing as an exportable consumer product rather than a regional construction service. Whether they ultimately succeed in every market is less important than the fact that they are willing to compete in them.

Gary’s Observation

The greatest lesson may not be that China can manufacture modular houses more cheaply. It may be that Chinese companies think globally, while much of the American modular industry still thinks within a comfortable delivery radius of its factories.

American manufacturers have tremendous strengths in engineering, code compliance, quality, and regional market knowledge, but those advantages will not protect them indefinitely from international competitors that improve their products with every shipment.

We should not dismiss these homes simply because they arrive in containers or because some early examples may fail to meet our standards. We should study how they are designed, marketed, sold, and delivered, because the company that learns how to turn a building into a repeatable global product may help determine the next chapter of offsite construction.

Gen Z Is Walking Into Our Factories—and Challenging Everything We Learned About Work

For the past two or three decades, Generation X and older Millennials have gradually assumed control of America’s offsite construction companies. We are now the owners, general managers, production managers, department heads, and supervisors responsible for getting homes through the factory and onto the jobsite.

Most of us learned management from people who believed personal problems belonged at home, overtime was part of the job, and complaining was something employees did after work. When production fell behind, everyone stayed late. When a department was short-handed, the dependable employees were expected to carry more of the load. If the plant manager lost his temper, people usually avoided him until he calmed down.

It was not always healthy, but it was familiar.

Now Generation Z is entering our factories, and many of these young workers are rejecting that entire understanding of employment. They are not simply asking for higher wages or more vacation time. They are questioning why the workplace operates the way it does, why management communicates so poorly, and why sacrificing mental health should be considered proof of commitment.

That makes many veteran managers uncomfortable.

We see young employees who need more direction, become overwhelmed more easily, question instructions, resist mandatory overtime, and use words such as “toxic,” “burnout,” “boundaries,” and “mental health” far more often than previous generations. Some managers conclude that Gen Z is lazy, fragile or completely unprepared for the realities of factory work.

Enough evidence supports some of that frustration.

There is also enough evidence to suggest that we may be misunderstanding part of what we are seeing.

The central question is not whether Generation Z must adapt to the offsite construction industry. They absolutely must. A production line cannot stop every time an employee feels uncomfortable, a module cannot leave the factory with defective wiring because someone was having a difficult day, and a customer will not accept a missed delivery date because the production team needed better work-life balance.

However, the industry must decide whether every management practice inherited from previous generations is worth defending.

Starting a new offsite construction factory is exciting—maybe too exciting. There is something powerful about standing in an empty building, looking at a set of plans and imagining production lines, finished modules rolling out the door, builders calling for more homes, and a company that finally helps solve the housing problem everyone keeps talking about.

I understand the attraction. You may have identified a genuine need in your market because local builders cannot obtain dependable factory capacity or housing demand is growing faster than conventional builders can respond. Perhaps you have spent years watching existing factories miss deadlines, deliver homes with too many problems, or treat customers as though they should be grateful for whatever they receive.

You may honestly believe you can do it better, and you might be right. Before ordering the equipment, hiring the first production manager, or signing a lease on a building that looks perfect from the interstate, however, you should take enough time to determine whether the opportunity is as strong as it appears.

I am not suggesting that every new factory is headed for trouble. Offsite construction needs new ideas, stronger leadership, better factories, and people willing to take calculated risks. The industry will not grow if everyone remains on the sidelines waiting for someone else to solve its problems.

The danger is that many prospective owners do not fully understand what they are starting. They are not simply creating construction companies; they are creating manufacturing companies that happen to build homes. That distinction has swallowed more good intentions, investor capital, and promising startups than most people in the industry care to admit.

Fresh Eyes on Modular By: Jorie Wisnefski

I learned about Wright’s Law this week from Regan Robertson, and I immediately saw how it applies to modular construction.

Someone else has already tested the idea inside a modular construction factory.

Wright’s Law describes a simple relationship: as cumulative production increases, the resources required to produce each additional unit tend to decrease. People learn. Processes improve. Technology gets refined. Mistakes get eliminated.

Those of us who are parents call it, Learning by Doing.

A 2023 study, Identification of Learning Effects in Modular Construction Manufacturing, analyzed production data from an actual modular factory. Researchers found that production time generally decreased as cumulative production increased. In the factory they studied, production time dropped from more than 190 days to around 120 days during the mass production of 149 modular units.

That's a great example of learning through repetition.

Doing something repeatedly isn't necessarily the same as learning from it.

We learn when something doesn't work.

A delay. A material shortage. A scheduling problem. A workaround everyone has just accepted. A module sitting in a yard because the next step in the process isn't ready.

Those moments create friction.

And we tend to try to eliminate friction.

But we should also see friction as information.

Innovation lives in friction.

However, recognizing a problem doesn't change a single thing. There has to be awareness that a change is needed, a willingness to change it, knowledge of the right innovation, application of that knowledge, and tenacity for the new approach.

Learning doesn't become innovation until it changes what happens.

That's an interesting lesson for modular construction because friction doesn't happen in just one place.

A purchasing decision can create a production problem. A production decision can create a transportation problem. A transportation delay can affect the jobsite. A foundation issue can waylay a finished module.

Everyone may understand their own piece of the process well, but are we capturing what the friction is teaching us about the whole process?

Modular has an enormous opportunity right there.

If we're going to scale the industry, we shouldn't just focus on building more. We should be getting better at turning experience into knowledge and, therein, knowledge into better processes.

What we’re learning from those problems is part of the thinking behind the conversation Gary Fleisher and I are putting together for our October summit in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. We’re bringing together people who understand different points across the process—from ERP and purchasing through manufacturing, transportation, foundations and the jobsite—to talk honestly about what drives them crazy in their own part of the process, how they’ve worked around it, and where they’re still looking for better answers.

The idea isn’t that no one has the definitive solution. It’s that someone else in the room may have seen the problem from a different angle, tried something that could help, or have an idea worth exploring. We’re hoping to create a space where people can troubleshoot and think through the problems together.

The goal isn't to talk about innovation in the abstract.

It's to look at the friction, understand what the fire is telling us, and see what we can learn from it.

Because if Wright's Law is right, experience should make us better.

And we have to make sure we're really learning from it.

Jorie Wisnefski

** Repetition can make us better, but only if we learn from the problems we encounter. In modular construction, friction between different parts of the process can reveal opportunities to improve. Gary Fleisher and Jorie Wisnefski’s October summit will bring modular construction people together to share those problems, compare what they've tried, and brainstorm better solutions.

Can Bioplastics Move Beyond Packaging and Into Construction? with Video

Plastic has become one of construction’s most useful—and troublesome—materials.

It appears in insulation, vapor barriers, plumbing, flooring, roofing membranes, window components, sealants, siding, packaging, and countless other products. Its durability makes it valuable inside a building, but that same durability becomes a problem when the material is discarded and remains in the environment for decades or centuries.

Bioplastics are often presented as the greener answer. They can be produced partly or entirely from renewable materials, and some are designed to biodegrade or be composted under specific conditions.

That sounds promising. It also requires more explanation than the word “bioplastic” usually receives.

Not every bioplastic is biodegradable. Not every biodegradable plastic is plant-based. Even compostable materials may require an industrial facility and carefully controlled conditions before they break down.

As construction searches for lower-impact materials, bioplastics deserve serious attention—but preferably without pretending they are all the same or ready to replace conventional building plastics everywhere.

Most companies judge their websites by appearance. They ask whether the design looks modern, the photographs are attractive, and the pages display properly on a phone.

Those things matter, but they do not answer the most important question:

Is the website actually doing its job?

That is why I developed the Website Effectiveness Index—or WEI—an extensive, independent website evaluation, report, and numerical rating system created specifically for companies serving the construction and real-estate industries.

WEI is available for:

Offsite factories
Traditional builders and contractors
Building-product and equipment manufacturers
Construction professional services
Construction and real-estate software companies

Each evaluation examines how effectively the website explains the company, builds credibility, reaches its intended audiences, and turns visitors into qualified prospects.

More Than a Quick Website Review

WEI is not a brief checklist or automated website scan. It is an extensive examination of the entire website from the perspective of the people the company wants to reach.

Depending on the business, that could include homebuyers, builders, developers, architects, engineers, contractors, dealers, distributors, investors or potential employees.

The evaluation considers areas such as:

Brand clarity and professionalism
Products and services
Customer and project focus
Industry credibility
Photographs, videos and project portfolios
Technical and educational information
Calls to action
Lead-generation opportunities
Recruiting visibility
B2B and B2C effectiveness

The company receives a detailed written report, strategic observations, and specific opportunities for improvement. The goal is not simply to identify weaknesses. It provides practical, actionable information the company can use.

A Confidential Numerical Rating

Every WEI evaluation also includes a numerical rating showing how effectively the website performs and where it ranks compared with other websites in its industry category.

The rating provides a measurable benchmark—not simply one person’s general opinion. It helps a company understand whether its website is leading the market, performing competitively, or falling behind in important areas.

Individual company reports and ratings are strictly confidential. A company receives its own results and comparative position, but WEI never discloses the names, reports, or ratings of other companies.

Completely Independent

WEI is not affiliated with a website designer, marketing agency, SEO consultant or website-development service.

That independence matters.

An evaluation should not be a sales proposal disguised as an objective review. I don't evaluate a website and then try to sell the company a replacement website or a package of marketing services.

The company can take the findings to its current website creator, internal marketing team, or any professional it chooses. The company makes the final decisions—and any resulting work remains entirely with it.

What Industry Leaders Are Saying

Craig Landri of Signature Building Systems called his evaluation “thorough, objective, and most importantly, actionable.” He added that it introduced ideas with real merit and identified specific opportunities for improvement.

John Colucci of Westchester Modular Homes described his evaluation in just three words:

“Extensive and WOW.”

Those comments capture exactly what WEI is intended to deliver: an honest, comprehensive assessment that goes far beyond whether a website simply looks good.

A company’s website may be the first salesperson, showroom, recruiting office and source of credibility a prospective customer encounters. It works around the clock, but that does not necessarily mean it is working effectively.

WEI provides an independent answer, a confidential industry benchmark and a practical path forward.

Learn more about the Website Effectiveness Index:

Click here: Inquiry

Solving What We Can’t Solve Alone

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

After my weekly call with Gary Fleisher, I couldn’t stop thinking about throughput.

Not production speed or how the factory works, but throughput.

Let me explain the difference as I see it.

We can make a factory faster at cutting, assembling, or finishing modules and still fail to move more product through the system.

Where ERP Fits In

A factory doesn’t operate in isolation. Think about the journey…order → planning → ERP → purchasing → inventory → production → quality control → staging → transportation → foundation at the jobsite.

Every handoff is an opportunity for the system to slow down.

If the ERP doesn’t accurately communicate what needs to be built, the factory starts with bad information. If inventory isn’t synchronized with production, an efficient production line can sit waiting for material. If production gets ahead of staging or transportation, we may have simply moved the bottleneck somewhere else, as I’ve written about before.

Transportation is particularly interesting in modular. The finished product itself creates constraints that don’t exist in conventional manufacturing. A module can be completed, inspected, and ready to go, but if it’s sitting in a yard waiting for a truck, it isn’t fully through the system.