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.

We’re Teaching Machines to Think. Who’s Teaching Our People?

Somewhere right now, a company is explaining how artificial intelligence will transform the offsite construction industry. It will help schedule production, track materials, prepare estimates, answer customer questions, and perhaps eventually explain why the forklift is never where anyone left it.

Meanwhile, a new employee on a factory floor is trying to figure out which drawing to use. The one on the table looks different from the one attached to the wall, and the person who knows the answer is at lunch. He spent yesterday following someone around and was told this morning he should be getting the hang of it.

I’m interested in what AI can do for our industry. There are useful possibilities, and some deserve serious attention. But I keep coming back to a fairly ordinary question: Why do we spend so much time discussing how to make machines smarter and so little time discussing how to help people get better at their jobs?

Before You Build an ADU for Mom and Dad, Have the Conversation Nobody Puts in the Brochure

I’ve been around housing long enough to know that people enjoy talking about what they’re going to build. Show them a floor plan, an attractive kitchen, and a little porch, and the conversation practically starts itself. Before long, someone is choosing cabinets while someone else decides where the flower boxes should go.

But if you ask whether Dad expects to eat dinner at the main house every evening, everyone goes quiet. That conversation rarely makes it into the brochure, though it may matter more to the project's success than the cabinets ever will.

An accessory dwelling unit, usually called an ADU, is a separate living space on the same property as the main home. For families considering one for aging parents, the appeal is easy to understand. Mom and Dad can have their own home, their children can be nearby, and everyone can spend less time worrying about the distance between them.

I can see a lot of good in that arrangement. However, before anyone signs a construction contract, I think the family needs to sit around a table without a salesperson, a floor plan, or a cabinet sample and talk about what they are actually proposing.