Bensonwood Homes Owner Slams Modular Housing Indusry

Some people just have to ‘slam’ their competitors and opponents
in order to make their point of view seem like the best. It happens in
politics, religion, late night talk shows and little boys on school playgrounds.

This time the person doing the ‘slamming’ is Tedd Benson,
owner of Bensonwood Homes, a self proclaimed leader in component housing.
He doesn’t want to be lumped in with all the others children in the modular,
prefab and component housing market so he is slamming them. It’s as if Michelle Kaufmann has an evil cousin we’ve never heard of before.

I think he builds a fine, energy efficient and good looking home
but does that give him the right to tell the readers of his blog that modular
home construction is “bringing the very worst building standards to
consumers.”

Here is the section of his latest ramblings that targets all
his fellow “off-site” housing buddies.

Words matter and the words that are used to identify the
current off-site construction methods are insufficient by definition, and
tainted by association. Here at Bensonwood and Unity Homes, we have long been
uncomfortable with the terms used for off-site building fabrication methods.
It’s usually either “modular” or “prefab,” and both have muddy meaning because
of the diversity in practice, and both come with some negative baggage. Modular
refers to the built volumes that are trucked on the highway like carcasses of
beached whales, and prefab mostly connotes a modernist style, with an
indeterminate percentage of value-added in off-site value actually accomplished
in the prefabrication process.

The segment of the construction industry referenced by those
two categories is whollyfailing in three significant ways. 

1. They represent only 2-5% of the new home construction, and
therefore aren’t making much of an impact. The low percentage of actual built
product is caused by #2, and is just as well because the damage inflicted in
#3.

2.  Modular and prefab aren’t bringing the sort of fundamental
quality and cost improvement to the industry that’s needed. Neither segment is
doing enough to use the off-site manufacturing control advantage to bring real
and much-needed improvements to the quality of homes. 

Modular is a building method in which whole houses or
fractional 3D portions of them are constructed indoors instead of outdoors. The
factories are predictably huge to house multiple volumes in production, and the
process in the factories typically mirrors the on-site process, albeit under
roof. Modular building has the benefit of controlling work conditions and the
interaction of trade functions, but it also imposes inherent compromise by
forcing architectural outcomes to the constraints of highway shipping rules.
Inevitably, the widest, longest and tallest commonly trucked loads are modular
buildings. They are the bane of the highway system; the ones with the escort
cars, flashing lights, flapping building wrap, and often spilling over into
both the adjacent lane and the road shoulder.

 Of course, there are some good things happening in the
modular building segment, especially in commercial construction, where modules
are typically only one aspect of a more extensive off-site strategy, not the
entire solution. In addition, there are a few modular homebuilders working to
raise the standards for modular building, and I certainly applaud their efforts
and hope for their success. It’s sorely needed.

 But the bottom line is that modular homebuilding in this
country is the industry sector bringing the very worst building
standards to consumers. This unfortunate fact infects the whole industry with
the consumer preconception of an affordable, but low tier product. It’s the
Twinkie of housing: it doesn’t cost much, but it’s not good for you either.

3.  Finally, the industry segment associated with
modular and prefab construction is wholly failing to create good jobs. This is
the worst failure in my mind, and gives further insight about #1 and #2. The
employee turnover and absentee rates for those sectors of the construction
industry is not only worse than the rest of the construction industry (which is
in itself very bad compared to other industries), but is (or was, in 2005)
worse than ANY other industry at 61%. This is inexcusable. Nothing good can
come out of a building system that depends on low pay, low skills, and bad
working conditions to achieve financial success.

CLICK HERE to read his entire blog posting.