As the construction industry continues to head toward industrialization, modular construction (or multi-trade prefabrication) is on the rise. How will your company keep up? Given the current workforce challenges that require different skills and methods, especially as skilled tradesmen retire, this is the perfect time to amplify your company’s prefabrication efforts no matter how much you are (or are not) doing today.

As the construction industry continues to head toward industrialization, modular construction (or multi-trade prefabrication) is on the rise. How will your company keep up? Given the current workforce challenges that require different skills and methods, especially as skilled tradesmen retire, this is the perfect time to amplify your company’s prefabrication efforts no matter how much you are (or are not) doing today.

This article will present a new mindset about prefabrication, including how to move work from the jobsite to a simple production-oriented setting without significantly investing in a prefabrication shop. It will also introduce training and processes that are needed to support this new mindset and prepare you for what tomorrow’s workforce will require in terms of new roles, skills, and backgrounds.

Prefabrication: A New Mindset

When most contractors consider prefabrication, they think of building assemblies or subassemblies before they need to be installed on the jobsite. This is a good start to help save time and money.

However, to proactively go from traditional prefabrication to modularized construction, the organization’s mindset from the top down must change, including the business model, the make-up of the workforce, and how they are trained.

Rather than asking what can be prefabricated, the project team must ask what can’t be prefabricated, and then look at every opportunity to move work away from the final point of installation. Easier said than done, this requires discipline and focused planning across the entire company.

Since aggressive offshore competition has already made this transition to build faster, better, and cheaper, time is of the essence for this shift to happen in the U.S. In addition, the workforce shortage will require a new way of working similar to the industrialization of the agriculture and manufacturing industries. Furthermore, industry veterans are retiring faster than they are being replaced, creating a knowledge and experience gap.