Every day we hear the term offsite construction bantered about, and, of course, our magazine is called Offsite Builder. But have you ever tried to define what that term means?
Like many things in life, its meaning changes depending on whom you are talking with or what you are talking about. Before launching this magazine over a year ago, we discussed what offsite meant to us, and to our readers. What should have been a five-minute discussion has yet to be resolved.
The constant in that discussion is that we are always considering offsite’s place in the total scheme of construction. Obviously, every construction project in the world is completed on-site, but every project also uses components built in a factory away from the building site.
For instance, windows and doors are components — whether they are shipped to another factory to be installed in a module or wall panel, or shipped directly to a jobsite. They are components because they have been built in a factory on an assembly line to save money and to ensure quality and standardization. Then they are assembled into a finished building.
Wall panels, floor panels, roof panels and trusses are components as well. So are the modules manufactured by modular home factories, the difference being that they can be shipped nearly ready for occupancy.
You can even define prefabricated tiny houses, auxiliary dwelling units (ADUs), and homeless shelters as components because they get shipped to the jobsite to be placed and finished there.
We also have assemblies with a scope that falls between completed modules and individual components like windows. We’re seeing completed bathrooms, called pods, that are built in a factory and shipped to a jobsite, and soon we will start seeing kitchen pods as well. In fact, I predict that skilled labor shortages will lead modular companies to start installing kitchen and bath pods in their modules.
The bottom line is that while offsite construction has a lot of meanings depending on whom you talk with, at the end of the day, it’s about deciding what parts of a project are best built in a factory.
