“Basically, if you can build it, you can build it with Crate,” says Amanda Gattenby, VP of Development at Crate Modular — a company that turns shipping containers into habitable buildings.
Crate’s initial projects were to replace
schools’ temporary classrooms. Now, in addition to schools, they also work on
hospitality projects, commercial food court and beer garden projects, as well
as housing. The housing includes ADUs (accessory dwelling units), affordable
housing, and homeless shelters.
The company was founded in 2018 and
acquired a couple of modular companies, one with a factory in Carson,
California, USA. This is where Crate now transforms its shipping containers.
“We use shipping containers that have come
one way, containing dry goods only,” says Gattenby. “Every container has a
serial number, so you can track when and where it was built, where it’s
travelled, all the inspections it’s had. Often, the containers we receive are
only 90 days old. We also do our own testing, to make sure the container is up
to our standards.”
Because the US imports way more than it
exports, Gattenby says there are 4 million empty containers available in the
country. This means Crate can be very picky about which containers to use in
their projects.
The sustainability aspect is important to
Crate.
“Containers are a recycled resource, and
they’re very durable. Shipping containers exceed the California building code
for structural and seismic by several times. The resulting buildings require
little up-keep. And they have a great thermal envelope, which makes them energy
efficient,” says Gattenby. “The steel construction and the well-insulated
envelope also mean that the buildings have very good acoustic properties. There’s
no floor-to-floor or side-to-side sound transmission between units.”
To turn become habitable buildings, the
containers go through an assembly line in Crate’s 110,000 sq ft factory.
“We start out with the demolition, the
cutting and grinding, then the roof structures, then we frame them out, we put
windows in. We put a structural steel c-channel around the perimeter of the
box. This becomes an interstitial space where we run our MEP [mechanical,
engineering, plumbing], and it also adds rigidity. So we’re able to cut out
both sides of a 40 ft container so it’s a completely clear 40 ft span. The
containers come out complete with painted drywall finishing, electrical and plumbing
finish and trim in place, cabinets, countertops, tubs, bathroom accessories.”
Once all the materials have been procured
and the line starts, Gattenby says it takes between 10 and 14 days for each
container to be completed.
“We’re fast. For example, for a 150-bed
homeless shelter we built, we drew the plans in 60 days, we got the state-wide
approval in California in 48 hours. We fabricated it in 4 months, and it was
set on the foundation in 4 days.”
The company also increases the speed of
construction by re-using designs.
“We have a catalogue of buildings that
we’ve built before. So if any of those meet a client’s needs, they can save
time and money because we’ve built it before. We can replicate and leverage
that knowledge,” Gattenby says. “We’re really trying to shift the paradigm to
buildings as products.”
C-Cube
Founded last year, C-Cube appeals to a niche market — that for ‘clean rooms’ in the life sciences industries.
Biotech or pharmaceutical companies have very
specific requirements for their working environments. When growing cell
cultures, for example, they don’t want specks of dust or pollen from the air
falling into their petri dishes. In a clean room, fresh air is filtered as it
enters the room, and air is constantly removed as fresh air enters. And this
needs to happen with minimal air turbulence. The room must also be airtight, so
unfiltered air doesn’t seep in.
There are international standards for clean rooms. For example, Christophe Mermaz, Co-Founder and Managing Director at C-Cube, explains, “For an ISO 7 room, all the air in the room must be changed every two minutes.”
The air entering the clean room passes through HEPA
filters that capture 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns. (An average
human hair has a diameter of between 50 and
70 microns, so we’re talking really small here.)
A clean room also needs to be fully flush. (I.e.
it has to have completely smooth corners, such as between the floor and the
walls, with no nooks and crannies.) Each module also has to be completely
waterproof and insulated.
Mermaz believes that modular construction is
the ideal method for creating clean rooms. The factory environment enables high
precision manufacturing, which results in tight building envelopes.
Each C-Cube module is also
‘smart’. Temperature, air pressure, humidity, air quality and so on are all
measured constantly and can be monitored remotely. The
building manager can be alerted if, for example, there’s a temperature
fluctuation outside the acceptable range. They can then make adjustments
remotely to fix the problem.
In addition, a company that’s using a smart clean
room to produce vaccines for a client, for example, can provide data about the
environment during production of that client’s batch of vaccines.
C-Cube’s competitors make ‘pods’ that must
be put under the roof of an existing building, which makes them hard to change.
But C-Cube’s modules are complete buildings, which have been designed with
flexibility in mind.
“Immediately under the removable roof,
each module contains its own air ducting, utilities, electricity, and guttering,”
Mermaz says. “To
simplify the construction process, and keep costs down, we’ll manufacture only
three different sized modules. But they can be configured in multiple ways,
including on top of one another.”
C-Cube’s modules are also relocatable,
which provides lots of flexibility — to change the building’s configuration, to
add or remove modules, or to move the entire building somewhere else.
Mermaz says that the idea of
modular clean rooms is appealing to start-ups. They might need only a small
space to begin with, but can increase space later with additional modules. “They
don’t need to stop production while we come and add space,” he says.
“It’s also helpful for larger
companies that operate in different countries around the world. Modules can be
set up in one country and, if conditions change, they can be moved elsewhere.”
C-Cube’s first prototype is almost
finished now, and the company has started to provide quotes to potential
customers. “Our prototype will show people the quality they can expect from our
Asian manufacturing team.”
Splash Modular
Joel Hutchines, who is now the CEO of Splash Modular, started his working life as a carpenter. Eventually, he became a general contractor, then an architect. During his architecture studies, he discovered computational design and digital fabrication. He learned more about them while working for Shigeru Ban in Tokyo and with his own design-build firm, Studio Workshop.
Splash Modular was founded last year. Hutchines
says that although they make bathroom pods from kits of parts, it is
fundamentally a software company.
At the moment, when an architect designs a
bathroom, for example, he or she typically sends drawings to the project’s consultants.
The consultants interpret the design, and request changes based on supply chain
and cost limitations that they’re aware of. The architect then adjusts the
design to take those limitations into account. This back and forth process may
be repeated many times.
In contrast, when using Splash Modular’s software, a designer works within such limitations from the beginning. This is because customizable parameters are built into the software’s algorithms up front, before the designer starts work.
The parameters are based on the materials
used, transportation and other logistics, building site limitations, and the capabilities
of automated machinery and robotics. The level of detail built into the
software makes it possible to estimate to a high degree of accuracy how much
each bathroom will cost.
This ‘File to Factory’ software sends data
directly to the manufacturers of the parts of the kits that make up a bathroom
— including scheduling information and the code to run their machines. This
eliminates the need for shop drawings or extra software to relay information.
The software also sends data to the
companies that supply materials and products to the parts manufacturers. Everything
is carefully coordinated, and the parts of each kit are transported from the
various manufacturing facilities to a Splash Modular licensee’s factory where
they are finally assembled into bathroom pods.
Splash licenses the production line and
the process of creating the parts of the bathroom kit to others.
“The highly efficient assembly line is
owned and operated by our licensees,” says Hutchines. “But we own the design, our
software runs the design and scheduling, and we charge a flat rate on every
bathroom that runs through that assembly line.”
When a factory buys a license, they also
get exclusive rights to Splash Modular’s own projects in that region. “Our
licensees work on their own projects, but under the exclusive region deal they
also produce work facilitated by us,” Hutchines says. “Let’s say Splash has a
relationship with a large hotel chain to build all their bathrooms. We bring
that work to our licensees’ factories, providing them with a revenue stream in
addition to their own projects.”
So, although Splash sells complete bathroom
pods, they don’t own any factories. Their licensee partners manufacture the
pods from parts that are manufactured elsewhere.
Hutchines says that the software allows
Splash Modular to become “virtually vertically integrated”. He claims that the
streamlined manufacturing results in a far better process, which everyone can
all benefit from.
“Amazon showed the world how e-commerce
can work by starting with selling books,” Hutchines says. “The bathroom pods
are the way that Splash is showing the potential of our software”.
Impresa Modular Franchising
Although Impresa Modular Franchising was launched only a few months ago, Impresa Modular has been around since 2008. (It used to be called Express Modular.)
Impresa Modular allows homeowners to
select and customize a plan for their home — or even design their own modular
home from scratch. (I love looking at floorplans, so I spent way too much time
browsing on this site!) In essence, the company sells homes over the internet.
Impresa Modular doesn’t own factories, or physical sales centers, and they
don’t have model show homes they can show homeowners.
Instead, what Impresa Modular has done
over the years is to build a network of modular builders they partner with
across the US. This enables Impresa Modular to deliver custom modular homes
anywhere in the country without having to transport the modules too far from
the factory where they were manufactured.
“We became the Amazon of modular
construction,” says Ken Semler, President and CEO of Impresa Modular. “We owned
the internet. But we weren’t making all the sales we could because we didn’t
have the local physical presence. Homeowners want to go out and see someone in
person at the sales center.”
Impresa Modular Franchising is the next
step. Semler says, “We already have the brand. And franchising gives us our
local footprint, making use of the relationships we already have in place.”
Semler says the response has been
positive.
“The factories we’ve approached to become
franchisees were our partners already. So they know they don’t have problems
with our houses or our customers. They know that the builders who work with us
are well-trained, understand the scope of work, and have appropriate
expectations. A factory that becomes a franchisee doesn’t have to do anything
other than what it wants to do: manufacture modules.”
Impresa Modular Franchising provides
training to franchisees who need it. An unexpected side effect of providing
this training is that Semler has been approached by developers who don’t want
to become franchisees — but they want help adopting modular construction.
“They don’t want to become a franchise
because they don’t want to sell homes to everyone. They just want to sell homes
on the lots they own. So, Impresa sells the homes to them and also provides the
training the developers need.”
A change from the original plan is that
franchisees are not required to be fully modular.
“Some builders want to add modular
construction alongside their on-site building business, instead of jumping into
modular with both feet all at once.”
About the company’s long-term goal, Semler
says, “We’d like to grow our franchise network to have factories and builders
in every region in the US.”
Moducore
For years, Jordie Puchinger and Bill Oliver
were senior operators of a modular manufacturing facility, working with MPE
Engineering as their prime engineering partners. They looked for software to
help operate the facility and increase efficiency, but they couldn’t find what
they needed. So, they created their own — spending 5 to 6 years developing it
and testing it on the shop floor.
Eventually, Puchinger and Oliver teamed up
with an engineer at MPE Engineering, Dan Wood, and co-founded Moducore last year, under MPE Engineering.
With decades of combined experience in the
modular construction industry, Puchinger says that the Moducore founders’
real-world experience gives them a deep understanding of what the industry
needs software to be able to do. And software for typical manufacturing
companies simply doesn’t work for modular manufacturing.
“A typical factory might make millions of
completely identical widgets. Modular construction is different,” Puchinger
explains. “Suppose, for one single structure, a factory is manufacturing ten units
— which may differ from one another. With ordinary manufacturing software, you’d
need to manage ten different Bills of Material. But in Moducore, you need just
one because it covers the entire project horizontally. Each module is
automatically managed ‘behind the scenes’ in Moducore, so you don’t need a
separate Bill of Material for each unit.”
The software is described as an end-to-end
platform for modular manufacturers. It covers sales, through design and estimating,
engineering, manufacturing, procurement, shipping and receiving, all the way to
the final construction site.
Puchinger says that although some great
software is available, none of it connects the manufacturing facility and the
site in one package. This is a problem because in modular construction,
manufacturing and site work happen at the same time.
“If you’ve got software managing your
plant, and another piece of software managing your site, they probably won’t be
able to talk to one another. And if you need to use two systems, someone has to
manage that data and build reports —there’s no real time reporting.”
Ease of communication is a key element of
the Moducore software. It includes activity streams, communication tools like
click-to-call, in-platform customer service chat, text message notifications,
email and system alerts.
“These are small tools that make a world of
difference in the long term. Those seconds and minutes add up. For example,
it’s very expensive for the manufacturing plant when a line is down, and rapid
communication can make a difference.”
Moducore also provides consulting and
engineering services through their partnership with MPE Engineering — which has
decades of experience in modular engineering and design. “We can design and
engineer a manufacturing facility, including all the robotics equipment, to
help new modular factories get started up.”
Years ago, the Boxabl CEO had built a large modular house in Connecticut. Transporting the modules from the factory to the site required all the available over-wide permits in the state for just this one project. This was the initial spark for the idea of modular buildings that are easier to transport.
“If you can’t ship it, it doesn’t make
sense to build it in a factory. You’re just going to lose all the efficiencies
you gained,” says Galiano Tiramani, Business Development Manager at Boxabl.
Tiramani explains that transporting
oversize loads by road is both logistically challenging and expensive.
“With an oversize load, in addition to the
truck driver, you need a follow car, and you sometimes need a police escort,
you might also have restricted routes and travel times.”
Boxabl’s solution is to manufacture modules
that fold up to 8 ½ ft wide so they’re highway legal without an oversize permit.
(The modules also fit on other forms of transportation such as trains and
container ships.)
The company was founded and started doing research
and development in 2017.
“We figured out how to get everything
finished inside, and to still be able to fold it down to 8 ½ ft. Within that 8
½ ft, we have 6 ft of empty space where we can house the kitchen, bathroom,
staircase, etc.”
In their quest for efficiency, Boxabl uses
simplified wall assemblies that are fast to manufacture. Giramani says they
also have superior ratings for fire, structural, seismic, and energy efficiency.
“The wall panels are made from EPS foam
laminated to steel, and magnesium oxide board. The raw materials come in and
get processed by off-the-shelf CNC cutters. Compared to typical wall
assemblies, the components are assembled really quickly, they’re bigger, use
less total material, and less labor is required to assemble them.”
At the moment, Boxabl uses a lot of manual
labor in their factory. But they’re aiming for much more automation in the
future, and these simplified assemblies are a good fit for that goal. They’re
also planning to have only a few different models for each room (a handful of
different kitchens, bathrooms etc.). But it will be possible to put the modules
together on the site in different ways. So, there’ll be standardized
manufacturing in the factory, and custom construction in the field.
Currently, Boxabl is targeting the ADU
market with their Casita module.
“The Casita arrives onsite and unpacks [ZR1] in about an hour on a foundation that’s already been
prepared. The kitchen, bathroom, refrigerator, washer, dryer, it’s all in
there. You unfold it, and it’s good to go.”
Tiramani says that they’ve have intense
interest in the Casita and they’re currently raising investment funds to move
to a bigger factory. “People are putting down their $100 deposit to get on the
waitlist to buy a Casita,” Tiramani says. “We think we’re going to have
thousands of orders before we get the bigger factory where we’ll be able to
fulfil them.”
Efficiency is a driving force at Boxabl.
“We think buildings should be built the way
everything else is built, like your car and your iPhone. We want to gain those
efficiencies and bring costs down so that it has a real impact on housing
affordability,” Tiramani says. “We want to bring pre-industrial construction
into the post-industrial world.”
If you’re interested in having her write for your modular construction business, you can email her at zena@zenafreelancewriter.com.
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