To construct a building, architects first take the client’s need or desire and add their vision and expertise to put a design on paper. Once that design fully reflects what the client wants, a structural engineer steps in to design all structural members to meet the loading requirements of the structure. In the case of a steel structure, between the structural design and the erection of the structural steel building, the project gets passed to the steel fabricator, typically awarded through a bidding process. The fabricator then needs a steel detailer, who is tasked with taking the architect’s and structural designer’s plans and adding the details.

The term “details” in the context of a structural steel building means all steel connections between the structural steel members as well as any other steel parts of the structure that require fabrication. A few examples include steel handrails and stairs, ladders, bollards, fencing or guards, mechanical openings and frames, and similar.

The detailers are the ones responsible for connection design; they are the ones who figure out how to make the building go together, create shop drawings of every single steel member—every beam, column, brace, joist, or girt—and part for the steel fabricator, and produce drawings for the erection contractor. Think of it as the cover on your puzzle box that tells you how to put your building together: a step-by-step instruction guide for your new building. The detailer is also responsible for the creation of all the computer numerical control (CNC) files used by the fabricator to cut and drill various steel parts mechanically, with the aid of some very interesting modern machinery.

While some steel fabricators have their own in-house detailers, as a professional engineering technologist who specializes in steel detailing with experience in structural design and drafting, it is easy to see the value in working for a firm that is positioned in such a way as to provide a “one-stop shop” for diverse structural steel structures. With many decades of combined experience, Fusion Engineering Inc. has tackled a large variety of projects, including everything from simple warehouses and office buildings to schools, large-scale arenas, hospitals, and aircraft hangars, to name a few.

Founded by Denis Mallet, P.Eng., a structural engineer and welding engineer, as well as Geoff Breau, C.Tech., a welding engineering technologist, Fusion’s team is knowledgeable in all the areas of expertise required for structural steel design and detailing. Located in Moncton, New Brunswick, Fusion primarily works on projects in eastern Canada; however, we’ve worked on projects all over the country.

Having structural engineers on staff as a steel detailer is particularly valuable because we can look at a design from both aspects. We understand what the architect is looking for in their finished project, and we know what the workers who have to put the building up in real-world conditions need—or want—to see when the steel shows up on site. In our case, at Fusion Engineering, it’s beneficial to have structural engineers, and even a welding engineer, as part of the company, providing all the expertise needed to bridge that gap between the architect and the finished product; we can fill all those roles.

When a firm such as Fusion acts as structural designer and detailer, we can troubleshoot any problems that come up immediately. Being a small firm, we can come up with a solution right away, change the model, change the drawings—it can happen in a matter of minutes. So for scheduling purposes alone, the engineer and detailer being under one roof, and the detailer being involved directly, is advantageous.

Indeed, the detailer becoming involved early on in the process affords a number of advantages to the end customer. We can provide input on what kinds of connections will work best, both for new builds and retrofits or renovations. We can often build in tolerances or propose ideas for connections the client may not have thought of because we work closely with the person who has to put up the end product.

‘All in the details’ really is the motto for a steel detailer; it may seem obvious, but it’s apt. A proper 3D model of a steel building contains all the details, from the structural steel members to the small steel parts in the connections between them, and even down to each bolt and weld. A relatively simple square building with little architectural detail will still have numerous drawings, while a moderate or large structure will necessitate several hundred drawings.

At the end of the detailing process, reports can be generated citing exact quantities of everything steel in the model—even numbers of bolts, their lengths and sizes. For professional technologists, the Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology they use every day to produce technical drawings and reports is astounding, and truly does put into perspective the kind of talent and skill our predecessors who worked with pen and paper really had. Even with modern BIM software, steel detailing still requires many hundreds and sometimes even thousands of hours for even moderate-sized projects.

While detailing steel structures can be meticulous and time-consuming, it’s one of the most critical parts of the entire design process. Getting it wrong at this stage can cause major delays and costs on site or in the fabrication shop. This isn’t to suggest that steel detailing isn’t rewarding or satisfying; quite the opposite, in fact. There’s nothing quite like seeing a 3D model you’ve created of someone’s design and vision turned into the end product for the client. This isn’t unique to steel detailers, of course; all parties involved in the construction of a structure take immense pride in their work, as they should. But there is something special about looking at the structural members and more specifically, the connections between said members, and knowing you played a part in making it all come together.

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“Modular construction is where traditional construction meets modern manufacturing,” explains Marketing Director John McMullen.

In traditional construction, the frame, walls, floors, and ceilings are installed and erected on the building site. In modular construction, portions of the structure including panels, rooms, and other spaces are built offsite in a factory and then transported to the building site. Once at the building site, these portions are assembled and erected.

There are two main types of modular construction: permanent and re-locatable. The former refers to hotels, apartment buildings, health care facilities, and other structures that are not intended to be moved. Re-locatable modular buildings might be moved to different locales and can include temporary housing, mobile office buildings, and classrooms. In 2022, for the third year in a row, multifamily was the leading market for new permanent modular structures, accounting for approximately a third of factory output.

There are over 250 modular manufacturing firms in North America, serving a growing industry. The market share for permanent modular construction grew from 2.14 percent of new starts in North America in 2015 to 6.03 percent of new starts in 2022. Permanent modular construction revenues reached over $12 billion that year.

This growth is thanks to the many benefits modular construction offers, in the form of safety, speed, and sustainability, states McMullen. For a start, the majority of modular construction takes place in a controlled factory environment, reducing the risk of accidents and incidents.

“There are no partially-built buildings to climb, no makeshift gangways to navigate, and no scaffolding to put together. Tools are safely stored and secured at permanent work benches, and light, temperature, and weather are all taken out of the equation since work is performed indoors. It’s just a safer, more predictable, more comfortable environment for workers all around,” he says.

As for speed, “modular construction allows for site prep and construction to take place simultaneously, saving up to fifty percent of the time needed to open the doors of a finished building,” he continues.

Modular construction also offers benefits for the environment. “Modular construction is inherently more sustainable than traditional construction. Because buildings are created in a factory using repeated elements, there is much less waste generated than there would be for one-off projects built on-site,” McMullen explains. This means less debris to dispose of since construction waste is a major contributor to landfills. Modular homes can be more energy-efficient than their conventional counterparts as well, thanks to tighter building envelopes and superior heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

The MBI was founded in 1983 as the Mobile Modular Office Association. “As the name suggests, the founding companies were mostly dealers of re-locatable office buildings. They came together to strengthen and formalize the industry, which was routinely challenged by intrastate code and inspection issues,” McMullen recalls.

Along the way, the MBI expanded to include companies involved in permanent modular construction and changed its name accordingly. It currently boasts over 500 member companies, for which it provides networking, training, work leads, and advocacy. While it still focuses on building code and inspection issues, the organization now has a hand in developing construction standards.

“We’re creating building standards, building awareness of the benefits of modular construction, and working with state and federal-level agencies to generate more opportunities for the industry,” says McMullen.

In terms of its advocacy work, the institute is firmly opposed to the possible expansion of the Davis-Bacon Act, a piece of federal legislation passed in 1931 to ease economic distress during the Great Depression. The act requires that laborers and mechanics be paid “the local prevailing wages for work done on public works projects… Simply put, a prevailing wage is the basic hourly rate of wages and benefits paid to a number of similarly employed workers in a given area,” explains the MBI.

Over the years, the law was expanded, to include military-related construction projects in 1941, for example. Until recently, however, the Bacon-Davis Act had little impact on the modular industry. As modular construction is done with “modern manufacturing techniques in one or more offsite factories, often in different states, prevailing wages didn’t apply to modular construction projects, public or otherwise,” the MBI points out.

In March 2022, however, the U.S. Department of Labor announced it was re-evaluating the Davis-Bacon Act with a view to extending the legislation to cover modular construction. Such a move would “impose prevailing wages on offsite and modular manufacturers working on federal construction projects,” which would mean “our members would be effectively priced out of competition,” says McMullen.

Beyond regulatory issues, other barriers exist to the greater acceptance of modular construction. Traditional construction companies and contractors often view modular construction with suspicion, as it goes against decades of existing building practices. Some consumers falsely assume modular buildings are of low quality. The reality is very different; since modular construction is handled off-site, modular buildings are actually quite structurally sound. The sections, after all, have to be well made in order to withstand high winds and adverse weather conditions during highway transportation.

“Many people are also still not clear about how modular construction works and how it benefits stakeholders,” McMullen adds. “Code compliance and building inspection issues still pop up, but we’re very responsive to those and are helping state-level officials understand the process, and we’re deeply involved in the creation of national standards for modular building projects.”

In addition to educating politicians, the MBI works hard to enlighten the public on the benefits of modular and reaches out to students as well. As the institute highlights, modular construction is not a new development. Thousands of years ago, Roman armies built pre-fabricated wall sections and then transported them to create instant fortifications.

Historic as modular construction might be, the industry faces modern-day challenges. The COVID pandemic, for example, put the modular sector on notice as it did the entire construction industry. Horrid as the virus was, it gave a boost to modular construction.

“Clinics, temporary hospitals, and other space solutions of all kinds were needed quickly, and the industry really delivered. Our factories were often eligible for waivers since they were producing critically needed infrastructure, so they stayed open,” McMullen remembers.

Not only could modular buildings be created and erected quickly, but they also often arrived ready for instant use and did not take up a huge amount of space. The COVID crisis was just the latest disaster in which modular construction has come to the fore. Modular construction has long been a popular option following other catastrophes, from fires to earthquakes, when temporary medical facilities and housing for displaced residents are required.

MBI keeps tabs on the role of technology within the modular industry. Robotic systems are becoming more common in modular manufacturing, often taking on dull, time-consuming tasks previously done by people. Robots can streamline manufacturing processes, driving down costs even more, which is good news for anyone looking for affordable housing (a critical issue amid soaring real estate prices in parts of Canada and the United States).

“Robotics has already been adopted by several of our members,” states McMullen, and the adoption rates are increasing. “It will certainly be a boon for efficiency and precision, especially for projects that require large amounts of repetition. As robotic manufacturing evolves, likely assisted by the evolution of AI, I think it will only add to the benefits that modular construction already provides.”

Going forward, he offers a positive forecast for both the MBI and the modular construction industry at large. This April, the MBI marked its milestone anniversary in style, with a highly successful World of Modular tradeshow and conference in Las Vegas. Over 1,500 people attended to hear presentations and seminars, mix and mingle, and witness an awards of distinction ceremony.

“The 2023 World of Modular was an amazing success for MBI. Not only was it our best-attended event ever, but we had the most diverse group of attendees we’ve ever had. We had some of the founders of the association returning to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of MBI, and we had high school students from a local trade school learning all about the industry,” McMullen says.

As for the industry itself, “I expect the market share for modular construction will keep rising as it has been, if not more quickly. The need for housing is critical across the country, and we’re seeing more and more projects delivered across North America. It’s a bright outlook, to be sure,” he adds.

The post An Age-Old Construction Method Finds New Popularity<p class="company">Modular Building Institute</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Starting off small, the business continues to build on its staff and its workspace. With a team of around 90 today, the company serves diverse markets including construction companies, major energy corporations, government entities, sports organizations, and others, all while living up to its motto: Think Inside the Box®.

At the time Shang and Dieringer began Falcon Structures, shipping containers were, well… shipping containers. Steel boxes of varying lengths and dimensions—20 feet or 40 feet long, for instance—these containers are purpose-made to be loaded onto ships, trains, and trucks. Containers are made to hold many thousands of pounds of goods, and are an efficient means of transportation worldwide. For decades, however, they would arrive full from overseas, be emptied, and then sit to rust.

In the late 1980s, one innovator patented making modified shipping containers into homes. Dieringer and Shang knew that these sturdy boxes could be used for much more, including workplaces, storage, industrial enclosures, first responder and military applications, and more, which led to the birth of Falcon Structures in 2003. “It’s cool that we’ve been able to make it for 20 years,” says Shang of the business, which will celebrate its 20^th anniversary in November with present and former staff, suppliers, customers, and others who’ve played a role in Falcon’s longevity.

An industry leader, Falcon Structures was the first in-house container structure manufacturer to receive building code acceptance criteria approval (ESR 4163). At the time of acceptance, the International Code Council (ICC) wrote: “The growing market demand for alternative building materials and techniques has led to a pressing need by the construction industry for new sources for materials. The global container homes market alone, as reported by Allied Market Research, is expected to reach over $73 billion by 2025. Off-site and modular construction overall has become an increasingly important new area for the industry.”

Although most of Falcon’s customers are in the United States, the company has delivered structures to Canada, Africa, and other locations worldwide. Compared to traditional construction methods necessitating bricklayers, carpenters, and other trades, along with materials and uncertainty over deliveries and weather, the advantages of shipping containers speak for themselves. Since they are factory-built, many of the variables that come with building on site are removed.

“We are building in a controlled environment, not in the middle of nowhere trying to find a Home Depot to get a missing part,” states Shang. “There’s a lot less waste and a lower carbon footprint. Building these structures is much more sustainable. Since they are shipping containers, they can literally be shipped anywhere in the world. There is an entire transportation system built around them.”

For the past seven years, Shang has served as Chair of the Government Affairs Committee with the Modular Building Institute (MBI), one of the Institute’s most influential committees. Founded in 1983, the MBI is known worldwide as a respected not-for-profit trade association serving the modular construction sector. And as Vice President-elect, Shang is on his way to becoming President in a few years. “It’s a great organization, and I think the world of it. It has been a good place to invest my time,” he tells us.

Falcon’s pre-designed floor plans meet the need for storage space, workspace, and living space, all customizable using Falcon’s modification library. Along with pre-designed shipping container solutions, the company also takes on more custom projects at scale. This includes protective equipment enclosures for generators used to mine Bitcoin, urban farms growing acres of basil within a container, and container-based food and entertainment parks. “That part of the business has really grown quite a bit in the past few years, as we’ve seen more and more applications for these containers come into play,” says Shang.

“One of the things that’s cool about containers versus traditional modular is that stacking them is no sweat. Engineering-wise, that’s what they were built to do.” In fact, they can be stacked nine-high. An empty shipping container weighs about 9,000 pounds and can be loaded with 50,000 pounds inside.

Deemed essential during the COVID crisis, Falcon Structures continued to work steadily. Even still, Shang and his team were faced with challenges, yet made it through without laying off a single staff member. “We didn’t think it was the right thing to do,” explains Shang. “I gathered my leadership team, and said, ‘Guys, this is probably going to be unprecedented, because one: we don’t know how bad it’s going to get, and two: we don’t know how long it’s going to last. So how do we weather this storm?’ That really was the rallying cry of Falcon: how do we make it through as a team, and stick together as a team? Looking back, that was the right decision, but it could have easily destroyed us as well.”

With years of business experience under their collective belt, Shang and Dieringer decided to stock up on as many shipping containers as possible. This forward thinking ensured the company had ample supply. Others weren’t as fortunate during the pandemic, when it was almost impossible to obtain containers because of major supply chain issues worldwide.

“There were folks in our industry who couldn’t get their hands on containers,” says Shang, “and when they could, the price of containers went up two or two and a half times; it was crazy.” Although prices eventually came down and supply increased, he says it felt as though there were so many ships backed up and waiting to unload during COVID that if you wanted to go to Hawaii, all you had to do was drive down to Long Beach, California and walk out into the shipping channel.

With need growing during the pandemic, Falcon Structures expanded, doubling its footprint. In fact, the need for Falcon’s container structures is at an all-time high. Attributing it to pent-up demand, Shang says that based on the broad array served by the company, it was “the biggest recession that never happened.” Segments of Falcon’s 50-acre site in Austin, Texas, are being dedicated to different phases for development. This not only allows the company to have more breathing room, but better control over inventory and staging. “When you’re cramped into a tiny space, you can’t really get productive,” says Shang, “so it really freed up a lot of space. And we’ve seen our financial performance and our throughput improve as well.”

A made-in-America success story, Falcon Structures has doubled its pre-COVID annual revenue from 2018/2019. And while this is important and creates more opportunities for employees, it is no longer the central focus of the business. After plenty of soul searching over the past three years, Shang says his actual goal is to bring Falcon Structures’ products to the world and help it flourish.

“Part of our mission statement is ‘build a better world,’ but the other part is, we want to give employees a place where they can creatively express themselves and do good work,” says Shang. “So those two aspects are what we are really striving for right now, and that’s what we’ll keep striving at for a long time. Revenue was a younger man’s kind of dream.”

Although the shipping container structures created by the company start off similarly, the same cannot be said for Falcon employees. Working on steel containers is unique—trade schools teaching shipping container modification don’t exist, at least not yet.

Some of the company’s 90 staff come from existing construction trades, where they became frustrated by being sent to different job sites. Others were looking to enter the fast-paced world of steel container manufacturing. Shang says his ideal employee is someone who perhaps grew up on a farm, knows how to do many things, and has common sense about the way things work. “When we get our hands on someone like that, we can teach them all the other trade skills they need,” he says. “It’s not like you’re going to go out and find someone who’s built container-type structures before.”

Unlike other companies, Falcon has never set out to be ‘diverse,’ since it has always welcomed women and minorities from day one. “We are very much a meritocracy, and hire the best person for the job,” comments Shang. “Many of our frontline workers are Hispanic and minorities, and women are well represented in the office team; that’s just the way the company evolved. I’ve always believed we hire people who are different because that’s how we build a team—we don’t want everyone to be the same. The culture of Falcon is just naturally diverse,” he says.

“If I look at the future of Falcon, the dominating theme is that as the company grows, its strong culture will stay intact; if anything, it will get deeper. And people who choose to come here and work here have a rewarding career doing great work. They know they are making a difference in the world. And we want to do more of that.”

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Located in Acheson, west of Edmonton, Alberta, in a 240,000-square-foot manufacturing space, Northgate Industries is an award-winning modular manufacturing company providing oil and gas, civil construction, and other sectors with both mobile and permanent modular structures since 1970. In addition to the sale of modular units, Northgate operates a leasing department and provides installation and maintenance services for quick occupancy.

From garage to growth
Watt’s father, Sid Braaksma, who passed away in 2019, emigrated from Holland to Canada in 1952. After earning a Journeyman Machinist Certificate from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and working for a few years, he invested all his assets into a supply business of trailer parts, then began renovating and selling RVs from his garage, with his wife doing the interior decoration—including sewing curtains—recalls Watt, who took over leadership of the family-owned firm in 2021.

In 1973, Northgate began offering field repair service to mobile units used in the petroleum and construction industries. By 1976, the company was manufacturing modular structures, primarily basic industrial trailers and camp facilities, in a 9,000-square-foot facility, and overseeing their transportation over rough terrain to drilling sites in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

In 1998, the company continued to grow when Braaksma purchased an airport hangar in Edmonton that had been built in the 1940s and converted it into an assembly line manufacturing model, quadrupling Northgate’s available manufacturing space. “This was a major stepping stone,” Watt says, “because with modular you need height and space to build the units, and that meant he could begin to compete at a higher level.”

In that decade the company expanded into the U.S. after being awarded a USA military contract for modular structures for a base in Nevada, and opened the Kan-Bud facility to service the petroleum industry in Poland.

“Oil and gas were booming there, and with the wall having come down in Germany, it was the right time to expand in Eastern Europe,” Watt says. That business continues to prosper, with Northgate representatives making regular visits to this day, apart from during the pandemic.

In 1991, Northgate took another step forward, developing turnkey camp solutions and opening its first camp in Calling Lake, Alberta. “My father wanted to branch out into open camps, where workers live closer to the work site,” she explains. “These camps are basically a hotel with a kitchen and dining area and can accommodate from 500 to thousands or more people working on the oil drilling sites in many different areas.”

Accommodations at campsites in Conklin Corner, Alberta and Buckinghorse River in British Columbia, for example, include a mix of executive rooms with individual three-piece bathrooms; suites with large work areas; Jack & Jill rooms with shared washrooms; and standard rooms. Wireless Internet, full housekeeping services, satellite television, and fitness and recreation facilities are included.

These buildings are interconnected by ‘Arctic corridors’ to make moving between them less stressful in the bitterly cold weather. Winter temperatures in northern Alberta frequently dip to minus 30°C (-22°F) or even lower.

Northgate expanded its manufacturing space again in 2010 to its present 240,000-square-foot facility, in order, Watt says, “to meet the increased demand for quality, remote, industrial, and permanent modular buildings.”

Partnering with Indigenous communities
Over its 53-year history, Northgate has developed a high level of expertise in handling building and logistical challenges in remote areas—like the northernmost regions of Alberta, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories—which often require modules to be transported across waterways on barges or, in the winter, over ice roads.

The company’s expertise in creating permanent modular structures that have been proven to withstand such challenging climate makes it ideally suited to constructing homes and other types of buildings, such as daycares, offices, multi-storey offices, classrooms, and health centres, for remote Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories, some with as few as 200 residents.

“We have some agreements in place with First Nations and most of the buildings we constructed in the past year, which incorporate culturally enriched designs, have gone to the Territories,” Watt explains. “We’ve had great cooperation with them, and we hope to continue to grow those relationships.”

Northgate, she says, respects First Nations’ treaty rights, employs Indigenous people both as sub-contractors in the Acheson plant and on site, and orders materials through Indigenous suppliers. “They are very much an important part of our business.”

The many benefits of modular
Watt is a firm believer in the multiple benefits associated with modular construction in a controlled fabrication environment. The method offers considerably reduced costs when compared to traditional, on-site construction, which can be subject to weather-related delays and less-than-optimal working conditions.

Detailed advance planning also results in savings because the costs can be narrowed down with a carefully prepared budget, and with all materials on hand and ready to go, there are no surprises and reduced delays once construction starts.

With expert design and engineering, and carefully planned transportation logistics, construction time is shortened, because the foundation can be prepared at the same time the modules are being fabricated, thereby speeding up the process and saving the client money. Because 80 percent of the construction is completed off-site, there is minimal disruption to an active working site and very little site clean-up is required once the units have been set in place by cranes.

As modular construction companies have told us previously, and Watt agrees, a good working relationship with the General Contractor who will prepare the site and zip up the building once the units are delivered is essential.

“Permanent modular is where we need a strong relationship with GCs, consultants, and time schedules, to make sure installation goes smoothly,” she says, “so they know what they’re looking after and so do we. The closer we work with GCs, the more seamless the result.”

Watt also speaks highly of the benefits of information sharing through the Modular Building Institute, which her father joined when he began performing modular construction. “There are a lot of rules and regulations,” she says, “and they were important to bring the industry to its full potential, because it was—and still is, in some areas—a new market.”

Giving back
Watt’s father began the business with the intention of developing a workplace culture that, as it grew, would support its workers with strict health and safety standards and benefit the communities it serves. One way the company achieves this is by being accountable for its carbon footprint, through a policy that insists on using eco-friendly materials and equipment with reduced environmental impact on fragile ecosystems. Another way is through building relationships with members of Indigenous communities and respecting treaty rights.

Throughout its long tenure, Northgate has prioritized sponsorship for several non-profit organizations, including Edmonton’s Cancer Institute, the Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Centre Society, the Stollery Children’s Hospital, Concordia University, the Dutch Cultural Club, and the Shiloh Youth Ranch, among others.

Of course, the very nature of modular construction lends itself to meeting community needs during times of crisis. During the pandemic, Northgate partnered with a General Contractor to build five multi-family affordable housing structures, three to five floors high, plus one seniors’ complex with 12 bungalows, in the City of Edmonton to assist in housing for the record number of homeless people in urgent need in the area. Although there were challenges—including material shortages after a ship bringing supplies went down near Panama, and the rising materials costs for plywood and OSB that affected the entire industry during those years—“we did get them built in a short time and now the city has turned them over to non-profit organizations who will manage these facilities,” Watt shares. And most recently, in the tragic summer of 2023, as wildfires ravaged the Northwest Territories, Northgate Industries announced that it stands ready to support firefighting efforts by supplying modular solutions for sleepers, command posts, and temporary housing.

In everything it does, Northgate Industries is making the tremendous value of modular construction known, and raising the bar on an industry rich with potential.

The post The Rise of Modular in Canada’s Northwest<p class="company">Northgate Industries</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Known as manufactured, mobile, and prefabricated—or “prefab”—houses, the construction quality of modular homes can vary greatly between providers. Affinity Modular homes stand apart, however, as they are not only designed to be erected on various types of foundations such as stilts, pilings, or crawlspaces, they are also strong and sturdy, meeting and exceeding state and municipal building codes and able to handle Wind Zone regulations up to 180 MPH.

The market for prefabricated houses is quickly expanding for a number of reasons, including their precise and effective construction technologies in a regulated and environmentally protected building center in accordance with the same municipal and state building codes as a home built on-site. Modular homes are also typically far more durable than site-built homes as they are moved from the factory to the home site, and they just might represent some the most popular and sought-after dwellings for future home buyers.

“At Vantem we believe modular is an important part of the future of construction,” says Chris Anderson, CEO, Vantem.

“As everyone knows, the labor market continues to make everything more difficult,” adds Marta Hardy, Sales Manager. “Add to that the nature of how site-built homes rely on factors often out of the contractors’ control and you have a perfect solution with modular construction.”

Not only does factory building bring Affinity the increased productivity that other industries have implemented and benefitted from for more than 100 years, it also helps create a controlled environment that keeps the building process reliable and well-regulated.

“We believe the future includes new ways of factory-building homes,” adds Anderson. “New techniques and new materials will further increase productivity and improve the weather resistance and energy-efficiency of homes being delivered.”

Affinity is the first factory in the U.S. to have access to Vantem’s cutting-edge, systems-built technologies to provide clients with high-quality homes and structures with excellent architectural designs by integrating the most advanced machinery and technology available today. Housed on a private 13 acres, the complex’s production plant spans more than two-and-a-half acres, allowing for construction in controlled environments unhampered by delays caused by bad weather.

“Weather at the job site is not a factor for modular homes,” says Hardy. “There will be no lost time due to rain, wind, et cetera, as modular homes are built inside a building in a controlled environment.”

Sub-contractors not showing up as planned can also play havoc on a contractor’s schedule, she adds. One missed sub-contractor visit creates a domino effect with the rest of the builder’s schedule. “Material can walk off the job site or material can be subject to weather damage; your home can get wet before it’s even finished. Other factors can occur which will often lead a builder to seek how to build a better mouse trap.”

Because of all of these benefits coupled with an ever-increasing housing crisis, there is a growing emphasis on expanding the availability of energy-efficient homes.

“40 percent of global carbon emissions come from the built environment, a majority of which is a result of the energy needed to heat and cool buildings,” says Anderson. “That energy use can be cut by 70 percent or more through building better thermal envelopes that are more airtight and have higher effective insulation.”

This is both an imperative to help stave off climate change and an opportunity as energy reduction also reduces costs for homeowners and provides a product that people really want, he adds. Affinity Modular has the ability to do all that and more as it helps propel the modular industry forward.

“Affinity has always made a great product that is hurricane-resistant and highly customizable,” Anderson says. “Now that the company is part of the Vantem family, the company will be adding new capabilities that will allow Affinity to deliver highly energy-efficient homes, including Net Zero, without a premium cost.”

This will be made possible by implementing Vantem’s proprietary system for the building envelope that decreases energy use. The company’s panel-based system is simpler and more productive, allowing the team to increase production and deliver more high-quality homes to customers while maintaining a very strong and resilient structure.

“The frequency of conversations related to energy is only surpassed by those discussing politics—and are often in the same conversation,” says Hardy. “As home costs rise, homeownership becomes more difficult. The cost of the home, which often boils down to the house payment, is only one factor people face in their search for being able to buy a home.” Utility costs must also be considered, she adds, and better windows, doors, sealants, HVAC, insulation, and more can all contribute to a lower utility bill.

“We’ve always built an energy-efficient home,” Hardy says. “With the introduction of the Vantem construction method, we expect to bring a new element into modular construction not seen by any other companies in the marketplace.”

Vantem being a leader in energy efficiency in addition to the other attributes it offers only makes the homes even more attractive to future homebuyers. “People are smart and they know that over the lifetime of the home, lower energy costs are very important,” says Hardy.

There have been plenty of challenges in the construction industry over the past few years—many brought on by the pandemic—but Affinity has continued to tackle all of them head on. “Although not completely immune to the labor market challenges, we are making headway,” says Hardy. “It takes commitment and we will continue to work to make Affinity Modular a premier employer.”

In the face of industry challenges, the company also embraces its many successes. “Reacting quickly to market demands is another area where the company has exceled,” Hardy says. “Our response to the Hurricane Ian housing need in Southwest Florida was deliberate and timely. We have been through it before and were poised and ready to help in any way necessary. Our availability to help homeowners rebuild from the most recent Hurricane Idalia will be no different,” she predicts.

“Major hurricanes have raked through our market over the years we have been in business. I believe our success has been based on the strength of our home to withstand these storms, which has attracted more buyers.”

Affinity has always built a great home, she adds, starting during a time when the housing market was very difficult. The company learned how to build homes that were primarily erected in coastal regions of the South for customers who were not a typical “payment” type of buyer, but instead had discretionary income such as retirement funds.

Looking ahead with optimism includes plans for growth and continued success in a market the company is quickly making its mark in.

“We expect to significantly expand Affinity in the very near future,” says Anderson. “The most common comment we heard from customers when we purchased the company was that they wished Affinity had more capacity; we listened, and the excellent team at Affinity increased capacity almost 40 percent in a few short months. We will increase capacity several-fold more with the expansion.”

Listening to customers and striving to meet their demands while keeping company goals in mind are just a few of the factors that have led to the firm’s success in the past and will continue to do so in the years to come.

“I’ve worked in housing manufacturing my entire life, and what we do at Affinity Modular is different than the other companies I’ve worked with,” says Hardy. “Henry Ford said, ‘you can have any color car you want, as long as it is black’—that’s the basis for all manufacturing: find something to build and build the same thing over and over. That is not what we do at Affinity Modular.”

Instead, she says, the company works to recognize that people want what they want, and everyone is different. While technological advances have created a different way of shopping today than 30 years ago and customers can get anything they want after a few clicks on a keyboard or mobile device, why would it be any different when buying a home?

“Is it hard? Absolutely! We all laugh around here because we would like nothing more than to be able to build the same thing over and over, but that’s not who we are. So, we had to become good at doing hard!”

That’s just one of the important qualities that set Affinity apart from other companies, and Hardy stresses “other,” not “similar,” as she believes there are no other companies similar to Affinity Modular working today. And she sees even more progress coming up.

“We expect to grow,” she says. “It’s as simple as that. We expect to take what we know and do it better and faster. We will be the company to watch.”

The post Building a Better Home the Modular Way<p class="company">Affinity Modular</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Dvele—”dwell” in Norwegian—was established in 2018 with the conviction that “home” is not only the foundation of a healthy society but that improving houses can also improve children’s futures. Determined to uphold a Scandinavian belief that spending more time in nature is good for our health, Dvele studies the science of homes, healthy living, and energy independence to address pressing issues in the housing sector and the natural environment. The company combines building material science and technology to create reasonably priced, less wasteful, self-sustaining homes.

“We work closely with suppliers and vendors such as The Federal Savings Bank, our preferred lending partner, to help position us in the marketplace to offer the best product possible,” says Kellan Hannah, Director of Growth and Marketing Strategies.

“Energy efficiency and the health of the home—the sustainability—was always important from day one, and it still is today,” says Hannah. “Like with most new products and new companies, the trouble is that a lot of these things don’t usually exist, or if they do, they’re enormously expensive. Very few people manufacture some of the products we wanted five or six years ago.”

It’s been a constant evolution, he says, adding the company is in its fourth version of its homes right now, and will never stop aiming to improve.

“It will always be a global, standardized approach to all of our homes, because we want to raise the bar on what the requirements are for homes and what each home should do,” Hannah says. “We’re always going to bring the same level quality of technology, sustainable materials, and energy efficiency to every home.”

Getting away from lumber in the houses’ framing was Dvele’s first priority. Because it’s predictable—and usually affordable—99 percent of builders use lumber to build on site.

“The first thing we did is move to recycled-gauge steel which in itself gives us a number of structural advantages that help protect the home from climate and environmental emergencies such as hurricanes,” Hannah says.

Dvele homes are Category 5 hurricane-rated, earthquake-rated and approved beyond the typical standard. Most earthquake-proof homes or buildings will not stand forever—they simply won’t fall down within the first hour after the earthquake, allowing residents to go back in and retrieve items. Dvele homes, however, will most likely remain standing due to their steel construction.

Another huge advantage of metal is the absence of pests and mildew, which is greatly beneficial to health and keeping people safe. “A lot of people’s asthma and respiratory issues come from the mold and mildew on the lumber of the home and the pests that eat it and leave behind waste,” Hannah says.

Other innovations include greater energy efficiency, moving into a new phase of manufacturing its own healthy materials and components, and integrating energy independence.

With the world facing multiple crises in housing availability and affordability, energy security, health issues, and a changing weather system, Dvele’s Self-Powered™, Self-Healing™ homes achieve an extremely high level of reduction of chemicals in the atmosphere. This is achieved by way of the custom-designed building envelope that prevents thermal bridging—heating and cooling gain or loss. The Self-Powered™ system provides clean energy production and storage along with continuous air circulation, reducing the draw on heating and cooling, and leads to a Dvele home being 84 percent more energy-efficient than a conventional home.

“It creates a self-sustaining, net-positive home that goes beyond meeting the daily or monthly needs of what most people use their homes for, and in fact can share energy with the grid to create micro-grids,” Hannah explains.

And potential clients are seeking the company out more regularly as they look to not only lower their own living costs, but help the environment as well. “There’s a big increase even in the resale market for green, energy-efficient, sustainable homes,” he says. “Sometimes they’re even selling for 20 percent higher than a normal home, so it’s becoming very favorable to people who want to live in a home for a long time.”

To keep the homes efficient and affordable, Dvele employs the use of cutting-edge automation. Much of what happens in home manufacturing is repetitive and can instead be processed via automation—not with the goal of removing people completely from the manufacturing, but to instead put experts where they will be better used.

To that end, the company now prints its own steel, which is then folded into beams and trusses for floors, walls, and ceilings, and punches out holes for conduit, plumbing, and electricity. The next phase sees all the metal components fitted together with robots on an assembly line and placed on a canvas, along with exterior and interior layers going to the home—essentially standardized, repeatable wall, floor, and ceiling assemblies.

This efficiency has all greatly sped up the entire process. While building a new conventional home can take from 18 months to two years, Dvele can now manufacture the entire home, to 95 percent complete, in just 12 weeks.

“When we put the modules together, it’s just a matter of connecting them,” Hannah says. “Once we’re fully automated and fully set up in our new factory in Montana—which will even include millwork for doors, molding, trim, and cabinets—we’ll be able to produce an entire home in five days.”

This could result in creating 2,000 modules a year conservatively, an amazing feat.

“We say modules because if you get a tiny home or an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) for your backyard, that’s one home, that’s one module,” Hannah says. “But if you build a 3000-square-foot home, that [might take] five or six modules. So on the low end, 2,000 modules a year, and on the high end, it could be upwards of about 6,000.”

The company has also begun selling DTC—Direct to Consumer—and to make a bigger impact and truly make a dent in the housing crisis, it needs to be done at scale. This means working with developers, which does have some drawbacks such as expanding and creating more suburbs and the resulting impacts in those areas.

“We’re already mitigating that by changing concrete foundations to using our light-gauge steel, so we’re significantly offsetting the amount of carbon that would have gone into the intense developing processes, and it’s growth to help more people,” says Hannah.

The Dvele team is experiencing a huge influx of developers approaching them, with about $250 million generated in the sales pipeline since the Montana launch. In response, the company has plans to have about 10 foundries running at full capacity within the next decade.

“When we speak about developers, we’re not just speaking about new, fresh land being developed on the edges of cities; we’re actually creating triplex and multiplex models that will be built within the city where there are old properties and buildings that need to be torn down and rebuilt. We can do that.”

The company is also working closely with an enterprise level of developers, typically hospitals, educational institutions, and other large manufacturers or companies with a large employee base. Instead of having people commute across town, a lot of these campuses have land that’s ready for development.

“We’re creating some really unique opportunities with hospitals and universities and other large tech companies, developing mini-home communities within their campuses to help provide their employees with affordable housing,” says Hannah. By doing this, they’re creating an asset and helping the environment, he adds. It’s a whole package of health and financial security wrapped up into what companies are already doing to attract and remunerate employees.

“It helps average, hard-working Americans,” says Hannah. “A lot of people that make up the population of people working and in homes are typically working in these types of institutions, so instead of making a commute across town or from outside of town, we thought, ‘why not have these little mini communities set up within them?’”

With homes operating at full capacity from the day buyers move in—solar panels producing clean energy for immediate use or recharge when needed, purified airflow and water, and exceeding the Passive House airtight standard—it’s difficult to fathom why this type of building won’t be the way of the future. Not only are these homes more efficient, they’re also designed to be more conducive to spending time together, lingering at home and having everything you need.

“We’re finding more and more people are okay with the size of homes we’re offering,” Hannah says. “It’s very rare that we get someone who wants a 6 to 10,000-square-foot home. I think a lot of people are learning that what was once luxury—space—is now having a climate-resilient home of self-power with barely any maintenance. Those now are seen as the cutting-edge, ‘luxury’ items that Dvele just produces as a standard.”

Just because homes have been always produced one way doesn’t mean they can’t be done differently, he believes. “We have to educate people on how there is another way to manufacture homes.”

In fact, Dvele is actively pursuing raising the standard of all homes with the U.S. government through the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) authority. Just as all cars have seatbelts and safety features, healthy homes can also help protect people living within them. Additionally, raising the standard of all homes being produced will result in efficiencies and innovations that will not only allow more builders to do it, but will drastically lower the cost of all homes.

“Once we’re fully online with our innovations in robotics, we could see 30, 40 and 50 percent cheaper homes. If more people were doing that, more people would be able to take advantage and have these technologies, and we’d actually be able to fix the housing crisis,” Hannah says. “We could spend $50,000 on a home and be very happy.”

With 42 percent of global emissions resulting directly from the home construction industry, Dvele’s processes aim to not only drastically lower the carbon impact on the environment, but to create long-lasting, sustainable dwellings filled with environmentally friendly building materials that are recycled or sustainably sourced, with no VOCs and no off-gassing.

“Part of our main value is that we always want to be creating a healthy home that’s good for people, good for the environment, and something that raises the standard of quality for people.”

The post Healthy Homes for a Healthy Planet<p class="company">Dvele</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

It was also the year that FK Architecture was created.

Today, 60 years later, FK is regarded as one of America’s top architecture firms. Active in multifamily, mixed-use/planning, commercial, renovations, interiors, hospitality, senior living, and apartments/condominiums, FK is seeing growth and potential in many areas, including affordable living, modular construction, and micro homes.

“One of the biggest things that has changed in the industry is modular construction,” says Managing Principal Gary Badge. Seeing the need for housing solutions, Badge got FK involved in this new arena about four years ago. “Lots of developers, contractors, and others in the community are looking at building differently, and it’s really because of all the challenges we are facing within this industry,” says Badge, a 19-year company veteran.

Building a legacy
Lyle Fugleberg first opened his one-person architectural practice in October 1963. Following a successful collaboration with Bob Koch, the size of the practice “doubled” from one to two in 1967. By 1972, Fugleberg Koch Architects, Inc. was officially formed.

Starting with senior homes in the ’70s, the firm entered other markets, including hospitality and multifamily housing. With a staff of 53 today, FK Architecture looks back on a proud history and forward to a bright future. The company was one of the first three firms in Central Florida, and many others that have emerged over the decades were launched by people who started at FK.

On October 27 the firm celebrates its 60^th anniversary with staff, clients, and friends. Bob Koch and Lyle Fugleberg will be in attendance to mark the occasion.

A highly diverse company, FK welcomes staff from many different cultural backgrounds, which is a key factor in its success. A supporter of community initiatives and continuing education, FK is also behind the Robert and Joanne Koch Scholarship for Architecture. Created in honor of Joanne after she passed, the annual scholarship was established to give back to the community. Initially established for students pursuing their bachelor’s degrees in architecture in Florida, the scholarship has since expanded to include more schools. “We are proud to offer that money,” says Badge. “It’s money you can use in a beneficial way to fuel your education.”

Along with the scholarship, the firm is a proud supporter of area charities, including Habitat for Humanity and Nemours Children’s Hospital, to which the company makes an annual donation. The team also donated 200 trees earlier this year, 100 of which will be planted in FK’s home state of Florida, with the other 100 donated to Brazil’s tropical rainforests.

Tackling housing issues
The FK team knows well that there is a shortage of affordable housing solutions across North America. Too few young people entering the skilled trades, supply chain issues, experienced construction workers retiring, and skyrocketing inflation are fast making the dream of home ownership a mirage for many. Great believers in finding solutions, Badge and his team at FK Architecture are looking at alternatives to traditional housing that are within financial reach. “Modular speaks to all of those issues, and we are getting lots of opportunities to present our services in that realm,” says Badge.

“It’s exciting, and something we’re very interested in. I’ve taken on the mission to promote modular because I feel strongly about it. I think it’s the way of the future and a significant alternative to conventional building,” he says.

Seeing the direction the market is heading, the company became involved with the Modular Building Institute (MBI). Founded 40 years ago, the nonprofit MBI is an international trade association serving the rapidly expanding modular construction industry. For FK Architecture, this relationship offers another way of doing business.

“A lot of us here at FK have had experience in modular at some point,” says Badge. “The firm has had projects in the past where we explored modular, and as you can imagine, things were done very differently back then than they are today. So we are proud to say we were involved in modular at its inception, and we understand its foundation and principles.”

Small is beautiful
FK Architecture remains proud of its many affordable housing projects over the decades and believes micro homes will soon play a key role. Looking at prototypes in the single-family and micro housing market, FK’s view on affordability doesn’t necessarily mean “low-income” but rather attainability for buyers. Not everyone can afford $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, and FK Architecture believes there are attainable, economical solutions.

“We have streamlined things from our years of experience and come up with a concept we think will be very beneficial to communities,” says Badge.

Affordable housing is an issue in many municipalities, which local governments are seeking to address. For FK Architecture, the goal is to get underway in the last quarter of 2023 and start building next year. Working with a local manufacturer in Central Florida on a prototype, micro house panels would be delivered to site and tilted up, making them faster to erect while still remaining competitive with conventional build projects.

Starting with a basic chassis, micro houses are highly customizable. Designed to have a small footprint, they can also be made incrementally larger. Working within Department of Transportation parameters, it is possible to deliver such homes to urban, suburban, and rural sites—saving time, money, and carbon emissions.

“If it is panelized, it is a different scenario, because we can stack parts and pieces,” Badge explains. “Think of IKEA, and how parts come in a box; you can have more units delivered at a time, because logistics is always an issue.”

Owing to their smaller footprint—from 450 square feet up to about 600 square feet—micro homes are extremely efficient and sustainably made. Bathroom and kitchen layouts can be standardized, and from a construction standpoint, sub-modules are built off-site to make construction faster and easier on-site. Since they are designed with an upstairs loft, micro homes are ideal for many purposes, including live/work spaces where owners can run a small shop and then sleep upstairs.

When first approached about smaller homes, the FK team was asked how many units would fit on a quarter-acre site. Twelve units were first considered, then seven because of the space needed for parking. Units can take on different configurations to work within confines and meet zoning requirements. “Local authorities seem to have a lot of small parcels, so that was our target when we initially looked at this prototype,” says Badge. “Then we thought it was applicable to a boutique resort/market rate situation—it doesn’t just have to be for the low-income housing market—and partnered with the local jurisdiction. So now we’ve expanded that platform. There was a lot of research and development involved in creating it.”

Valued and much praised by its clients—many of them repeat—and much awarded, too, FK Architecture’s recent accolades include being named one of the Best Places to Work 2023 by the Orlando Business Journal, and making the Fast 50 and Golden 100 lists as one of Central Florida’s largest privately held companies. Last year, FK was named one of the nation’s top architecture firms in the 2022 BD+C Giants 400 Report.

From small renovation jobs to high-rise projects, FK Architecture takes on all projects with the same commitment to quality and client service. Many of its recent projects are mid-rise/garden-style work and conversions, such as transforming a hotel into multifamily units. And while these projects make up a significant amount of FK’s business, the firm is open to larger, more complex resort-style projects.

Multifamily and modular
In the future, Badge would like to see FK Architecture be the go-to firm for multifamily and modular deliverables. “They are one and the same and separate at the same time. We’ve had multifamily as one of our stable project types since the inception of the firm. I want us to be the pioneer, the mainstay, the ultimate experts, and the definitive solution,” he says.

“We have enough expertise and background in it, and we’ve got the resources and networks to affect that. Modular could be in the multifamily world, and it could also be separate because it’s just a construction deliverable.”

He finds that of all areas in the United States, the Southeast is particularly void of modular deliverables in terms of both housing and hospitality. Modules exist for school portables, first response situations, and some medical purposes, but Badge says it’s not yet at a point where you can point to a project and say, “Oh, that’s a modular one” or “I know who did that.”

“If you went out west, you could do that pretty easily,” he says. “We’ve been active in the sector, and I don’t know any other firm that’s as active as FK Architecture; I go to functions and don’t see anybody other than out-of-state firms. I’d like to see us take that lead and bring modular to our clients.”

The post Through 60 Years of Milestones, Pioneering Modular Construction May Be the Biggest Yet<p class="company">FK Architecture</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

As the name suggests, EVstudio is organized into inclusive ‘studios.’ While the company does maintain specialized engineering departments to serve clients who require discipline-specific services, team members are also interspersed in studios based around sectors served by the company. These sectors include education, office, industrial, residential, worship, health care, multi-family, parks and recreation, off-site construction, and retail.

A studio might have “architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, MEP [mechanical, electrical, plumbing] engineers. So these teams work exclusively together on all the projects within that studio,” explains Founder and Principal Dean Dalvit.

The company’s engineering services range from civil, structural, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing to energy modeling, underground stormwater management, and retaining wall design. The company also provides planning services, primarily to developers.

“Planning comes in all flavors. To some people, planning is writing master plans for communities. For other people, planning is taking a site and creating a vision for a large, multi-use mixed development. We’re more in the latter category,” says Dalvit. EVstudio excels at redevelopment projects that entail “taking vacant land or previously developed land,” and coming up with a vision to transform it into something new, he explains.

Most of the company’s work is performed in the western United States. Among its more notable accomplishments is RidgeGate Station, a development in Lone Tree, Colorado. This was “our largest project to date,” and involves “over 500 units of multi-family,” says Dalvit, who adds that, “there is also a mixed-use component.” The project comprised over 715,000 gross square feet of space featuring rental units, commercial lease space, and aboveground parking garages. The project was commissioned by Regency Residential Partners, a repeat client.

EVstudio was also tapped for an apartment development in Durango, Colorado, called the Gauge Apartments. This assignment centered on “90 units of workforce housing in three buildings that are right in town. It turned out to be a fantastic project,” Dalvit shares.

The Yellowtail Residences luxury condo development in Big Sky, Montana was another project close to the company’s heart. This development featured a dozen units and was unique in that much of the housing was manufactured off-site, as was also the case for the Gauge Apartments.

In off-site or modular construction, building segments are manufactured in a factory, transported to the building site, and assembled there. EVstudio is a strong proponent of the modular movement, and Dalvit frequently speaks about this topic at industry events. Off-site/modular construction can be completed faster than traditional construction and produces less waste. It is also safer for workers, as much of the work is done in controlled factory settings, rather than building sites, which can be chaotic. In response, the company has launched a much in-demand off-site construction studio dubbed the EVolution Studio.

“Off-site construction has been around for a long time but it seems to have hit some sort of tipping point in the last five years. We’re seeing a lot more interest and activity and more market share across the built environment being done with larger components of the building manufactured off-site,” says Dalvit. “What we’re most excited about right now is the pioneering work we’re doing in the off-site construction space.”

He predicts that the Big Sky condominium development will “probably be the poster child with how far you can push design in off-site construction. A lot of people think of modular as kind of low-end; this will prove to the world that it’s not limited to commodity-style housing; it can be a solution for high-end luxury housing as well.”

Dalvit founded the firm that would become EVstudio in 2005. Licensed as both an architect and a professional engineer, he knew from the start what he wanted the company to look like, even in the earliest days when he was sole proprietor.

“I am a multi-disciplinary designer,” he explains. “I can’t look at buildings and not see every discipline jump out at me… The whole idea from day one was a multi-disciplinary approach.”

Originally called Eagle View Architecture, the company expanded, quickly taking on a partner and new staff and changing its name to its current moniker. A Texas office, now located in Austin, was opened in 2009. In 2021, the company acquired an Idaho firm called neUdesign Architecture and incorporated it into the fold. At present, EVstudio has over 100 employees across all three locations.

The company’s success has been predicated on several factors. Its studio structure and integrated service offering are key, but the team has also benefited from having a set of core values and a willingness to embrace new technology and concepts.

Back when the firm was just a small group in Denver, staff members sat down to analyze what made the company tick. Out of these sessions came a set of values intended to guide the business going forward. These principles were distilled into five core values, consisting of joy, responsibility, EVolution (or change), excellence, and leadership. More than just aspirational goals, these values set the tempo for a business that prides itself on being flexible, resilient, and loyal to staff.

“During the great recession of 2008 to 2012, we didn’t lay anybody off. We had colleagues whose businesses were completely falling apart. We sustained through that largely because our fundamental operating philosophy is to build a resilient company that provides opportunities to our team, provides value to our clients, and provides sustainable longevity for all of us,” notes Dalvit. “We’ve been a very technology-forward company. Part of that is due to the fact that we’ve always been in multiple workplaces,” he says.

Early communication between offices in different locales was facilitated via Skype, the video-conferencing platform. Since then, the company has embraced Autodesk Revit building information modeling (BIM) software and 3D design programs, as well as virtual and augmented reality. The company often creates videos that provide a digital “flythrough of a fully-rendered project site,” Dalvit shares.

This past year, the company “migrated to a fully cloud-based platform for all our accounting and file management systems,” he says. “We’re interested in the next technology that isn’t here yet and how it will influence our work. We’re looking at things like artificial intelligence as it applies to architecture and engineering. Our underlying philosophy is that we are willing to spend a few thousand dollars on technology if it gives us tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars of value over time.”

EVstudio’s upwards trajectory was challenged, though not halted, by the advent of COVID. “All of our hospitality work post-COVID basically just vaporized. We weren’t doing anything in hospitality, restaurant, or even office in 2020 to 2021. We’re seeing that stuff come back [now],” says Dalvit. “The nice thing about the way the company is built is we’re able to pivot fairly quickly to markets that are strong. That’s part of our resiliency plan for the company and to maintain job security for our staff.”

While hospitality work disappeared, the company’s housing work took off during the COVID years.

In terms of the future, Dalvit is eager to fulfill a long-term growth objective called ‘EVision.’ “Our overall vision or mission is to become a nationally recognized design firm,” he says. “By organizing into studios, that makes it really easy to acquire or adopt new firms or create new work groups in other geographic locations. They just tack on to our studio models, which is organizationally very efficient… The work we’ve done in the last year has largely been creating an infrastructure that enables us to scale into the next generation.”

Apart from the purchase of neUdesign, EVstudio has largely grown organically, “but our new challenge is how to scale through a more systematic and strategic acquisition approach,” Dalvit shares. “Acquisitions sound great on paper, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to truly integrate two teams that have not worked together before. It takes a lot of capital as well.”

Regarding the latter, the company is looking at opportunities to provide the necessary resources to fund its further growth. Regardless of how expansion plays out, Dalvit is tremendously enthusiastic about the future.

“In five years, if everything we have planned is executed as planned, I expect the company to have between 200 and 250 staff, with at least two more office locations regionally, and doing business in the entire western half of the country,” states the EVstudio founder.

The post Integrated Services from an Innovative Firm<p class="company">EVstudio</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

Since its inception, Ontario-based SFA Saniflo Canada has been driven by aspirations to offer easier to install plumbing solutions, particularly where conventional below-ground plumbing is cost- and time-prohibitive.

Whether the project is large or small, with water supply and electricity, any project can come to life. SFA Saniflo Canada’s diverse range of above-ground solutions including macerating and grinding pump systems, drain-water and condensate pumping systems, and lifting stations enable bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, and other plumbing facilities to be located where needed with less effort.

Enabling technology
SFA Saniflo Canada’s operations were established in the 1980s. Backed by the 65 years of leadership of France’s SFA Group, which has 27 subsidiaries in 32 countries on five continents serving 70 countries around the world, its strength lies in its vertical integration, which enables it to maintain unrivalled quality standards across its expansive geographic reach.

“Through our different brands, we always provide more sanitary comfort, wherever water flows,” explains Managing Director Phil Warren.

SFA Saniflo Canada provides sanitary pumps and macerator pump units for domestic and commercial use; showering, hydrotherapy, and spa products; industrial pumps and lifting stations; and water treatment equipment and solutions, all of which are second to none.

The redesigned Sanibest®Pro Grinder Pump is the industry’s first and only one-horsepower grinder pump system. As such, it promises 25 percent more power than the previous generation, which makes it ideal for homes and public spaces alike.

Another great example of the standards that are being set by SFA Saniflo Canada is the Sanicubic 1, a pre-assembled simplex grinder that is designed to handle wastewater and sewage streams from multiple plumbing fixtures in both residential and commercial applications.

Again, powered by a one-horsepower motor, the fast-rotating power of the stainless-steel cutting blade enables it to minimize the possibility of clogs by reducing the solids in the wastewater stream, pumping it either 36 feet vertically or 328 feet horizontally through a 1.5-inch rigid pipe, making it ideal for both above- and below-grade projects.

The company’s offerings also include vitreous china, floor-mounted toilet bowls. The Sanicompact®, a water-saving toilet bowl with built-in macerator, has been designed to save space and resources. Featuring a dual-flush option and a compact design, the toilets use just 1.28 gallons of water per flush and are available in round and elongated models.

“We have managed to reduce the water consumption of our units, with potential annual savings of more than 3,400 gallons of water per family,” says Warren of the potential savings the company’s solutions enable.

SFA Saniflo Canada’s products can be found in residential and commercial kitchens, laundries, and essentially anywhere that functions at exceptionally high temperatures to meet health and sanitation standards. SFA Group even extends its reach to the marine and RV markets, offering a specifically designed electric macerator that replaces manual hand pump toilets.

Likewise, where high-efficiency appliances are producing significant levels of acidic condensate, the company’s condensate pump and neutralizer kits help to prevent corrosion by increasing the pH levels of the water before discharging it into the home’s primary line. The Sanicondens® Best Flat is a recent innovation from that combines both the condensate pump and neutralizer in a single compact system.

“SFA Saniflo Canada is an advocate and early adopter and supporter of condensate neutralization—not only for the impact it has on high-efficiency boilers and water heaters, et cetera, but also its impact on the environment. By providing information and products on how to solve these issues, we are providing innovative technologies ahead of the trend, so people are aware of it before it’s even the standard,” explains Warren.

Unrivalled quality and innovation
As all SFA Saniflo Canada’s products are made and assembled in-house, quality assurance is paramount. While many above-floor plumbing solutions have product warranties of up to one year only, SFA Saniflo Canada’s customers gain the peace of mind that its macerating pump products carry with them a standard four-year warranty.

According to Warren, “Vertical integration enables SFA to exert a high level of quality control over all aspects of its manufacturing processes and production. The objective is to assure customers that SFA Saniflo Canada’s products will reliably perform at a high level for years, even under the most demanding conditions, backed by the maceration field’s best warranties.”

This level of confidence in its quality makes SFA Saniflo Canada unparalleled in the market. Since the 1990s, SFA Group has committed itself to the quality certification process. In fact, it was one of the first industrial companies in France to earn ISO certification, which is indicative of the company’s commitment to continuous improvement.

As Warren notes, “Innovation is often spurred by necessity.” The richness and diversity of SFA Saniflo Canada and SFA’s offerings is part of the company’s DNA and has been since the beginning. When it was founded in postwar France in 1958, its goal was to address the challenges of the day, which included structural devastation and limited resources. At the time, communal living spaces and shared bathrooms were the norm; installing a private bathroom was something most people could only dream of, reserved for those with the money and the means to do so. That is, until SFA Group stepped up with a solution.

SFA Group was established as a water treatment plant equipment designer but quickly pivoted to invent the macerator, which could reduce waste to slurry and pump it to a main drain without the need for costly below-grade plumbing, which was one of the greatest barriers of the time.

This technology was a game changer then and it remains a game changer today as SFA Saniflo Canada and SFA Group continue to offer innovative, above-floor plumbing technologies. Through its products and its approach, the company leaves communities better than when it found them.

Taking it a step further
Beyond product quality, performance, and innovation, SFA Saniflo Canada is dedicated to sustainability and waste reduction in its own operations. This Green Business Bureau (GBB) Platinum status member is dedicated to reducing and managing water consumption, seeking out recyclable materials for packaging, leveraging solar power, and optimizing its shipping and logistics systems.

“Reducing our carbon footprint is a major challenge, but we are committed to achieving this goal. For this reason, we are conducting our first Group-wide greenhouse gas assessment in 2023,” explains Warren of the company’s in-house efforts to improve sustainability.

Philanthropy is also an important aspect of what SFA Saniflo Canada does. From Plumbers Without Borders to tree planting efforts with Wearth to restore habitats and reverse the trend of deforestation, the company is a partner in a number of community initiatives.

“SFA Saniflo Canada is a big believer in giving back to communities worldwide. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it supported many pop-up hospitals with products to help move urgently needed water from point A to B and to provide critically needed drainage,” explains Warren.

SFA Saniflo Canada is also a supporter of the education system via trade-school scholarships and other community initiatives that enrich the lives of its employees and the places they call home. Through its work with the Breakfast Club of Canada (BCC), SFA Saniflo Canada has provided more than 2,000 breakfasts for children and will continue to make an impact in the future.

Whether it is through its outstanding products and above-ground solutions or its philanthropic outreach and commitment to community, SFA Group and SFA Saniflo Canada have carved out a niche in the market that cannot be overlooked.

From technological know-how to innovative, inventive, easy-to-install solutions, SFA Saniflo Canada customers benefit from revolutionary design and what the company describes as the “mastery of pumping solutions,” which brings both its private and professional clients optimal sanitary comfort in their daily lives.

The post Improved Sanitary Comfort, Wherever Water Flows<p class="company">SFA Saniflo Canada</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.

With the launch of his company, Claborn built an experienced executive team, steadily expanded product lines and services, and learned to recognize and seize every opportunity to benefit customers and company. So successfully has Claborn done this that Cornerstone is now the leading provider of detention products in the world. And with its recent acquisition of RW Modular, the company has shown the way for corrections construction.

In just 25 years, Cornerstone has grown through strategic acquisitions of respected businesses specializing in corrections-related products and services, including mattress manufacturers, security specialists, and windows and electronics specialists. Bringing on these types of companies and others has made Cornerstone a single source for anyone requiring corrections products, construction, and other services.

A natural fit for modular
Around the world, detention facilities are aging out. Some are so old that they are beyond repair, and need to be replaced for the benefit of inmates and staff alike. As times change and construction methods evolve, a different type of building is required.

Recognizing an urgent need for better, smarter, and faster methods of building led to Cornerstone’s acquisition in 2022 of RW Modular, LLC. A well-known provider of monolithically-poured concrete modular products for domestic and international markets, RW’s pre-finished, precast cells have been used for correctional, residential, hospitality, and military applications.

Claborn feels that bringing on board RW’s owner and President Steve Weirich together with his entire team has strengthened Cornerstone’s position as a one-stop solutions provider for the corrections industry.

“We welcome Steve and the employees of RW Modular to Cornerstone and are excited for the additional array of knowledge and services they bring to our team,” he says. “Steve’s experience and leadership will allow us to continue to serve the correctional industry and bring quality to all of our projects.”

Before the acquisition of RW, Cornerstone did not have a modular division. When RW came on board, an entirely new business unit was created. As a company with other entities, some items used by the new modular unit in the manufacturing process, outfitting, and finishing come from other businesses under the Cornerstone umbrella.

With the companies having worked together on many projects over the years, the merger of these two brands takes Cornerstone to another level, adding extra value for customers. For Steve Weirich, becoming an integral part of Cornerstone is a perfect fit. Creating RW Modular in 1994, Steve and his team are well-versed in the many advantages of modular construction over traditional building methods, starting with how products are made.

Monolithically-poured concrete modules are strong, long-lasting, fire-resistant, non-combustible, and well-suited for areas prone to challenging weather and even seismic activity. The modules are sustainable since they reduce the consumption of raw materials compared to conventional construction. And with the world’s construction industry facing a shortage of tradespeople, these modular units can be manufactured and set in place quickly.

On-site advantage
Indeed, a key aspect of RW Modular’s business model that appealed to Cornerstone was its ability to set up temporary manufacturing facilities at or near project sites. There is no standard “factory,” or standard product, despite some similarities from one project to the next.

Detention facilities, for example, do not have standard cells. Cranes and molds are created on-site instead of in a fixed factory. The upside, from a costing standpoint, is lower shipping costs. “The savings to set up on or near the project site—especially when there is reasonable size or scale to the project—can be significant,” says Weirich, Executive Vice President of Cornerstone Modular Solutions. “It can be a seven-figure saving in cost.”

For clients and communities alike, there are many benefits to modular. Producing cells on-site instead of in a factory two or three states away means hiring more local people and using area companies. “That’s a major selling point, especially when you’ve got these projects using tax dollars.”

Modern and secure
“There is a real desire to provide more modern, secure, and safer facilities,” says Weirich. “It’s like renovating your house after so many years; there are facilities anywhere from 50 to 100 years old that don’t have the safest, most secure, or most humane conditions. So there’s a fair amount of correctional work going on now to bring things up to more modern standards. And this is being done for the safety and security of the inmates and people working in the facility—not just the correctional officers, but also medical staff and social services workers.”

Another factor in the growth of modular construction includes changes in the approach of correctional facilities themselves. According to recent figures, an estimated 1.9 million men and women are incarcerated in American state prisons, local jails, federal prisons and jails, territorial prisons, immigration detention centers, and other facilities.

Years ago, typical cells were small. Measuring about 80 square feet, they held two inmates. While this type of construction still exists, Weirich is seeing more humane building, with larger cells and health care rooms. The new facilities are still secure, but more are designed with designated areas for proper physical and mental health treatment.

“We’re seeing a lot more diversity in the types of products we make to accommodate what has truly become a recognizable need,” says Weirich. “As a society, this gives us a much better chance at rehabilitation. So that’s been a fundamental improvement in the market.”

Building on trust
He explains that there are three categories of clients for the company. The first includes general contractors who write the contracts, with Cornerstone serving as a primary specialty contractor under a large GC.

Then there are designers—particularly architectural firms—who have a lot of influence on the type of building systems and methodology of construction being utilized. These designers engage with the company in advance to evaluate which products and systems fit their needs.

Third, there is the end user. In corrections, this may mean the Department of Corrections for various states, the federal government, immigration, customs enforcement, or private companies.

“All those entities fit the client base,” says Weirich. “Our client base has a lot of respect and trust that’s been established by Cornerstone over the last 25 years. And when you have clients who have confidence and trust in you, you can say to them, ‘We can provide you A and B on a project, but we can also take care of C, and you can come to us for A, B, and C, and count on us taking the project from initial design all the way through to commissioning and owner occupancy.’ And that is something the market has been very receptive to.”

The addition of a modular unit has also diversified Cornerstone geographically, including select locations outside the United States. Although the company’s focus has been primarily on the corrections industry in America, Weirich says Cornerstone is looking at broadening the market in other countries, with monolithically-cast concrete structures for multifamily and single-family residential housing.

Some things to celebrate
Recently, Cornerstone won a contract for a new detention center in Jackson County, Missouri. With an estimated cost of $300 million, the Jackson County Detention Center will comprise 450,000 square feet, with 1,000 beds. This project will benefit the local community through jobs.

“There was a significant requirement in the bid proposal package to run employee outreach and local business community outreach, and we overwhelmingly satisfied and exceeded the requirements of both of those areas for the project,” says Weirich. “That’s a real advantage for the system that we utilize.”

With Cornerstone’s 25^th anniversary coming up this year, Mitch Claborn remains at the helm of the company and a respected figure in the corrections sector.

“Part of the reason for me to sell my company was the opportunity to partner with Mitch,” says Weirich. “He’s a great leader and businessman, and really has a vision for the company, including vertical integration, which has led to significant investment on the manufacturing side.”

The post Looking To Cornerstone for What’s Best in Corrections<p class="company">Cornerstone Detention Products</p> appeared first on Construction In Focus.