It’s no surprise that pre-fab is catching on. Last year, Mortenson Construction finished construction of the $623 million St. Joseph Hospital in Denver. The use of prefab exterior wall panels and 440 ”plug and play” patient bathrooms – prefabricated (down to the shower curtain track), made off-site and inserted fully-made into the building — saved the equivalent of 50 days of construction. A cost-benefit analysis of the prefabrication techniques that were used concluded that for every dollar spent on prefab, “approximately 13 percent of the investment was returned as a quantifiable benefit to the project.”
OLD MADE NEW
The masterminds behind Montgomery Ward’s idea in the early 20th century to sell homes prefabricated in a factory and delivered to your plot of land ready for assembly, would be astounded to see how their idea has evolved. Last year, the developers behind the $57 million renovation of the Broadmoor West hotel in Colorado, used the very same techniques to build and install 175 modular bathrooms in the Broadmoor’s West Building for all the guest suites. Walking into one of the luxury bathrooms (fabricated by Oldcastle Modular’s Eggrock brand) no one would ever think that the space featuring double sinks, soaking tub, shower stall and separate toilet water closet was anything other than custom built – but it was.
SEA CHANGE
With advances in computer-aided design (BIM) that allow developers and architects to build a structure twice — once virtually and once physically — big contractors, with an eye on the bottom line, have embraced the use of prefabricated building components on a scale unimaginable only a few years ago. The use of pre-fabricated bathrooms and kitchens, particularly for apartments, hotels and other large commercial structures, including Public-Private Partnership (P3) projects that tend to be very complex, demanding and often require many years to design and complete, is fast becoming the norm in broad swaths of a design and construction industry that is undergoing a tectonic shift in the way structures are conceived and built.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES
Once derided as low quality, prefabrication has been transformed by the melding of design, construction, fabrication and related disciplines into a key component of some of the biggest commercial building projects in the world.
The structural challenges of high rise construction make prefabrication in this setting more challenging, but the rise of commercial building costs as well as recent labor shortages of skilled trades, has led developers and architects to look for alternative construction methods such as adapting modular building techniques to meet the engineering challenges of multi-storied towers. Pre-fab elements are now being extensively used in complexes worldwide.
Pre-fab construction is particularly well suited to apartments, hotel units, care homes, and student residences due to the compartmentalized nature and repetitive floor plans of these types of structures.
But builders are increasingly pushing past the boundaries of traditional pre-fab designs. Open any architectural publication or even Sunset magazine and you will see that the wide variety of designs and building materials available have made prefabrication suitable for both simple single-family dwellings and eye-catching showpieces ranging from the traditional to the eclectic as well as multimillion-dollar apartments and all manner of eye-catching private and public buildings.
Metal prefab buildings, once used mainly for warehouse or manufacturing purposes, are becoming ever more popular as residential structures. As the price point of traditional construction continues to rise, modular is also being widely used to augment existing buildings.
BUILDING GREEN
Many industry stakeholders confirm a growing market for modular structures that are energy efficient, environmentally sensitive and conform to green building standards. Pre-fab designs that produce as much energy as they use, along with being healthy, efficient and comfortable are being built at price points that are more affordable than a site-built green home.
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