Building Affordable Modular Apartments

I have seen several low-rise townhouse developments built near us in the last few years, and I am both amazed and appalled at how primitive the construction methods remain. Teams of workers nail and bolt the frames together by hand, add plywood framing and installation, and then other workers add interior drywall, wiring, plumbing and exterior finishes and roofing. It's terribly labour intensive and hence expensive.

A company in Chicago is trying to change that by building modular apartment units in a factory and shipping the units to the where they just have to be bolted together.

Skender’s 100,000-square-foot factory on the Southwest Side, which began production in late May, contains four bays with hulking gantry cranes overhead, as well as welding jig tables that are dozens of feet long. But don’t look to be wowed by sci-fi feats of robotic automation—there’s not a robot in sight (yet). Instead, the technology is aimed at seamless coordination.

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 At Skender, this repetition begins once an order is placed, and staff begin identifying the relevant components and writing assembly-line schedules. When materials arrive, numbered and bundled with an instruction set, they’re laid out on massive welding frames that allow line workers to affix clamps that secure steel elements. It’s not super-high-tech, but it means that welds can be accurate to 1/1000 of an inch. (“If I’m out on the dirt at a site, I’m talking about 1/16 of an inch at best,” said Scopano.)

To me, this kind of production makes a lot of sense, both in terms of expense (which will probably decrease over time), and the ability to control quality. (I am boggled a how shoddy some of the local building construction appears to be). 

I have seen some limited steps in this direction. On Kingston Road a large condo or apartment building is going up. They are using prefabricated metal (I assume aluminum) wall frames instead of wood and the building is going up much faster than with traditional wood framing. A couple of years ago I saw a TV news segment on a Toronto-area company which is building prefabricated homes in a factory and assembling the components on site. I expect to see more of this kind of construction n the future.