The Future Is Modular: HUD and MOD X's Offsite Construction Workshop and Tours
By IPAD Program Analysts Meron Habte and Sarah Lee
Inside the offsite construction facility for Blueprint Building Innovation in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo credit: Sarah Lee
In early February, the National Institute of Building Sciences and MOD X organized a 2-day tour of offsite housing construction facilities and projects in Boston, Maryland, and Virginia. The tour welcomed visitors from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, and Japan as well as federal agency partners. The tour concluded with a workshop at the HUD Headquarters in Washington, DC.
Meron Habte and Sarah Lee from HUD's International and Philanthropic Affairs Division joined the delegation on the tour's second day, which included two field visits to Blueprint Building Innovation in Baltimore, Maryland, and Van Metre Homes in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.
Blueprint Building Innovation, an offsite builder specializing in multifamily homes, hosted the first field visit. Blueprint first develops each of its projects virtually and then fabricates the most labor-intensive portions of the projects in a climate-controlled production facility. Blueprint shared that its use of engineered lumber and waste reduction processes result in more sustainable products; Blueprint projects generate waste levels of less than 2 percent compared with the 15 to 17 percent waste levels of traditional construction projects, and they can be assembled 30 percent faster than projects employing traditional construction methods. Key Blueprint projects include The Lodge at Autumn Willow in Fairfax, Virginia; Commodore Perry Homes in Buffalo, New York; and Crawford Gardens in Washington, DC. The field visit ended with a tour of Blueprint's offsite construction facility.
Group picture of the MOD-X team, the HUD team, delegation from UK, Ireland, Sweden, and Japan, and the Blueprint team. Photo credit: Meron Habte
Overview of the Blueprint factory. Photo credit: Meron Habte
A kitchen constructed by Van Metre Homes using modular construction techniques being prepared for transport to a construction site. Photo credit: Sarah Lee
Timber panel assembly line. Photo credit: Meron Habte
Panels are manually assembled by Blueprint team. Photo credit: Meron Habte
Once assembled, panels are aligned for the next stage. Photo credit: Meron Habte
Panels are densely insulated. Photo credit: Meron Habte
Insulated panels are then transferred for window or door installations or packing. Photo credit: Meron Habte
The second field site was at Van Metre Homes in Northern Virginia. Founded in 1955, Van Metre Homes built its first modular product in 2019 and has been expanding their research and production capacity ever since. The visit included a close-up look at a truck that was ready to transport fully constructed parts of a kitchen and bathroom to be assembled at a home construction site.
The site visit concluded with a workshop at the Brooke Mondale Auditorium at HUD Headquarters that brought together key partners, including international visitors and leaders from HUD and other federal agencies. Workshop participants discussed HUD's future efforts to support offsite housing construction. After an overview of research findings from the MOD X team, participants split into three breakout groups to discuss objectives and metrics for industrial housing, share programs that have succeeded abroad, and highlight potential future partnerships.