The New Face of Plant Prefabrication

In the Bluebeam/StrXur video titled Building Better, Faster with Plant Prefab, the art of prefabricated buildings gets a breath of new life. Steve Glenn, CEO of Plant Prefab, explains that modular construction cuts overall building time in half. Site work and construction happen concurrently. Under traditional site-based construction, site work must take place first, and only afterwards can construction take place. “As the site work is happening, we’re working here in a controlled, all-weather environment,” he says. “There are serious advantages of time.” Those time advantages can be increased with the use of Bluebeam Revu for project collaboration.

Plant Prefab employs a full-time staff rather than subcontractors. In addition, the homes built by Plant Prefab use less construction materials and thus create less waste. Risks to construction workers are drastically lowered within a contained environment, and each project has a decreased impact on the environment, effectively becoming “greener” and better for the Earth.

Unlike most existing prefab companies, Glenn explains that Plant Prefab is not “designed to do the same thing again and again.” Instead, it works on custom projects that are tailored to the needs and wants of each customer. “Online, there are some cool technologies,” he says. “Currently, you can go configure a home like a car.” Essentially, as a customer of Plant Prefab, you’re able to utilize that 21^st-Century tech and personalize the structure that you want to be built. Glenn adds that Plant Prefab is the first prefab company that Amazon has invested in. “You can expect some cool, integrated smart home technologies,” he says.

According to the Dodge Data & Analytics 2020 SmartMarket Report on prefabrication and modular construction, the top types of projects for prefab are low-rise offices, commercial warehouses, public buildings, healthcare, retail stores and shopping, multi-family, college buildings, manufacturing, hotels, and schools. Prefab in residential is on the rise, however, and its presence in the mind of modern homebuyers is becoming more prominent. If you are interested in the subjects of prefabrication and the small house movement, watch the recent podcast with Forbes writer Sheri Koones, whose newest book, Downsize: Living Large in a Small House, has recently debuted.

Overall, prefabricated and modular homes are becoming less expensive, greener and easier to build.

Glenn mentions a customer in Santa Rosa, California who tragically lost their home in a wildfire. Traditional homebuilders estimated that it would take around “a year and a half or more” to build their new home. In comparison, because Plant Prefab works on several projects simultaneously, that Santa Rosa family had the option to search out a home that would only take around three and a half months to complete and would cost much less. The median home price in the United States is about $200,000. For a prefabricated home, the price can be about 10% to 20% less expensive than the traditionally built house. And that’s very attractive by any home buyer metrics.  

If you’d like to explore first-hand the ways Bluebeam Revu can give your company a time advantage in its collaborative workflow, try it for yourself. You can download a full working version of Revu Standard, Revu CAD or Revu eXtreme on a 30-day free trial. When it’s time to convert that 30-day trial to a subscription or perpetual license, contact Applied Software and talk to a Bluebeam expert about your firm’s specific needs. Applied will help you champion innovation at your company.