> It doesn’t feel very efficient, especially residential construction. My neighbor is building a garage with some finished space above. It’s sat without a garage door for literally months now - everything else is done.
If all you have to improve the construction industry is better scheduling and supply-chain management, that's something. But the poster above seemed to be hinting at things more like new construction techniques.
They can be, and there's lots of modern construction techniques that are really good (search term "building science").
One big problem is that a lot of stuff is still built to "minimum code" which just isn't that great. On top of that, sloppy construction work can significantly undermine what is done. In my own house I've fixed several simple things, like missing insulation around vents and holes cut too big (or created by a hammer, rather than cutting).
Here's a good walkthrough of a house under construction showing lots of problems typical to any subdivision (non-custom) build: https://youtu.be/OmU2N_Q732A
> I like to point out that very few house builders use agile methodologies to build a home.
Home construction often has milestones that are fairly comparable: 1) competition of the structural components, 2) drying in, 3) utilities, 3) drywall and Paint, and 4) Finishing.
Each of these are phases where they could theoretically stop. There are times in history and places in the present where people live in structures that don’t have windows and doors, or without utilities, etc.
However I would agree that they’re not marketed as viable until they’re close to finished.
> You're conflating the complicated with the complex. Construction workers don't need Agile methods, which is why "there's a 60% chance the framing will be up by July" sounds so dumb. The physical properties of wood framing, electrical wire, shingles, and drywall haven't changed in decades.
When's the last time you saw a construction project that landed on time? Construction projects are a classic example of forecasting difficulty. Lots of things have to go smoothly at the right time, including supply chain, coordinating work from multiple organizations (including local governments), and the weather has to play nice.
> The catch is that construction is a feast or famine occupation. [...] There is sort of a "get it while the getting's still good" mentality afoot right now.
Indeed, and that's not good from the point of view of construction standards. When the going is good, contractors go pedal to the metal and will do everything they can as fast as they can, inevitably lowering their average work standards (both in terms of output quality and safety measures). Plus, construction booms typically lead to more widespread economic bubbles.
I wish we could find a way of stabilizing that particular market.
> but it kind of proves the point that current construction techniques are optimized for cost
I don't think that's a fair takeaway - drywall lets you do things like insulate, run cabling, provide moisture barriers, easily change room layouts. These are all things that people want to do in their homes today that are straightforward (mostly) with drywall, and borderline impossible for a DIY'er in an older building.
> Automated construction will start in the next 10 years.
Doubt it. It is one field where productivity has not seen increases at all[0]. Plenty of advances in technology demonstrations, but these really are not translating into improvements on sites.
> Building a little shed outside? Would be silly to use the same rigor that goes into a high rise.
This is a bad analogy. They both have 1000's of years of shared development (some high rises still use bricks), 100's in an industrial age and 20 years in the internet age. (Testing is only ~70 years old)
People today use shed technology that pre-internet builders would not have know about or not existed.
But that 1000 years also includes how to use workers to get the job done.
That's not going into the rigor required in many places to build a shed. Watch Still Mine (2012) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073086/ about a couple wanting to build a house themselves, it's not a shed, but fights to build sheds against local governments are less romantic. (And it's a good movie)
> I genuinely wonder if an actual house designed by carpenters for carpenters wouldn’t be better? Maybe not more attractive, but better built?
Maybe if they really over-build it, but I don't think carpenters know how to calculate stuff like structural load requirements. I know the building code have some rules of thumb, but I kinda doubt those cover all the situations you'd need to design a home (e.g. how strong does this wall need to be based on all the stuff above supported by it).
>> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs.
> To what end?
To the end that you can get your house built on a schedule that you want. A neighbour is a general contractor who has a good reputation: he, and the specialty teams he uses, are booked at least a year out.
This isn't too say we shouldn't train more skilled trades, but having a spectrum of of people available helps those you can't afford to pay top dollar for top talent to also get quality results.
It should also be noted that not everyone is gifted enough to be a top or even decent trade, yet we want as many people as possible to be productively employed. There will some percentage of the population that may be most productive simply following what the computer tells them to do:
> I'm not sure you would want your house built by the contractor that took short cuts and did shoddy work. You might have roof over your head, but there will be more expensive problems later.
You might want to pick a better analogy as you've literally described all roofing construction at this point
> If one doesn't care that the carpenter building his house is using a hammer upside down, that's a whole 'nother bunch of issues I won't go into here.
I'd love to see at least a small allusion to what nature the issues are made of. Because, to iterate, I'd rather have a well-built house build by an absolutely unconventially working carpenter than a mediocre house build by someone that knows how to use a hammer according to the textbook.
If I want to see nice processes and fantasies fulfilled, I watch movies. In real life, I care about results.
> Talk with anyone that has built a house and they'll have horror stories of months of delays.
This can easily be explained in the part of the world I live in. Small/medium construction companies prefer to work on bigger projects than a house for obvious reasons. So they'll come over and do parts of your house in between jobs on the bigger sites which freqently means massive delays.
> It saddens me that construction quality is almost irrelevant when building a new building nowadays.
Depends on where you live; houses in the Netherlands are built to high standards when it comes to things like insulation, build quality, electrification, etc.
Are houses in the US still built with 2x4's and drywall? You'd think they would move to what we have here in the Netherlands, mostly sturdy concrete blocks, insulation layer, and a pretty brickwork or brickwork-looking facade.
I mean the amount of clips I see on the youtubes of people breaking walls make me cringe. A wall should break you, not the other way around, :D
If all you have to improve the construction industry is better scheduling and supply-chain management, that's something. But the poster above seemed to be hinting at things more like new construction techniques.
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