Entire apartments can arrive from a factory 95% finished
By finishing walls, cabinets, and fixtures indoors, a California factory cuts the skilled work needed at the construction site.
plantprefab.com · Plant Prefab Begins Construction on Cloud Apartments’ First 100% Affordable Housing Project in Los Angeles | Plant PrefabFor Manhattan Place, a 60-unit apartment project, Cloud Apartments, the developer, is having most of the building made in a factory and delivered to the site. Plant Prefab, a California housing manufacturer, will build all 60 units and complete 95 percent of the finish work before anything leaves the plant.
It starts on a computer. Its patented method, called the Plant Building System, uses detailed computer modeling to plan two kinds of customizable parts: flat wall sections, called panels, and boxlike apartment sections, called modules.
Next comes the factory floor. In Plant Prefab's $40 million factory at Tejon Ranch, just south of Bakersfield, which covers 270,000 square feet, the company says automated lines allow fast, high-quality fabrication of panels. Workers then assemble the panels into modules and finish the interiors inside, with flooring, cabinets, paint, and fixtures already in place. Doing that finish work in-house reduces the need for skilled labor at the construction site, according to the company.
Once on the lot, the nearly complete modules are stacked and joined together.
That speed claim comes from the company. Plant Prefab claims its system helps "developers and general contractors build housing 20 to 50 percent faster than site-based methods," with better quality control, more design flexibility, and less wasted time, cost, and material. The announcement provides no independent measure of that speedup.
Questions people ask
What is included in the 95% that is finished in the factory?
It means the walls, floors, cabinets, paint, and fixtures are already installed in the factory. The remaining work happens on the lot, where crews join the modules and make the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing connections.
What is the difference between a panel and a module?
Modules are large, boxlike sections that can form all or part of an apartment, while panels are flat sections like walls and floors. Plant Prefab uses both, building panels on automated lines and then assembling them into finished modules.
Why is building indoors 20 to 50 percent faster?
According to Plant Prefab, indoor production offers better quality control and time, cost, and material efficiency, but the announcement gives no detail on exactly how those savings produce the 20 to 50 percent speedup.