Using a Chainsaw to Cut Butter

Imagine you had just asked someone to slice butter and they went away and came up with the idea of using a chainsaw. It certainly has the power to do the job and the blades would certainly be sharp enough. However it was very messy and noisy, even though it could cut the butter. So now you asked them to find a better way to do it. They decide to focus on making the chainsaw more efficient, less noisy and messy. However someone else walks into your office and shows you another way to achieve your goal, a knife that could do the job in a much more efficient manner.

In other words, this completely different instrument, a butter knife, which turns out more appropriate method. There is no mess and the butter is perfectly cut to the size required. No matter what you do with the chainsaw it will never compete with the butter knife. It is simply not the appropriate tool.

Nothing beats the appropriate method

The same analogy is relevant to the US housebuilding industry. There has been report after report, including the recent Mckinsey Report highlighting the lack of productivity in the US house building industry and in particular the report clearly highlights the inefficiency of "stick framing". Just as the chainsaw is an inappropriate tool for cutting butter, so we have "stick framing" in the housing industry. It may have at one time, over a hundred years ago, been the appropriate framing methodology.

Nail guns, Skilsaws and Hard Hats

In much the same way as in the case above, focus was placed on making the chainsaw more efficient, the stick framing discovered on site compressors and nail guns, hand held skilsaws and hard hats.

However, just as no one looked at whether the chainsaw was the appropriate methodology to cut butter, the real question that should be posed is, is stick framing the appropriate methodology to frame a house/ apartment building in the 21st century? The answer, most certainly has to be NO.

To answer yes, is to completely ignore the technological advances of the last 200 years and the experience of all the other countries that utilize wood framing as a construction method.

Will I send the mechanics to your front yard, to build your new car?

Can you imagine the type and cost of motor vehicles if Henry Ford had not started using a production line. Imagine going into your local car dealer this weekend to buy a new vehicle (Tesla) and the dealer says he can offer you the option of having parts sent to your front yard and he can get the local mechanics to come out in their pick up truck with a compressor and welding gear to build the car (which theoretically could be done just like stick framing) or you can have it built in the factory. Which would you take? In fact you would probably think that the car dealer had completely lost his mind or has been in stasis for the last century.

Can you imagine that Elon Musk even considered for one nano second building his SpaceX rocket on the launch pad without out the benefits of factory controlled conditions, computers and automation or that Tesla would be built anywhere else other than a factory.

Just as housing is framed on site so too could any other product be built on location but nobody would even contemplate it. In the case of housing, we have become conditioned due to tradition to think that it is normal to send different crews of labor to different locations and have materials delivered to site, all without the benefit of factory controlled conditions. It has been said that "construction is 200 years of tradition unencumbered by innovation".

Do you think a Boeing 747 or an Airbus A 380 would ever have been built if they had to be build it on location at the customers nearest airport with local aircraft mechanics. It even sounds ridiculous to say it, but yet, this is what happens with house framing. It almost seems that not alone does "stick framing" not take advantage of modern production technology, it seems to even further and purposefully resist incorporating modern technology.

Just as many other industries have had to do over the last 200 years, the housebuilding industry needs to stop trying to make something which was appropriate for another century, deliver the benefits and requirements of this century. The industry needs to look at a fundamental change in the way it goes about its business. To ignore the advancements in logistics, on site execution, computer aided design and engineering and manufacturing and the resultant benefits in productivity, quality, safety, reduction in waste and more energy efficient buildings, is to put your head in the sand and ignore the progress that has been made over last two centuries. Its inexcusable!

*Gerard McCaughey is Chief Executive of Entekra Inc, a firm specializing in design, engineering and manufacturing of fully integrated off site solutions (FIOSS) for homebuilding industry. Mr. McCaughey previously co-founded Century Homes, Europe’s largest offsite building manufacturing company with five plants in Ireland and UK, which he sold in 2005 to Kingspan Group Plc. He is generally regarded in Europe as being one of the leading figure in the green building movement, and was at the forefront of regulatory reform in both Ireland and Britain. He has spoken and written about green and offsite construction in many countries around the world and is a previous winner of Ernst and Young’s Industry Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

?www.entekra.com