Building the Future by Looking to the Masters of the Past

Master Builders of the past managed every step of the pre-construction and construction processes to create beautiful and lasting building projects. Deluxe Modular has taken inspiration from this forgotten tradition to create our streamlined, modular process.

In the 1600s one did not go out and hire eight design professionals, a general contractor, 12 subcontractors and a slew of consultants to build one’s building. They simply hired a Master Builder, who learned the trade by word of mouth and relied on experience, models, and rules of thumb to determine the sizes of building elements. The Master Builder was responsible for everything — designing the building, dealing with engineering issues, determining the means and methods of construction, and employing all of the workforce necessary to complete the project. The same team worked on every project, learned from prior experience and implemented improvements as they progressed. Buildings were built efficiently, at reasonable costs, and with great levels of quality.

Today, things are very different. Despite all the advancements made over the last 400 years, constructing a building has become harder, not easier. Completing a project today requires sometimes dozens of disjointed teams with different tasks, who will all point to each other when the disorganization inevitably leads to costly delays and mistakes.

Deluxe Modular believes we should return to the ways of the Master Builders of the past — with the benefit of today’s technological and digital advancements to make building systems truly efficient and effective.

It isn’t just Deluxe that believes we need to return to a more sane way of building.

Experts and researchers around the world have been publishing extensive materials about the inefficiencies and waste in the construction industry for years. The global consulting firm McKinsey concludes:

There is a need to move away from the hostile contracting environment that characterizes many construction projects to a system focused on collaboration and problem solving. […] The biggest impact on productivity would come from moving toward thinking about construction as a production system, where possible encouraging off-site manufacture, minimizing on-site construction through the extensive use of pre-cast technology, assembling panels in factories and then finishing units onsite.

In addition to McKinsey, the Fails Management Institute (FMI), the leading management consulting and investment banking firm dedicated to engineers, “nearly two-thirds of respondents expect more change in how construction is put in place over the next five years than in the last 50 years combined.” Their report goes on to recommend that, “this framework must include programs, systems, and standardization- all of which will come together to support a more streamlined approach to the design-manufacture-construct process.”

Deluxe’s system-built, modular building process addresses these concerns, combining all steps of the pre-construction and construction processes into a single, streamlined experience.

As the industry leader in commercial off-site systems-built construction for more than 50 years, Deluxe has long led the way in how buildings are built and sold in the United States. Now, with a revamped modular building process and focus, Deluxe is proud to offer customers the benefit of more than five decades and hundreds of millions invested in pre-built designs and concepts to give building owners the ability to streamline the pre-construction process and start with a realistic budget on a guaranteed design-build basis, to simplify the construction process, and to finally bring the construction industry into the future — by taking inspiration from the past.

Originally published at https://www.deluxemodular.com on September 18, 2019.