Fabrication
Where and how the parts are made, in a shop where accuracy is cheap or on a site where it is not.
made under a roofThe stage
Somebody has to cut, join and finish the parts. The choice is where: under a roof with machines and jigs, or outdoors on the lot.
What the usual way assumes
That houses are built on site, piece by piece, in the weather. Errors of a quarter inch are normal, and they are hidden with caulk, shims and joint compound.
What we do instead
Move work into the shop wherever it helps. Wall panels and cut timber made in a shop hold to a millimeter or two. Offcuts are easier to reuse there, materials stay dry, and a mistake costs a board, not a day.
Accuracy matters more to us than to most builders, because parts that are meant to come apart again can’t rely on glue and filler to cover a poor fit. A bolt needs holes that line up.
We also measure before we make. A laser scan of what was really built is cheaper than remaking a part that doesn’t fit.
What we don’t know yet
When shop-building pays at our size. A factory wants repetition, and we build a few homes at a time on odd city lots. New machines don’t help much unless the building is redesigned around them, and we have not yet proved that sum on our own work.