These Labor Saving Innovations Are Key To Solving The Housing Crisis

The overall economy has nine million job openings, and the government is pulling levers to get that down to eight million, anticipating that it will take four to five years to recover jobs lost during the pandemic.

And, while the AI revolution will have a big impact on productivity growth in the next 10 years, labor still is the most significant problem faced by housing in 2023 and 2024 according to Dr. Robert Dietz, the chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

He points out that for every five people leaving the construction industry, there are only three that enter it. One way the association is working to improve this scenario is by supporting immigration reform. This policy work would run alongside the actions of the group’s members and partners that are creating new products, processes, and collaborations to manage these projections.

Saving Labor With Clear Communication

As fresh new faces show up on job sites, they either sink or swim and that can happen fast. Especially if English is their second language, which happens to represent a lot of laborers. What can make someone feel lost, helpless, and uncomfortable is not understanding, not being able to communicate, or missing something that might be obvious to long time laborers.

Flashpoint Building Systems has removed all those barriers by laser printing the complete plan set and project details directly onto the subfloor. What the worker then has is real-life scale plans that remove communication barriers between printed floor plans, superintendents and the laborers actually doing the work.

The solution, or integrated layout system, was invented by Flashpoint Building Systems’s co-founders Pat Churchman and Nick Stoppello to solve for the challenges they had in their design and construction careers. Their solutions was scouted and incubated by Levi Smith, the CEO at Franklin Building Supply, who is launching efforts to infuse the housing construction industry with technology and innovation.

Since then, the startup has relocated its facility to Franklin’s lumber yard and expanded operations to recently be awarded a project from one of the nation’s largest home builders. Flashpoint was selected for a large, Boise-based community with 111 new single family homes. Before using Flashpoint’s innovation, the builder’s typical framing process on a 2,200-square-foot home took about 16 days. After using the integrated layout system, it dropped to 10 days, reducing the time by nearly 40%.

In addition to the significant labor savings, the walls in the new projects were straighter, the builder reported less rework across all trades, and the trades from those projects reported they had a clear expectation and understanding of what and how the home was going to go together.

“In construction, the most important task is communicating a clear understanding of scope,” said Stoppello. “Plan miscommunication and misinterpretation is rampant among those responsible for getting the work done. The result is a reactive, chaotic, and expensive way of doing business that leaves a sour taste in the mouths of all the stakeholders.”

Flashpoint Building Systems is a stair step to the full robotic construction approach and can seamlessly integrate into existing workflows to save time and money. The next phase of Flashpoint’s growth is licensing software and equipment to customers as a modified shipping container delivered to the area of a home development, or where the material is centrally distributed from, to do the laser printing and cutting. The first self-contained prototype is functioning and set to deliver to a construction community soon.

Partners Deliver Free Training

The Home Builders Institute reports that for every five trades people retiring, there are only three entering the trades, which is leaving a large gap.

As a leader in workforce development, the institute is opening several training academies across the nation to deliver skills training to a new generation of home builders.

The group has partners such as The BuildStrong Foundation, The Home Depot Foundation, and The Home Builders Association of Central Arizona to offer free construction trades training to anyone 18 years of age or older. The academies are now open in Orlando, Denver, New Orleans, and Houston, giving hands-on training to go from little-to-no building experience to a sought after employee in nine weeks.

Students receive mentorship throughout the training and job placement support after graduating from the program.

Labor’s Window of Opportunity

Many manufacturers look at industry economic reports to plan for the impacts that their customers and distribution channel will be facing. One manufacturer took on the labor challenges through its research and development department, where they dug in to solve it with their products.

Keith Mann, the vice president of marketing at Pella, spoke about the process at the company’s launch of the new Steady Set interior installation system that can remove an entire person from the window installation process and save 60% of the installation time.

“Can a window manufacturer focus on installation,” he asked the audience during a presentation. “We looked at what we would learn and what we would change to build around human-centered design by listening to customers and spending hundreds of hours in the field to find out how installations were happening in the field every day.”

Part of what they found was that 85% of the time install crews were passing the window unit from the inside to the outside. So, the company responded by building the industry’s first interior install system called Pella Steady Set.

Jenn Tuetken is the director of innovation and design at Pella and shared that Steady Set comes with all components pre-attached, so the installer doesn’t have to manage more parts and pieces on the jobsite. There also is a built-in head stabilizer serving to safely keep the window in place during installation. Plus, the windows with the new system don’t require as much exterior work, including eliminating the need to attach the window from the exterior.

A live, in-person demonstration had the installer completing all the window’s interior work in 2.5 minutes. The installer then went outside to tape but didn’t have to add any fasteners and puncture the exterior weather barrier. The install was done in 3 minutes and 53 seconds, compared to the regular install that happened at the same time and racked up 7 minutes with 2 people.

For a 6’ x 6’ window, the regular install took 5 laborers and ran up to 87 minutes, where the Steady Set equivalent needed 2 laborers and only 26 minutes.

“Windows were never designed for installers until now,” Tuetken said. “It’s time to revolutionize the window industry and leave complexity behind.”

Pella is launching Steady Set on the majority of its rectangular wood window options this summer.

Pella’s team is looking at how Steady Set can offer value to other product lines but focusing on single family new construction windows now because it has the biggest impact due to its complexity. Not only did Pella solve for the labor challenge, but the new installation system helps solve for some common water management challenges. Steady Set has features with the new sill shims so water can escape and not get trapped inside the wall cavity and behind the water-resistant barrier.

Since most training happens on the jobsite, it was critical for Pella to make sure its innovation was easy to adopt in the field. Steady Set windows have QR codes that can be scanned on the jobsite for instant access to installation videos and there are instructions on the unit itself in both English and Spanish.

Critical Roles Of Communication And Technology

In The Farnsworth Group’s analysis of this year’s International Builder Show where Pella launched the Steady Set window and Flashpoint won most innovative construction product, it stated some manufacturers, like Pella, did a great job releasing innovation and then communicating how it is tied to labor efficiencies. At the same time, other manufacturers had labor saving innovation, but the communication of its benefits didn’t perform, which is a core area of focus that manufacturers need to understand and resolve.

Grant Farnsworth of The Farnsworth Group says that manufacturers and suppliers have to take a role in solving for today’s labor challenges and time constraints. He also warns that labor shortages can have far reaching implications, like more reliance on software and technology, another way that manufacturers and service providers need to prepare.

Any way it is sliced, the labor challenge is huge. All support will matter and make a difference, and all stakeholders need to take a role or risk obsolescence.