Prefabrication experiments - 465 - Notes in passing - 01 - Brand Equity

 

Several rebranding efforts throughout the 20th century from prefabrication to manufactured housing to factory-built and to offsite have struggled to shed biases against prefab. Digital technologies frame DFMA and platform theory as the latest labelling and a reenergized position for industrialized building systems. Virtual design tools, coupled with housing crises, labour shortages, climate change and a better grasp of modern methods of construction potentials to address the cited challenges add up to a fertile era for factory-built architecture.

 

Prefabrication still deals with postwar connotations which have impeded a more generalized use. Even with companies using robust marketing, buy-in from architects and consumers remains tenuous. Katerra's meteoric rise and subsequent equally quick demise is a case in point. Even with massive investments supporting it, the once flagship of innovation failed. Was it bad planning, bad branding, or too big too fast ? Certainly, a combination of many factors led to its shutdown. 

 

While branding yourself as an innovator elevates your position as a potential disruptor in a slow-to-move construction industry, it also supports the idea of being off the mark, unconventional and risky for an industry mired in perennial habits. Some see brand equity as a solution to the bias problem for offsite construction: In acquiring a large portion of Stack Modular, a North American modular volumetric producer, Bird construction has incorporated an offsite solution to its service list. 

 

As a general contractor Bird understands the role and responsibilities of construction as a service coordinating many offsite produced components and onsite trades. Merging this integrator capacity with the speed and efficiencies of modular volumetric elevates both parties with an idealized business proposal based on their strengths. Being associated with Bird's 100-year history in the construction space, modular volumetric gains instant credibility as a relevant construction method. In turn, being associated with Stack Modular's innovative manufacturing methodologies elevates the general contractor to an agile innovator capable of adopting new business models as they become available and applicable. Uniting onsite services with offsite production in a seamless manner creates a formidable business model to develop and build projects of any scope. 

Bird and Stack Modular - brand equity