The Off-Site construction industry is having a great year despite COVID-19. Most builders and developers are too busy working with new buyers, planning projects, and doing all the “in your face” work that needs to be done right now to worry much about next month, let alone next...

America’s Achilles Heel I want to drift off topic for a bit. Last week we were advised that the U.S. was under a massive cyber attack. As of today, Sunday December 20, the attack is on-going, there is no determination of who is responsible, how deep the attack has penetrated, how to...

Retired now from MiTek (but not from this magazine), it is a fitting time to thank all of you I have been honored to serve. I was fortunate to have started about the time floor trusses were being introduced, and to have seen them revolutionize apartment building. In December, I observed four...

COVID Shipment Delays WILL RISE The global pandemic surge is further exacerbating shipment schedules, lengthening many commodity and specialty items that are weeks behind already. Some truckloads of basic commodity Canadian lumber are just now catching up on two-month delays despite prices...

Usually I am the first person in line shouting the benefits of modular construction to help the affordable housing market, but not this time. That’s because it doesn’t matter how you approach the affordable housing market if there isn’t enough factory capacity to keep ahead...

2020 Hindsight 2020 hindsight. Deduce deeper. Look farther than the end of my nose and keep asking, “What’s next?” I didn’t do that at the beginning of the pandemic. I failed to consider how men specifically would respond to the lockdown. I saw hangout at home, catch...

The American Lumber Standard first published a standard for lumber in 1924 which delineated lumber sizes and assigned design value methods, classification, inspection procedures, the National Grading Rule, an accreditation program, and other specified functions. It was the first foray into such...

When the first automobiles began showing up on the streets more than 100 years ago, most were built in barns and warehouses one at a time. There were no car dealers as the two or three person shop that built them also sold them. Car builders began popping up in every small town in the...

Like scientists tracking a slow-moving glacier, a leading pollster of America’s builders is seeing signs that contractors’ views are warming when it comes to off-site construction. The research by Ed Hudson, director of market research at the Home Innovation Research Labs,...

When we think of poverty, we think homelessness, food banks, and welfare. Chronic poverty was once compared to catching a grasshopper in a jar when we were kids. The jar had a lid with holes poked in it. For a while, the grasshopper jumped up and kept hitting his head against the lid. Then he...