The construction industry has a record high 422,000 unfilled job openings which is almost 4x the unfilled openings a decade ago and represents a growing crisis. Many construction execs have rightly identified the need to retain talent in a competitive market and boost productivity dramatically to complete more projects with fewer resources. Thus, many builders have already begun investments in growing their offsite construction and prefabrication businesses, which will leverage the benefits of factory production to deliver on their labor constraints. 71% of the construction value chain will be disrupted by this movement towards leveraging offsite construction on major projects and 60% executives foresee this disruption gaining momentum over the next 5 years.
In this How to Guide, we review how making an investment in scaling your offsite business and launching prefab factories will lead to future success if complemented with onboarding a dedicated Prefab Manager role to manage your supply chain and operations at the factory level. Furthermore, it is crucial that your Prefab Managers have the tools and technology needed to make the factory successful.
Given our experience working with many different prefabricators, we often get asked whether a Prefab Manager needs to have prior experience in the manufacturing industry or if it’s better to hire from the construction industry and train the manager on manufacturing principles and processes. In this Guide we will review how hiring a Prefab Manager from the construction industry and providing them with essential tools in Offsight can bridge any gaps and set your Prefab Manager up for long-term success.
Planning For Prefab
Offsight’s Pre-Production feature set, including our Forecasting & Estimatingfunctionality and Configured Templates, assists prefab managers with planning their prefab projects and accurately understanding their resource requirements to achieve their target delivery dates and meet their project schedule. With this feature set, managers can accurately forecast and calculate labor, materials and installation costs on complex prefab projects. Offsight’s templates leverage workflows built around factory assembly as opposed to traditional job site work. We accurately tie labor to workstations or stages in your manufacturing process. Our algorithm incorporates factory availability hours, labor capacity, holidays, and project workstation hours to generate your prefab project schedule.
Managing Prefab From The Shop Floor
Once a Prefab Manager has built their plan using Offsight’s Pre-Production feature, they can import their plan to Offsight’s Production feature to manage and track prefabrication in real-time during the active project. As with Pre-Production, the Production feature set also guides Prefab Managers in creating manufacturing workflows based on physical workstations or areas in their prefab shop. The manufacturing workflows can be associated with specific prefabricated products or designs to define how these products will flow through the factory. Operators on the shop floor can then access Offsight’s mobile apps to track progress in real-time for each prefabricated product in the project and Prefab Managers can access live updates on progress, schedule delivery and create quality reports.
Controlling Prefab Project Costs
Offsight’s Materials & Inventory Management tool set and the Labor Tracking & Timesheets tool set are essential for Prefab Managers to gain full control on managing their variable project costs during prefabrication. The Materials & Inventory feature set is designed for the DfMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) process which allows Prefab Managers to define a Bill of Material (BOM) for every individual prefabricated product or product design. This allows for highly accurate material tracking and cost management. In addition, the Labor Tracking & Timesheets feature set incorporates manufacturing principles including linking labor to factory shifts and workstations and tracking labor across each individual product in the overall offsite project. This allows Prefab Managers to create materials consumption and labor cost reporting to ensure projects are within budget and on schedule for delivery.