High Tech Homebuilding

Imagine you’re a framer working on a new housing development. When you get to the job site in the morning, you boot up a computer and watch a video that shows step-by-step the framing that’s scheduled to be done that day. A package of the day’s materials – already cut and ready to assemble – has been delivered. You put on your tool belt, grab your nail gun, and get started.

CM faculty and students are using computer-aided design to virtually build six different home models for Genesis Homes in Denver. The goal of the $40,000 research project is to drive down the price of entry-level homes by improving productivity and reducing waste.

“We’re using a three-dimensional CAD system to build these homes piece by piece,” says Associate Professor James Folkestad. Folkestad and Associate Professor Bolivar Senior are the project’s co-principal investigators.

Ph.D. student Brad Johnson and undergraduate student Ryan Hodack are providing their practical experience to the project. Over the summer the students worked with Genesis Homes to build actual prototypes at the 1,350-unit project site north of Brighton, Colo. With that experience, researchers then used CAD to memorialize the homebuilding process and create virtual building plans in the form of a book and a movie.

“The idea is that when a house is precisely defined virtually, it will fit in reality,” says Folkestad.

The key word is precision. By building the homes on a computer one piece at a time, researchers will create a set of definitions for precisely how long and at what angle every piece of wood needs to be cut. With this knowledge, materials can be pre-cut at the mill and the entire package delivered to the job site. Skilled laborers can then assemble the homes following written and animated instructions that show the building process one step at a time, from framing, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC to trim and finish components.

“Effectively we’re building a model kit,” says Miles Grant, ‘75, CEO of Genesis Homes. “If they follow the instructions, 20 different people will build the same home in exactly the same way.”

Folkestad notes that the virtual building process will still allow builders to make improvements often discovered while constructing a home. Such improvements can be incorporated into the computerized model and adjustments made as needed.

The research project with Genesis Homes is similar to another “lean construction” project Folkestad has proposed to the National Science Foundation. Under a three-year, $300,000 grant, Folkestad and his research team will apply technology and principles of construction management to advancing the concept of lean construction.

“There is a body of knowledge associated with ‘lean’ that can be applied to construction,” Folkestad explains. The variables affecting lean construction are sequencing and speed and the relationship between the two. The research team will address the question: How can we use virtual models to better plan and predict these variables?

Folkestad believes that using three-dimensional CAD designs for virtual homebuilding will enable lean construction by using new knowledge to plan ways to increase productivity.

“Our hypothesis is that in the future we can radically change the sequence of how things are done,” says Folkestad. “Instead of having individual trades working on individual components of a building project, we’ll have more of a melding – more people working together to keep production moving along at all times.”



Timber

The City of Fort Collins recently established the Gardens of Spring Creek to enrich people’s lives and foster environmental stewardship through horticulture. When developing shade structures for the gardens, the city took the notion of environmental stewardship one step further: They built the structures from wood thinned from Colorado forests as part of the state forest service’s fire mitigation and restoration efforts.

The project was initiated through the CM department and the Colorado Wood Utilization and Marketing program, a collaboration of colleagues from the Department of Construction Management, the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship, the Colorado State Forest Service, and the USDA Forest Service. The program’s aim is to create demand for wood removed from the state’s forests. Developing new markets for Colorado wood by-products helps offset the cost of forest clearing to prevent large-scale wildfires and catastrophic insect and disease outbreaks.

“When the city was ready to build the shade structures, we saw this as an opportunity to help get something built using Colorado wood,” says Gailmarie Kimmel, a CM research associate and member of the Colorado Wood Utilization and Marketing program.

The project involved the CM department, students and faculty.

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