Episode 2 | Offsite Construction: The Basics with Jay Lepple

Alison and Mark sit down with Jay Lepple, Production Officer at Bensonwood, to explore the key advantages of offsite construction. In this episode, they delve into the European roots that shaped offsite building practices in the U.S. and discuss some exciting innovations in the industry's future. Learn more about Bensonwood by visiting: https://bensonwood.com/

Learn more about Bensonwood by visiting our website: bensonwood.com

Transcript

Jay Lepple: 0:00

Music.

Alison Keay: 0:05

Welcome to a new era of homebuilding, where we explore sustainable home building, high performance design, innovative off site construction and groundbreaking practices that are transforming the homebuilding industry. This podcast is produced by Unity homes, a brand of bensonwood. Welcome back. Thanks for listening. I'm Allison Kaye, Sales Team Lead at Unity homes, and hosts of the new era of home building podcast.

Mark Hertzler: 0:29

And I'm Mark Hertzler, co host and director of unity homes.

Alison Keay: 0:32

And today we're interviewing Jay Lepple, Production Officer at bensonwood. And just for a little background on bensonwood, they are an off site fabrication company that builds panels and timber frames and millwork and unity homes. Is one of the bensonwood brands. Bensonwood is well known for the work of our owner, Ted Benson and reinvigorating timber frame construction in the United States. Bensonwood began producing building panels as a solution to the skin of their timber frames in the early 2000s

Mark Hertzler: 1:04

and Jay has been with Benson wood for almost the entire time that they've been fabricating panels. Jay is the Production Officer at Benson wood that covers three different production facilities, timber frame woodworking and building systems, plus our procurement departments, shipping, receiving in virtual fabrication. He's been with Benson wood for a little over 23 years, been in the construction industry for somewhere around 30 and is a FIAs certified builder. Welcome Jay, thank

Jay Lepple: 1:34

you. It's great to be here with such a wonderful team that's building energy efficient homes for clients that need them. Awesome. So

Alison Keay: 1:43

we're looking forward to hearing your perspective on off site construction. That'll be the topic of our discussion today. So we'll dive in with some questions. Great. So Jay, from your experience, why would somebody pursue offsite construction?

Jay Lepple: 2:00

Well, I think one of the easiest answers is time savings on the site, from when our crew gets there with a foundation already poured to an insulated, weather resistant, airtight shell with windows and doors installed in about a week or two. So that's an amazing amount of time to just have a shell up where, in the rough framing community, you could expect sheathing on a roof. And you know, a month to three months for framing, and who knows how that works with the amount of insulation that needs to go in, the air sealing the windows and doors installed, and so that's a pretty big time crunch to be able to do that and then get right into HVAC and the other trades that need to get in there and getting into sheetrock very quickly after that. I think some of the other huge perks in the factory is the quality. We're in a climate controlled environment. We're using CNC cutting and fabricating machines, where the ergonomics for everything at Waste level using vacuum lifts. It's pre planned with the client and the unity team, and having all this airtight window is going in in a dry assembly. And of course, with using the larger product we use with our glue lambs and engineered lumber at lengths of 36 feet, we reduce the waste that incurs on site, and we're able to reuse a lot of that.

Alison Keay: 3:40

Yeah. Also, with the on the quality topic being in a more of a manufacturing environment, there's actual quality control processes that are involved. It's a quality assurance for the homeowner that what they're getting is the product that they signed up

Jay Lepple: 3:53

for. Yeah. And to elaborate on that, we have an amazing QC process where a checklist follows every panel through every station throughout the facility, so that we ensure that each thing is getting fixed all along the way, if there is ever an error, and it's

Mark Hertzler: 4:11

well documented, the labor shortages across many industries, but especially construction right now. And I'm not sure what the average age is of the construction worker, but I think it's in the 40s, so we're not getting enough new people into the field. How does off site construction help with that labor shortage?

Jay Lepple: 4:30

Yeah, I think it taps into a lot of different areas, one, being in manufacturing rather than just being a carpenter. So to say, running around on sites you can get into the CNC line of work. So there's there's also a lot of computer knowledge that's needed in terms of the CAD reading and the shop drawings that are done in such a perfected way throughout the process. So there's other areas to tap into, and a lot of. Times somebody can be really great at one part of the fabricating process, where they don't need to be as skilled in a different way. And so it's, it's actually amazing how far outreaching we can be to have skilled associates in the production process. So

Alison Keay: 5:20

tell us about the evolution of bensonwood and Unity's off site construction. How did it start? What were the early days like, in terms of how we accomplished our offsite fabrication?

Jay Lepple: 5:31

Well, I think in the early days, we were primarily focused on timber frames. And you know that that came from this New England area with Ted tearing down old timber frames, looking at the joinery, understanding it. And so, you know, the big off site knowledge came from that, right? He wanted to bring back that into a shop setting, create these nice joints, not in the field, and then bring them out to site, to a wreck. So there's always this understanding that we do a lot of this processing work within a factory setting, and then bring it out to site because he was going long distances or short but having the limited site time to do that, and I would say that evolved into the sips manufacturing of foam core stress skin panels, where Hughes partnered with a bunch of people in our area to create the envelope of these timber frames. We needed a good insulated envelope, airtight envelope, that would wrap these timber frames. And while that was great and it's still useful, we wanted some more systems to be integrated into our panel system for our HVAC subs, and a little less waste too. We were, we were throwing rough openings into the landfill, and that's not good. So we wanted to be have more of a green aspect within our panels. So in the early 2000s we started developing many, many different types of panels, giving a chase way for our electrical subs to run wires through the interiors of our buildings, try to cut costs on that, and then start filling our panels with a different type of insulation, cellulose, rather than the foam. Yeah,

Mark Hertzler: 7:21

I remember the story that Ted has told about the early days of sub panels and how things were cut on site. One time he showed up on site and there was particles of foam blowing all over the place, and he said, No, we cannot do this anymore. Things have to change. So I know there's lots of stories of, sort of the evolution of Benson wood, and how they went from SIPPs panels with foam to the more environmentally friendly panels of cellulose, yeah, and

Jay Lepple: 7:51

it's a great point, and I think sips still have their place in the industry, but we've developed a product that we've built Hundreds of homes with, and it works well. It also during the recession where people were putting a lot of money into the energy in the envelope of their home, rather than the timber frame, that helped us understand more of a hybrid timber frame and panel aspect. We had these big, large walls that had structure in it, so we were able to then create roof panel strategies too. At the time, we were still doing a hybrid system where we would have a ridge wall and roof rafters and still cover those with sips, but now a lot of times lopped out, and that's most of unity, and we're making large, 14 inch panels with engineered eye joists and with cellulose to match the wall system and the airtight enclosure we use. So it's really Springboard us to the future and where we are now.

Mark Hertzler: 8:51

Yeah, and I know here in the United States, this type of construction is still fairly new. There's the number of companies that are doing it, but it's not very widespread. But in other parts of the world, this is actually much more common, and Scandinavia is certainly one of them, and especially Sweden, I think you've been to some of those factories overseas. What have you learned from, you know, other countries, and how have we adapted that to what we're doing here?

Jay Lepple: 9:17

Yeah, we've, we've learned so much in so many different ways, not just from my visits, but I think at an early age of this company, we were learning a lot from from Japan in terms of lean, in terms of the craft. Same with France, with the French scribe, and New England itself, from the early adopters that had timber frames here. And then, you know, Germany, Austria, Switzerland. A lot of the technology came from them. The CNC tooling, the durable and resilient buildings they build, the Passive House standard. And Scandinavia itself is just a level above in terms of the. Energy standards and the off sites construction, and so, you know, the way they are building over there. There's so much more off site construction, as you've said, and understanding that they're in a real competitive market to to compete with each other, and saying that everybody does it this way, not just a small percentage. They really understand and it's it's so efficient, so lean and up to these energy standards that we're not even at yet. So when I'm speaking about Lean, what I mean is the manufacturing process that has been adopted by many, you know, notably in the Toyota industry. But the things that we do, you know, one of the main thing, is eliminating waste over production. There's, there's so many, I think there's eight wastes of lean. I'm not going to list them all right now, but there's a lot of waste, and that's, that's the number one goal is to eliminate that waste that we're not overproducing, putting bundles out in the yard, that we don't need that every but things in its spa and its flow, and that goes all the way to each and every tool that each of the production lines has attestation. You know, every spa is a tool. We don't have tools there that we don't need. There's only the tools. There's only the fasteners that we need there. It goes into a lot and it and it's how you can assess not only the entire manufacturing process, but really needle down into each one of the specific production areas in the shop

Alison Keay: 11:30

relate that to the waste that you can imagine with site built construction, and how many times people are walking around to get to different things, looking For tools, wasted materials, all of those things come down into the lean manufacturing process, right?

Jay Lepple: 11:45

That is one of the major waste really, Allison, is the steps you take to go find a piece of wood or a material or or the tool you need, or the fastener you need. And that's something we take very seriously, not only within the manufacturing facility, but on site with our job boxes and making sure they're set up the same way. A little

Alison Keay: 12:07

bit of background on that is in the 1970s when the oil crisis happened, kind of worldwide, the Scandinavia and European countries responded by implementing energy code that is even surpasses the current energy code here in the United States. And so they've been building in these high performance ways since the 1970s and so they're just light years away ahead of us. And

Mark Hertzler: 12:32

I know Ted has family connections in Sweden, and that's part of the reason why Unity has a little bit of a Swedish flare but when you look at our designs and our home plans, they all have Swedish names. So that's the connection. Is both the what we've learned from Sweden as far as off site construction goes, but also Ted's family connections there.

Alison Keay: 12:52

So I'm interested in what it was like to go from the manual construction of the panels that we used to do in our shops here in Walpole, and what, what was the main change when we started building down in Keene, where our new production facility, what kind of work was put into preparing for that? And what are the big differences?

Jay Lepple: 13:12

Yeah, this, it's such a important topic for our company, and how we've evolved. We went from a 11,000 square foot facility to 100,000 square foot so in the Lean aspect of our old facility, where we're manually doing it, and we only had certain amount of tables, and we had to bring in walls at times, and then roofs at times, and floor systems at times, it really helped us with a smaller inventory and getting the handling of those materials in the facility, what just in time. So there was a lot less waste, there was a lot less inventory needed, but we were doing a lot less volume when we went to the new facility. Oh my gosh. What a blessing. It was. Just amazing to move to 100,000 square foot facility with dedicated lines for our open cavity walls, our roof assemblies, our floor systems, our insulated walls and having the space to actually store some of our already dry materials in a dry place. We now have two speed cut machines there. We have a semi automated framing machine, two cutting machines, a upraiser table, you know, a gantry that we can store the panels in and do all kinds of work, like windows. But when we and we have vacuum lifters all over the place, so nobody has to lift sheets by hand. But I would say that what was amazing was Paul boa here in the facility, who's been with the company for think 30 plus years. Really took about a year with an intern of planning this system, understanding the layout, how we can really dissect this, working with myself, working with other. Of individuals that worked in the facility and making the best possible manufacturing lines that we could. And with that, you know, when we first jumped ship and went to Keene in the matter of three months, we were seeing the efficiency, and I think that is a testament of how much he and others planned for this and the amazing results that came out of it in such a short period of time. The other thing that I just want to say is to be noted is all the carpenters that were here, hand framing, hand sheathing, installing Windows, they just picked up on the CNC equipment immediately. It was amazing how quickly they were immersed in it. It just shows a little bit about our culture and how much they were ready to adapt to anything that came ahead of them.

Mark Hertzler: 15:47

We've been talking a lot about the off site aspect of it, but that's only part of it. The other part of it is assembling the panels on site. And I want to qualify this question before I ask it, because, you know, there's a saying, what happens on the road, stays on the road. So the question is, professionally, what have you learned? What are the lessons that you've learned on the road about assembling the panels and being efficient out on site? Yeah,

Jay Lepple: 16:14

I'll keep the war stories to a minimum, out on the out on the road. But the the big thing, just as Ted learned and all the people before me, was bringing anything that was a challenge on site or that they had troubles with, to fix that within the shop, bring that back, bring that feedback. We had such a great team of engineers and designers. And typically, that's not the the way information flows in the construction world. You're in a design studio or an engineering studio, and you never really get to talk to those individuals on site. And those individuals were encouraged to come back, bring the feedback back. This is, this is what's going to make our timber frames better. These are going to make our building systems better. They have always been such an important and integral part of of our team here. And I think, you know, it's amazing still, that culture that the designers listen to the people on the road. How can we do this better? What are the fasteners we can use? How can we increase our speed to keep them off the road? Because really, all of those individuals now that are on the production line, we ask that 20% of their time be on the road, and that's as much for them to learn and make sure that the QC of the product that's going out is getting assembled in a way that they know they can guarantee that it's that's going to be perfect. And I just it just points to the amazing culture that we have. And they and they all volunteer basis. They're not told to go out on the road. They all volunteer to go out on the road because they love it when they see the Unity clients, and we get these great reports back of one of the last people the clients see on the job site from us is our road crew and our job captains. And they do, they take such pride in what they do while they're there. And and the air tightness, I should just say, even though we're probably not getting into that is is amazing. You know, the Passive House standard is point six air changes per hour, and these teams are coming in well below that in every single one of these homes, even though there's not passive houses. And so that's amazing, testament to the quality of both the individuals in the production environment, in the shop and out on the site.

Mark Hertzler: 18:43

And I can say I've been out on site when they've done the blower door tests. And those guys, they take it as a challenge. They're trying to beat each other when it gets to the air tightness and that blower door test. So it's always nice to see that. And I think it's a great thing that the same people that are building the panels in the factory, or the people that are assembling it, and so they're going to make sure that everything is done right. Because when you're out on site and you're responsible for getting it together, you want to make sure everything was done

Jay Lepple: 19:11

right. Certainly, yeah, it is a competition, too.

Alison Keay: 19:15

What do you see as the future of off site construction? Where do you think it's going? What do you think might be possible? Probably both in the industry in general, but also bensonwood specifically.

Jay Lepple: 19:26

I'm going to start at a little higher level here with the the whole country, as as you mentioned before, with the energy codes, there's the country, there's the state, there's the local jurisdictions that we have to abide by maybe a certain standard, but not all the time. And so we cross many states to get this, with the with the design, the architectural requirements, the engineering requirements, if it's code compliant, the energy code. And so it's difficult when each state. Has something different they need to see, or the local jurisdiction needs to see. And if we were on a level playing field with everybody that had the high energy standard that you spoke of earlier, this would be a lot simpler for all of us to follow these guidelines. So I think that's somewhere where our whole entire country can improve. General contractors that we partner with. Well, most of them are fantastic that we work with, but understanding there's a different business model to bring panelized or off site construction into their either their brand or their company, and understand how they could build out multiple houses in a year, rather than the one that they're doing from start to finish, it would be a huge thing.

Alison Keay: 20:45

A lot of the time it can be thought of very similarly to hiring out your framing, yeah. So under a general contractor, they very regularly hire out the framing. This is hiring out a high performance building show, right?

Jay Lepple: 20:57

And that's where, you know, I always think of ourselves as a super sub, offsetting multiple different trades, the framer and sheathing, obviously, and the insulator. And now we're getting to the point where we need an airtight specialist of some sort, on on the on these job sites, along with a window and door installer, which is getting very pricey, where we can do this in a factory setting for much cheaper, you know, chest height, putting and installing these windows and doors, where sometimes these can be on second and third stories of homes. You know, there's a lot more that can go into this, too. Is, as you know, in the past we we've built bathroom pods, we put on siding, we put on interior finishes. We've had plug and play plumbing plug and play electrical making pods for HVAC systems and other heating systems and and that's where I think we are going to advance, advance as a whole industry, to see those things, where we have more licensed people that can do that, bring them in the factory. That's going to be a huge shift, not just bidding on the next job and going to run wire throughout a whole building, that we'd actually be doing that in a factory, the siding and trim is another one that I think is one of those subcontractor specialties, or maybe it's the GC, but again, you're working at heights. You're using either a lot of pump staging or lulls or staging the whole building. And you can think of things like soffit materials. It's always number one on my mind, thinking of being under an eave putting up soffits, having the rain come down on you, where you've got that panel already flipped that upside down in the factory, and you could put all your your sub fascia on, your soffit on and save a whole lot of time, and have your roof done and and a fully weatherproof Shell in no time. So there's so many possibilities to bring everything that's happening on site to off site.

Alison Keay: 23:07

Yeah, the factory setting really is protecting the investment of the homeowner in what they're paying for upfront with that high performance shell, the more you can do in the factory, the quicker it can get installed on site, and the quicker you are protecting your investment, it's not exposed to the weather. So

Jay Lepple: 23:25

another, another area that you know, I can see, the off site world, especially in the panelization, is where we have, we have modulars already, and they have a spot in the industry, but they require big boxes going down small roads that are not big enough for those those places. So I think in these populated urban areas where you can't always get these large boxes, and this is somewhere where we can put more value within each of the panels and get a building erected without such large infrastructure to bring either the boxes in or the whole house in to the job site.

Mark Hertzler: 24:04

And just, you know, talking about the country and industry as a whole, offsite construction is not necessarily new. You know, it's been around for a while. It goes back to, you know, the Sears kit homes, as you mentioned. You know, the modular builders have been around for a while, but I think we're coming to a point where a few things are coming together. You know, it's the lack of labor that we have in industry, and it's also that people are much more focused on the quality and energy efficiency, realizing that it's not just the finishes and fixtures that make up a house. It's, you know, what's behind the walls and what you can't see, and that quality that you can really get with off site construction. And so you know all that's coming together, where I really do feel like in the coming years, this is going to take off much more than it has in the past.

Jay Lepple: 24:57

Yeah, for sure, I'm excited to be part of it. Yeah. It well.

Alison Keay: 25:01

Thank you for sharing your insight. It's been great talking off site construction with you, Jay. We hope you come back for some future episodes to share more of your knowledge with us

Mark Hertzler: 25:11

and your stories from the road and the story,

Alison Keay: 25:15

and thank you for listening. We're hope you're excited about off site construction and that you learned some new things.

Jay Lepple: 25:21

Thanks Alison and Mark,

Alison Keay: 25:25

thanks for listening to another episode of a new era of home building. If you're passionate about high performance homes like we are, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode on building certifications with our guest, Beth Campbell. You can also visit unityhomes.com to learn more about our upcoming events. Subscribe to our newsletter. Check out our home plans and get in touch. Thanks to George Peavey, Jason reamer and Josh Riemer of our company's very own plum Gable band for the music you hear on this podcast, and thanks to Damaris Graham for the production and editing of the podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Until next time, I'm Allison Kang and I'm Mark Hertzler, and here's to better building you.