Watch enough construction and it may occur to you that things have scarcely changed since Ramses II’s building spree. Yes, we have cranes, forklifts, and electric saws, but so much of building still comes down to backbreaking labor: guys digging ditches, pushing wheelbarrows or swinging hammers. Wed this commonplace observation with our apparent need to disrupt and revolutionize every industry and your offspring is modular construction.

What is modular construction? It’s a method of construction, not a building type.   It’s a matter of where rather than what. Instead of erecting a building on-site, most of a modular structure is built off-site. One assembles everything but a project’s foundation, exterior siding and roof in a factory a thousand miles away. It’s constructing an apartment building in individual modules—imagine freight containers—in, say, Boise, trucking them to your site, easing them onto your foundation and then screwing them in, side-by-side, and then stacking them floor-by-floor like a child’s building blocks.

When finished, the Modular Building Institute says that, “Modular buildings are virtually indistinguishable from their site-built counterparts.”

Why do this? Why bother fooling with a construction method that has worked for the last five thousand years? Simple. Modular companies claim their approach can save up to 40 percent on construction costs and finish buildings 40 to 50 percent faster. How?

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