Flexibility Isn't Free (But Construction Acts Like It Is)
Think about how we run most projects: Designs move, decisions get delayed, RFIs stack up. To construction teams, this flexibility is like an insurance policy—we wait because committing too soon feels risky. (You might recognize this: we hedge timelines, delay coordination, keep drawings fluid—because locking down too early feels dangerous.)
But prefab runs on the opposite assumption. Factories need certainty, not flexibility. Production schedules lock weeks in advance, and once they lock, there’s no safe way to “adjust later.” (Typical modular factories operate on 6–12 week batch cycles—once they’re set, shifting a design means losing your spot in line.)
Yet, we still bring prefab suppliers in after major design decisions are locked—often far later than other industrial sectors. In aerospace, designs freeze years before production. Automotive companies stop making fundamental changes 18–24 months out. But in construction, IFC drawings often aren’t fully stable until after groundbreaking, sometimes even halfway through the build.
(No wonder we struggle—our decision-making timeline isn’t just delayed, it’s structurally incompatible with how prefab wants to work.)
How Late Decisions Quietly Multiply Costs
We underestimate how much prefab amplifies small decisions. A minor ceiling adjustment—maybe just a two-inch variance across corridors—sounds harmless. But in prefab, that tiny shift isn’t trivial. It triggers re-coordination, module re-batching, and on-site rework.
On one recent healthcare job, a seemingly modest late-stage design tweak ended up adding nearly a week of manual field corrections. The racks were fine. The modules were fine. But the process wasn’t. (That simple $15,000 design fix quickly became a six-figure coordination headache—exactly the opposite of what prefab is supposed to solve.)
In traditional stick-built, you might fix that issue with a quick RFI or a field directive—maybe half a day’s headache. But prefab isn’t a collection of standalone parts; it’s a carefully timed choreography. It moves in sequences, not pieces.
When we allow the design to float into construction, it’s not flexibility—it’s fragility. The entire model is fragile, even though our gut instinct is to believe it’s protective.
What Prefab-Friendly Projects Do Differently
The projects where prefab genuinely succeeds don’t just use prefab—they adapt their whole workflow around it. Here’s how they make that happen:
- Early scope lock-in: On successful prefab jobs, critical trades like MEP aren’t finalized at 90% CDs—they’re locked in as early as DD.
- Procurement sequencing matches prefab logic: Purchase orders and trade contracts are sequenced around factory timelines, not just construction milestones.
- Suppliers aren’t vendors; they're partners: Prefab firms are integrated into schematic design, not consulted afterward.
- BIM and coordination models freeze earlier: Teams accept imperfect BIM at an earlier stage rather than chasing perfect models too late.
- Production logic drives schedules: Milestones reflect production batch cycles, not arbitrary install deadlines.
These changes seem straightforward, but they require us to rethink deeply held assumptions. (I’ve seen project teams struggle with this—letting go of flexibility feels unnatural, even unsafe at first.)
Quietly Reframing Our Operating Model
The deeper problem isn't simply mismanagement or resistance to technology. It’s that prefab exposes something hidden in our current way of doing things: our systems reward deferring decisions until we absolutely must commit. (This is structural, built into our contracts, our processes—even our culture. Nobody means harm; it’s just how things evolved.)
This works well enough in traditional construction, where minor adjustments cost relatively little. But prefab amplifies the consequences of deferral. What feels safe in traditional projects becomes profoundly expensive in prefab. (Studies consistently show late-stage design changes cost five to thirteen times more than early decisions. In prefab-heavy builds, I’ve personally seen multipliers even higher.)
Rethinking Our Approach, Quietly and Clearly
We don’t need louder advocacy for prefab. We need quiet clarity about why it keeps failing.
Prefab doesn’t break loudly at the end—it breaks quietly, at the start, before we even realize what’s happening. It breaks when we issue coordination drawings too late, when procurement waits too long, when schedules flex beyond what the factory’s logic allows.
We’ve structured our entire industry to be flexible at the exact moments prefab needs finality. And that’s why the “revolution” is still struggling to stick.
Here’s the quiet truth I keep coming back to:
Prefab can’t just be bolted onto our existing system. It requires the system itself to shift. Until construction embraces earlier decisions as strength—not vulnerability—we’ll keep losing quietly.
(Prefab isn’t failing construction. Construction is quietly failing prefab—one delayed decision at a time.)
(My own reflection, after years of watching prefab struggle, is simple: our systems need updating far more urgently than the technologies we keep chasing. Perhaps the real innovation isn’t prefab itself, but how we structure decisions around it.)
