Every level of government is buying offsite. None is buying the part that makes it compound.

Government has decided that factory-built housing is part of the answer. The money is already moving. New York committed fifty million dollars to put families in factory-built homes, then sold those homes below the cost to build them. States are publishing pre-approved home catalogs, from Michigan to Indiana, to speed permitting and cut soft costs. Counties are now planning modular factories of their own.

Each effort is sound. Together they do not compound.

Each program buys a product or a plan. None buys the layer beneath them. Without shared, open standards, every jurisdiction’s investment is an island. A module built for one state cannot be sourced from a factory tooled for the next. A catalog drawn in one place cannot be built by a manufacturer across the border. The public buys offsite many times over, and buys it unaligned, many times over.

Even the most comprehensive federal reform proves the gap. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act advanced through both chambers of Congress. It modernizes financing and program rules across dozens of provisions. It funds nothing to build the open marketplace that catalog-based construction needs.

Even the best state proves it. Vermont opened its pre-approved catalog to factory methods after CfOC engaged it. The catalog is real progress. It still stops at plans. No state has yet built the open standards, agreements, and file types that let one jurisdiction’s investment serve the next.

The alignment layer is the work of government

That layer is the proper work of government. A standard serves every jurisdiction and belongs to none, so no single state will fund it alone. This is the textbook role of public investment, and its highest and best use.

Open standards, agreements, and file formats are that alignment layer. They let a dollar spent in one state lower costs in another. They turn fifty separate procurements into one compounding market. They make public investment add up instead of cancel out.

What the Center for Offsite Construction does

CfOC builds that shared infrastructure as an open commons, free for any government to adopt. The work proceeds in four steps:

1. Name the shift, so the change is legible to those who must legislate and procure for it.
2. Map what it requires, so the work is finite rather than open-ended.
3. Ship the open-source pieces — the standards, agreements, and file formats — through an ANSI-accredited consensus process.
4. Help early adopters apply them on real public projects.

Already at the table

• CfOC holds ANSI-accredited standards-development status. The first open connectivity standard is now in active development.
• CfOC’s Executive Director served as an expert evaluator on Ulster County’s award committee for its Modular Construction Strategic Plan. That engagement led to an invitation to represent offsite interests at a New York Federal Reserve roundtable of local officials.
• CfOC advised the State of Vermont as it opened its statewide pre-approved catalog to factory-built methods.
• The published philosophy and Models of Delivery map give legislators and agencies a shared language for the shift.

Two ways to begin

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Want to keep learning? The Philosophy essays on this site make the deeper case for why building is changing and what it means. →