ADL Attends, Headlines at Advancing Prefabrication in Dallas
Author: William McCormack
Nolan Browne and Diana Fisler represented ADL Ventures at the Advancing Prefabrication conference in Dallas, TX on Wednesday, June 16 and Thursday, June 17. The multi-day event, Advancing Prefabrication, sought to advance prefab and modular construction by connecting industry leaders, designers, contractors, modular firms, and other related stakeholders.
On the morning the conference officially began, Browne, who is ADL’s Chairman, spoke alongside Joan Glickman, Program Manager, Advanced Building Construction Initiative & Residential Buildings Integration at U.S. Department of Energy. The duo made the case for the urgency of America becoming a leader in industrialized construction and for the Advanced Building Construction (ABC) Collaborative, a visionary DOE program funded by the DOE and jointly led by ADL and RMI that coordinates the players in the buildings industry supply chain around developer demand to accelerate the deployment of innovative construction technologies. Their talk, titled “ABC Initiative: Manufacturing and Construction for High Performance / Low Carbon,” highlighted the conference’s Wednesday morning segment on supply chain transformation.
Nolan Browne, Chairman and Diana Fisler, Principal
Glickman provided an overview of the DOE’s initiatives to advance prefab and the high-end manufacturing jobs they hope their efforts will generate.
Browne discussed identifying market barriers to investments in building construction and how stakeholders can work together to address those challenges.
They both offered the audience an overview of efforts to make prefab high-quality and affordable by pursuing component assembly offsite, mass customization, and a unified software platform to preserve data.
The second half of their talk focused on ABC and its impact. By facilitating coordination between players, the collaborative amplifies the impact of research and development spending and helps to promote standards around new technologies — from off-site, modular, and prefabrication to structures that reduce carbon emissions and promote strong resiliency. The collaborative also seeks to reduce duplication of labor and coordinate efforts with government, foundation and private sector incentives to increase associated efficiencies.
In addition to the presentation on ABC, ADL also exhibited at the conference event and engaged with other attendees on ranking potential improvements in prefabrication with a short survey that inspired spirited discussion. Among the options below, logistics optimization emerged as the most common favorite, perhaps because of the difficulty of delivering and staging bulky materials and the complexity of the construction supply chain.
The ADL team draws on its deep expertise in buildings and construction to strengthen the links between corporates and startups and facilitate the development and deployment of innovations that benefit both. As ADL Principal Fisler explored in a recent piece, offsite and modular construction do not need to be all or nothing — innovations in the industry can take all forms.
ADL is equipped to assist with new structures and tools that result in more efficient and profitable building processes with lower carbon footprints. Reach out below to learn more.