Entekra is an offsite construction company from California that made it though to the finals of the 2020 Ivory Innovation Awards. On April 16, through a livestream presentation, they were awarded first prize in the Construction and Design category.
The Ivory Prize shines a light on foundations, businesses, non-profits and community leaders who work to make housing more affordable. The awards focus on three categories; construction and design, finance and policy/regularity reform.
The winners of the 2020 Ivory Prize are chosen by Ivory Innovations’ Advisory Board, which consists of some of the leading innovators in housing design and is chaired by Kent Colton, Senior Research Fellow of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and president of Colton Housing Group.
“Entekra was chosen as the winner of the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability in the area of Construction and Design because of its ability to reduce the time it takes to build housing, and therefore the cost. With its innovative offsite solution, Entekra can improve both quality control and the time and cost to build a home,” says Colton. Entekra took home the gold for construction and design thanks to their innovative Fully Integrated Off-Site Solution® – FIOSS®.
According to a McKinsey report: “Globally, construction sector labor-productivity growth averaged 1 percent a year over the past two decades, compared with 2.8 percent for the total world economy and 3.6 percent for manufacturing.”
With the global construction labor shortage, the construction industry has been innovating and leveraging advanced technology to automate as much of the process as possible. FIOSS® is a construction solution that increases the productivity for framing single-family homes by an incredible 500 percent in terms of manhours.
“To improve the affordability of housing, home builders have to increase their productivity, which has steadily declined in the United States for more than a quarter century,” says Gerard McCaughey, Entekra’s CEO. “As Entekra was founded to change the way houses are built by improving construction productivity, the entire Entekra team is honored to receive this award,” adds McCaughey.
FIOSS® is able to achieve its impressive results by merging concept, design and engineering in an offsite manufacturing facility. The housing elements are created offsite and only need to be assembled onsite which reduces time and labor. The key structural elements of a typical 2,500 square-foot single-family home can be manufactured in the facility in under 4 hours. Once the elements are onsite, the home can be assembled in as little as 3-4 days rather than the usual 15 days to frame a home utilizing conventional building methods.
