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Los Angeles is currently experiencing a massive shortage in affordable homes. The government estimates that this stands around 500,000 units across the city. In California as whole the shortage was estimated to be as high as 3,000,000 - 4,000,000 homes as of 2017. The solution to this crisis seems evident, produce more homes quicker. But in practicality undertaking this new construction is much more difficult.
Offsight customer CRATE Modular has an answer. Their structural steel modules are uniquely suited for multifamily housing and paired with their expertise and consultative approach they can rapidly reduces the time to complete a new affordable multifamily project. CRATE works with affordable housing developers from the early design phase, through permitting, manufacturing and installation of their products. In this manner, they can ensure from the start that all multifamily affordable housing projects they undertake will be built professionally and effectively when they enter factory production.
CRATE Modular utilizes Offsight’s software to visualize their entire production process in a simple digital workflow. Through Offsight, CRATE can effectively manage their production and delivery and track and control variable project costs including quality/rework and labor.
With soaring jobsite construction costs resulting in over-priced housing, owners who are going offsite expect to build housing more quickly and cost effectively. Managing production costs from the factory floor is a vital step in ensuring that CRATE’s multifamily projects can be built at an affordable price.
Offsight is their go-to solution to help track and manage variable production and labor costs which can detract from project profitability and ultimately the affordability of the multifamily modules themselves.
Offsight’s labor costing and timesheets functionality allows CRATE to monitor labor spent and attributes work hours to each module and work station in real-time. With Offsight, operators are able to easily check in and out of modules and stations after shifts start and end for projects they are working on. This allows the CRATE management team to pull accurate daily reports of labor expended and compare it with planned labor spend for each project.
By implementing Offsight’s labor tracking functionality and managing this major variable cost in real-time with Offsight’s Digital Timesheets, CRATE can manufacture their multifamily housing cost efficiently and ensure that the project can be completed on time and on budget.
Through Offsight, quality inspectors can flag non-conformance, assembly or installation issues to trigger real-time email and app alerts. Supervisors and managers can track these issues live and confirm they are resolved before the module leaves the factory. This ensures all modular steel units meet the highest quality standards and reduces the risk of costly rework issues that could impact the overall project cost.
Compliance with building codes is a critical aspect of multifamily and residential projects, particularly when it comes to affordable housing. Using Offsight, CRATE was able to easily create customized digital building code and conformance checklists for daily inspection reports and audits. They were then able to access Offsight’s Reporting Dashboard to easily share these reports on a scheduled basis with their third party inspector, ICC NTA, executives, managers and other project stakeholders.
This process was streamlined further through Offsight’s Partnership with ICC NTA , whereby building component manufacturers undertaking multifamily, commercial and affordable housing projects can add their ICC NTA inspector to Offsight as a secure user to easily track code conformance, reduce time wasted back and forth and improve document management during factory audits.
“Offsight has saved us a tremendous amount of time on tedious reporting and provides us a means to track and share build code conformance across our many complex multifamily projects. Offsight is a must have as we seek to ramp up our business, invest in new product lines and grow our workforce.“
CRATE Modular
COO, Matt Miller
