With the ongoing shortage of skilled labor showing little signs of abatement, contractors are eagerly seeking ways to increase efficiency. This is one reason why the use of panelized wood-framed wall systems and other methods of prefabrication are gaining popularity.

“There is a lot of automation and digitization of building information with BIM, so that’s a factor,” said Mike Steffen, director of innovation for Walsh Construction. “But the big factor that’s leading to its use now is the shortage of labor.”

It’s actually a double whammy – in the Pacific Northwest, at least, he added.

“There’s more work out there available for the contractors to do, and the labor pool is extremely stretched,” he said. “So they have to do more with less, and panelization allows them to attack projects, regardless of their size, with a smaller crew and be able to spread their labor out. To me, that is actually the biggest driver of the change right now.”

One of the advantages of prefabrication is the reduction in the amount of on-site work required. By using three-dimensional digital models based on engineering and design documents, virtually any part of a project can then be shared with trade partners; then those aspects where prefabrication makes financial and practical sense can be tackled.

“Really, it’s part of the Lean construction trend that’s been smoldering a little bit over the past almost decade at this point,” said Aaron Vogel, a project and building information modeling (BIM) manager for Bremik Construction. “Some components of that seem to be catching on more than others, but basically it’s making it more of an efficient manufacturing process instead of the less efficient method of building everything on-site.”

Vogel has helped guide a number of projects where Bremik has collaborated with trade partners in creating these models months before the first shovelful of dirt is moved.

“If we’re coordinating with trade partners on all the systems in the building months before anything shows up on-site, it allows them to prefabricate,” Vogel said. “We get everyone on board early on and partner with the subs and try to communicate early on that we view this as a benefit we think you should do.”

Some of the larger subcontractors Bremik has partnered with in this regard include Piper Mechanical and Timberland Inc. The latter firm is working with Bremik on the Magnolia II affordable housing project in Northeast Portland. There, the two companies worked up a digital framing package based on building plans using Autodesk Revit design software. This allowed Timberland to pre-cut every stick of lumber being used for the four-story building for nonprofit Innovative Housing Inc.

“We’re kind of taking things that normally aren’t part of construction industry and making it more like manufacturing process,” Vogel said. “We’re borrowing from the architectural and design and from animation, and now there’s a whole push toward improving the visibility of the project, so there’s a whole tidal wave of software geared toward the contractor.”

It’s not a rigid process. There are so many variables in each project that creativity is not only allowed; it’s required.

“In general it’s been an asset,” Vogel said. “It’s been something that to a certain extent has grown out of the architects’ modeling. But it would be nice if we can use it to move toward a more collaborative process.”

Prefabricated wall panels are one of the easier pieces of a building to build off-site. They come in many forms too. From simple interior walls consisting only of bare studs to exterior panels that come with weather barriers, insulation and even utility fixtures, the variations are nearly endless.

Computer-aided design and manufacturing have also helped ensure a much higher level of accuracy in crafting prefabricated components.

Such advantages of prefabrication may influence decisions for affordable housing projects. The owner requirements for projects of this type typically differ significantly from those for market-rate projects, in part because of the former’s long-term approach.

“With the client niche we serve, especially in the affordable housing world, costs have been going up dramatically,” Steffen said.

From a historic annual rate of inflation of roughly 3 to 4 percent, the current rate of cost escalation regionally is at least double that amount.

In response, Steffen led a team of Walsh executives in crafting a white paper that examined a host of different ways of approaching design, preconstruction and construction in an attempt to reduce costs and boost efficiencies. Known as Cost Efficient Design and Construction (CEDC), this effort is simply a matter of common sense, Steffen said. CEDC includes things like standardizing the layout of residential units, reducing their width (and by extension, the building envelope), avoiding excessive glazing, staying away from cantilevers and structural steel, and putting plumbing in back-to-back walls.

Altogether, such actions can slash roughly 10 to 20 percent from a project’s cost, Steffen said.

“Our premise is if you follow these ideas you will very likely reduce costs,” he said.

Such strategies can be used with prefabricated wall panels. There are many examples under construction in Portland, including the Nesika Illahee affordable housing project being built by LMC Construction in the Cully neighborhood.

The three-story wood-framed building designed by Carleton Hart Architecture will have 59 residential units. Prefabricated panels manufactured by Pacific Wall Systems are being used. This has reduced the number of carpenters on-site to fewer than 10.

“If I had 20 guys out here they’d just be getting in each other’s way,” LMC superintendent Tim Williams said. “I think we have more superintendents (on-site) than we do laborers and carpenters.”

Meanwhile, efficiency also is increasing via use of cross-laminated timber panels in floor and ceiling installations for projects such as Albina Yard, an office building in Northeast Portland. Geoff Sosebee of Lever Architecture helped design it.

“The panels only require a crew of four, including a crane operator, and it goes up very, very quickly,” he told the audience last month during a Portland Design Week event focused on prefabrication. “But we learned that we needed team-wide communication with the contractor, the manufacturer, architects, engineers, fabricators – everyone involved.”

Lessons were learned along the way, Sosebee added. But the process that was developed in ad hoc fashion for Albina Yard has since been used in other projects.

“We modeled every bolt and every screw, and in the end we wanted this thing to go together like an Erector Set,” he said. “An entire floor would be set in three to four hours during construction, but it wasn’t all easy.”

Challenges abound for the building industries these days. However, prefabrication and similar strategies are attracting attention, and may help firms overcome those hurdles.

“The industry has been lazy and has not been willing to do the right thing, which is to do the intensive coordination early and have this stuff figured out on paper or with a virtual model,” Steffen said. “But the industry is going more and more that way, and the prefabrication can help.”

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A new development in Oregon City will provide affordable housing for military veterans struggling with low-wage employment and even homelessness.

Known for now as Pleasant Avenue Veterans Housing – it will be named after a local service member upon completion – the building will provide 24 apartments for persons with incomes at or below 30 percent of the median family income. Northwest Housing Alternatives, a nonprofit, is developing the project for the Clackamas County Housing Authority. The two-story building was designed by KASA Architects and is being built by general contractor Walsh Construction.

“It’s open to veterans from all over; they’re not restricted to Clackamas County,” Clackamas County Housing Development Coordinator Angel Sully said. “The county has a long-standing relationship with NHA, so when we were approached by them and their former director it just seemed like a good fit; it just checked all the boxes we needed.”

The building will hold 12 one-bedroom units, eight two-bedroom units and four studios.

Crews broke ground in mid-January and currently are nearing completion of wood-framed interior and exterior walls and roofing. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing work is just getting started.

“We’re right at the tail end of framing, and in the next couple of days we’ll have the roof sheathing all done,” Walsh Construction superintendent Bryan Ware said. “The roofing and siding will start next week, and with windows there will be a very quick transformation. But right now the project is tracking really well. We’ve gotten some lucky breaks with the trades.”

The project is one of the first for Walsh using its new Cost Efficient Design Construction methodology, which seeks to minimize construction time and cost through design and material efficiency. Here, those efficiencies are being realized both through the use of panelized exterior and interior wall systems, as well as a design that avoids complex angles and shapes.

“The entire project is prefabbed and panelized,” Walsh Construction project manager Brandi Pine said. “It’s got the two-foot spacing, which is not totally common on a wood-framed structure. The entire project was panelized, and it took us two weeks to stand all the walls and then it’s been another week and a half to do the roof; so it’s been extremely fast framing.”

The wall panels are manufactured by Pacific Wall Systems, which has plants in Central Point and Tumwater, Washington. The wall systems come in a wide variety of configurations ranging from bare studs to nearly complete walls with drywall, window openings, weather barrier, and plumbing and electric fixtures.

In this case, Walsh chose to use exterior wall panels sheathed with DensGlass weather barrier. The interior consists of basic stud walls, some of which have plywood sheathing.

The biggest advantages are the time saved and the need for fewer on-site carpenters.

“It’s definitely faster when you panelize, regardless of how many people you have,” Pine said. “There are not a lot of wood framers too, so this was the perfect storm in terms of a lull in the workload. Being panelized, they were able to stand almost half a floor in a day.”

For context, the entire building consists of 18,000 square feet of floor area over two stories. That kind of time savings means completion will be reached in less than a year; tenants are expected to begin moving in at some point after Thanksgiving.

“This is the second veteran project that NHA has done,” Northwest Housing Alternatives’ Nikolai Ursin said. “The first was Pomeroy Place, which was opened a couple of years ago in unincorporated Washington County. There’s a veteran preference on the lease-up policy, so people who sign up to be on the wait list, if they’re a veteran, then they get bumped up the list.”

Financing the project has been complex, Ursin said. But because NHA has avoided using federal low-income housing tax credits, Clackamas County should be able to smoothly take over the building after it is up and running.

“We’re functioning as a turnkey developer for them,” Ursin said. “As we convert to permanent financing, the Housing Authority will purchase the project from us and then they will continue ownership and operations for the next several decades.”

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A downtown Milwaukie site that was formerly the home of local landmark Bernard’s Garage is being redeveloped into a multifamily housing project, the first such project to be built in the city in years.

Dubbed Axletree, the five-story, 110-residential unit mixed-use building is being developed by Guardian Real Estate Services on a parcel at the corner of Southeast 21^st Avenue and Washington Street in the heart of the city. General contractor R&H Construction is building the roughly $31 million project, which was designed by SERA Architects and is one of under way in the downtown district.

“I think we got a catalyst deal here and a catalyst project,” said Tom Brenneke, Guardian’s president and a Milwaukie native. “We need housing, and it’s ripe for it right now. We’re going to see some interesting things happen when this development is completed because there are lots of capital projects going on right now. It will begin happening, but we’re the first ones in.”

When it comes to commercial development, Milwaukie has lagged somewhat behind the rest of the metro area. But this year large projects have gotten under way at Milwaukie High School and the Northwest Housing Alternatives campus, both just blocks away from the Axletree site. Further plans also are on tap in the city center thanks to a city of Milwaukie master planning effort.

“I grew up there,” Brenneke said. “I know the neighborhood well, and that makes me unique. But you look at the proximity to Portland and you think of yourself being in downtown Portland working, and you can go left or right; left to Vancouver and right to Milwaukie, and I don’t know why you’d go left.”

Downtown Milwaukie, lacking the chic factor of Portland proper, has long been known as the home of Dark Horse Comics and not a lot else.

“Downtown has historically been very quiet,” Brenneke said. “Maybe it’s just not as cool or hip.”

A development surge that was expected to follow completion of TriMet’s orange line in 2015 has resulted in multiple transit-oriented projects near stops in southeast Portland, but downtown Milwaukie has yet to see the same type of mixed-use building that has proliferated in Portland.

“We’ve always been around that area, but why develop?” Brenneke said. “I’d say obviously light rail is very compelling, and then the proximity to downtown Portland. And I think you have to distinguish downtown Milwaukie from the rest of Milwaukie. You get out to King Road and 82^nd and you have a lot of development out there.”

Brenneke also blamed Portland’s inclusionary zoning policy for slowing residential development to a standstill.

Deals in Portland are not working right now, Brenneke said. “Inclusionary housing has really done this in. The math doesn’t work,” he said. “Trying to get these to pencil just doesn’t work. So we’ve started looking elsewhere where we don’t have those requirements, and obviously Milwaukie fits.”

Axletree’s 110 residential units will be split between four stories and programmed to provide 44 studios, 58 one-bedroom and eight two-bedroom units ranging from 440 to 1,044 square feet. The ground floor will be split into four commercial spaces totaling 7,300 square feet of floor area.

The building will contain 78 parking spaces, including a 17-stall mechanical car stacker.

Crews broke ground earlier this fall and the first concrete deck pour took place last week. Andy Hernandez, site superintendent for R&H Construction, expects to begin placing prefabricated wood-framed walls by next week.

Prefabricated components are being manufactured by Pacific Wall Systems of Tumwater, Washington, and trucked to the job site. Walls are hoisted into place with a tower crane, saving significant amounts of time and manpower, Hernandez said.

“It’s huge,” he said. “We’ll get truckloads of panels and we’ll probably be framed in 15 weeks, where to do it conventionally not only would it add three weeks to our overall, we would have two to three times the labor on site, which gets to be a problem.”

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A celebration was held last week for the topping out of The Union at St. Johns, a four-story mixed-use apartment being built in North Portland by R&H Construction for developer Farid Bolouri. The Jones Architecture-designed building features three stories of wood-framed construction over a ground-floor concrete podium and a below-grade parking garage with around 90 spaces. It will have 103 residential units including studios, one- and two-bedrooms, 20,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.

All of the project’s wood framing was prefabricated by Pacific Wall Systems in Medford and installed by Wood Mechanix. The weather-resistive barrier application is 25 percent complete, and window installation began last week. Next month, drywall installation will begin, masons will begin installing the brick veneer finishes, and the tower crane will come down. The project is under budget, on schedule and gaining on the completion date, which is slated for this December.

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