ABSTRACT
The essential nature of the construction process has not changed for thousands of years. Buildings have always been and still are put together from small parts and pieces brought to the building site and assembled in place. Modular solutions have been proposed for decades but have not been widely adopted. Why not?
The legacy modular industry is constrained by regional markets out of a widely held but erroneous conviction that maximum size modules minimize cost. Trapped in conventional thinking, modular manufacturers cannot effectively market beyond a distribution range of about 125 miles. A true industrial solution requires global distribution to attain meaningful economies of scale. Here is our fundamental insight: low-cost transportation is the key to a robust modular building industry. In accordance with Principle #2: Economical Long-Distance Transportation, the intermodal shipping system will open global construction markets and supply chains, and in accordance with Principle #3—Intermodal Standards, the right size for a building module is the size of the shipping container.
