The origins of modular buildings date back to the 17th century. One of the first known modular houses was born thanks to an American colonial fisherman who had recently moved from England and wanted to build a house using reliable English construction methods. The first successful construction of a fully modular domestic system did not materialize until 1933, with the Winslow Ames House, owned by Robert W. McLaughlin and his company, American House, Inc.
A modular building is a prefabricated building that consists of repeated sections called modules. Modularity involves building sections away from the construction site and then delivering them to the intended site. The installation of the prefabricated sections is completed on site. Prefabricated sections are sometimes placed with a crane.
The modules can be placed side by side, end-to-end, or stacked, allowing for a variety of configurations and styles. After placement, the modules are joined together by connections between modules, also known as interconnects. The interconnections link the individual modules together to form the overall structure of the building. Once again, modular construction met those needs because of its efficiency, reduced costs, and rapid construction.
The benefits that modular construction provided to homes since the Sears Modern Home program were the type of benefits that were even more important to businesses, specifically, the reduction in construction time. The construction of modular buildings allows the community to share designs and tools related to the different parts of housing construction. Modular construction and prefab construction are different, but they often overlap. Usually, there are prefabricated parts of the modular scheme, for example.
Unlike traditional construction methods, modular construction is a much faster process that can dramatically reduce the chance of going over budget and being left out of the scope. The construction of modular buildings may seem like a newer way of constructing buildings, but it actually has a long and historic history. Permanent modular buildings are built to meet or exceed the same building codes and standards as site-built structures, and modular construction projects use the same materials specified by the architect that are used in conventionally constructed buildings. Permanent modular construction (PMC) buildings are manufactured in a controlled environment and can be built with wood, steel or concrete.
The Conklin Hall at Dutchess Community College is an excellent example of how modular construction methods can build a large construction project on budget, on time and in limited space. In the 1970s, modular construction gained enough ground among companies that began to choose it more frequently over traditional construction. The fact that modular construction starts in a controlled environment outside the premises helps to avoid the difficulties that conventional construction methods usually have, such as inclement weather, which can increase the likelihood of going over budget and being out of reach. These new modular houses were built from parts of a factory, in which a steel structure was used as the chassis on which the house was transported to the construction site.
This process of building structures outside the premises, and then transporting and assembling them in half the time compared to traditional techniques, has undergone an extraordinary transformation since the 1830s and has become one of today's main construction approaches. In England, many McDonald's restaurants are fully built and operational in four weeks, thanks to modular construction. As companies began to realize the benefits of prefab construction, it became widespread among the construction community.
