PD&R at the 2025 Industrial Housing Summit: Advancing Industrial Construction

PD&R at the 2025 Industrial Housing Summit: Advancing Industrial Construction

Staff from HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) attended the inaugural Industrialized Housing Summit at the University of Texas, Austin on July 24 and 25, 2025. The summit's host was the Enabling Technologies for Housing Innovation Center (ETHIC), a HUD grantee whose mission is "to be a technological engine for shaping innovative and emerging products, policies, and people that provide affordable housing solutions." ETHIC's research focuses on creating a new industrialized construction (IC) ecosystem to increase the scale of affordable housing production. 

ETHIC structured the 2-day summit to bring together stakeholders for solutions-oriented dialogue on the opportunities and challenges of IC. The event included a day of educational sessions and panels and a second day of site visits related to industrialized construction, including a factory and an infill site. The summit had more than 120 attendees representing a range of key stakeholders in housing construction, including policymakers, academics, current homebuilders, and others interested in learning about IC.

Industrialized Construction

IC is the transformation of conventional onsite construction into optimized offsite manufacturing, assembly, and installation of standardized housing components through digitalization, automation, supply chain integration, lean processes, and sustainability. IC aims to increase productivity, quality, efficiency, and lifecycle value through industrialized production techniques and interdisciplinary collaboration across the housing supply ecosystem. Technologies such as panelized systems (open/closed wall panels, ceiling/floor cassettes, and mass timber) or volumetric modular (fully enclosed on all six sides) offer promising solutions.

The Summit: Day One

The first day of the summit began with opening remarks from PD&R General Deputy Assistant Secretary Todd Richardson, followed by keynote sessions and plenary discussions on IC and the promise IC offers for building more affordable housing. The "IC 101" session discussed the fundamentals of IC, differentiating between panelized, modular, and other types of IC in terms of their application and impact. Other panels focused on how builders can use IC and actions local policymakers can take to make IC more appealing and increase housing production in their jurisdictions. 

The first day also featured several panel discussions aimed both at those already working in the IC industry and stakeholders trying to understand IC construction. The panelists shared information about inspections, siting, and key barriers to IC scaling and adoption, especially around regulatory complexity across codes, permitting, and zoning. The panelists also discussed startup and operational challenges facing IC manufacturers.

The Summit: Day Two

On the second day, attendees visited Falcon Structures and an infill site in the heart of Austin. Falcon Structures, founded in 2003, is a container-based housing and structures manufacturer that repurposes shipping containers into office space, detached housing, transitional housing, classrooms, bathrooms, and other uses. Falcon Structures only uses one-trip shipping containers built to International Organization for Standardization specifications, which ensures that the containers can withstand extreme environments and meet size and durability standards. Shipping containers are made with Corten steel, and, when repurposed, have a lifespan of up to 50 years. Corten steel, made with copper; chromium; phosphorus; and trace amounts of nickel, silicon, and manganese, has considerable corrosion resistance and tensile strength.

Falcon Structures converts shipping containers based on user requirements. In addition, the company's products are preapproved as meeting the building code standards for several states, allowing the company to build and ship to those states. Falcon Structures reviews the codes for the destination state to ensure that the units it builds meet the requirements of the location so that the products arrive ready to site. In all cases, the responsibility for permitting remains with the buyer.

Falcon Structures' cofounder, Stephen Shang, noted that many offsite housing manufacturers are going bankrupt because they lack knowledge about factory efficiencies. Rather than relying on heavy machinery, Falcon's manufacturing facility optimizes factory resources to remodel containers efficiently and with minimal waste. The company's innovation is its design "book," which it uses to quickly respond to client needs. Zoning issues, however, still need to be resolved on a case-by-case basis.

The second visit was to the KRDB's infill site in downtown Austin. In March 2025, the city of Austin adopted an ordinance modifying drainage regulations to most residential subdivisions of no more than 1 acre. Eligible plots can undergo a streamlined drainage review, allowing for new infill housing units on these lots.

The owner of the plot wanted to remove a single-family home and develop three separate units to be used for rental housing for university students. The site is in a dense city center, ideally suited for a quick construction timeline. Each infill unit is three stories with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. KRDB, a vertically integrated firm, functions as the project's developer, designer, and builder. Vertical integration allows the team to control the budget and building process. KRDB completed more than 80 percent of the units' construction in a factory and sited the structures on the plot with a crane, with some work, such as building a stairwell and a deck, completed onsite. 

Conclusion

With its grant to ETHIC, PD&R helps showcase how homes can be built differently. PD&R will continue to encourage builders to adopt IC and support research to make homebuilding more efficient and affordable.