Hello World!
We are excited to share more details about our new venture, Reframe Systems. We are on a mission to accelerate and scale the construction of net-zero homes for all. We are developing a parameterizable modular construction system and a network of microfactories that enable us to drive down costs and construction times of net-zero housing to make it economically viable. We are seed-funded by Eclipse Ventures and Foundamental Ventures and are on track to build our prototype microfactory in the Greater Boston area by the end of this year.
Origin story
Our co-founders, Vikas, Aaron, and Felipe worked at Amazon Robotics for a combined 20 years. Together, they helped build and scale flexible human-robot solutions globally across Amazon’s fulfillment network.
After becoming a parent and spending 41 days in the NICU with his newborn twins, Vikas became more appreciative of our limited time on this planet. This compelled him to build a future that would make his children and grandchildren proud. He explored how he could apply his expertise in scaling automation solutions to tackle carbon emissions and impact society. Vikas partnered with Eclipse Ventures to develop a thesis on constructing net-zero-carbon homes faster and cheaper with modular construction in flexible microfactories. After building conviction in the business case, he formed Reframe Systems with a seed investment from Eclipse Ventures and Foundamental Ventures.
Aaron shared a similar passion for tackling climate change. He left Amazon in 2021, determined to find work that would leave a lasting positive impact on the planet. He had recently moved to Vermont from Boston and saw how a housing supply shortage, made worse by a recent influx of remote workers like himself, made it difficult for people to find affordable homes to buy or rent. When Vikas approached him with the idea of starting a business in modular construction, he saw a unique opportunity to help solve these related problems.
Felipe, also a dad of newborn twins as well as a toddler, felt similarly to Vikas. Fatherhood, and a childhood spent growing up in Brazil witnessing profound economic inequality, informed his ambition to have a net-positive impact on the world. He came to the US with these ambitions in pursuit of the American dream. In his time here he has seen parts of this dream become increasingly unaffordable for a significant portion of the population. So when the opportunity arose to work on a project that would tackle affordability and climate change he jumped on it.
Human Progress, Climate Change and the Built environment
The Earth is warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Without swift and comprehensive action, climate change will irreversibly damage life on this planet. We can limit temperature increases to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and avoid the worst effects of climate change. To do so, we must succeed at bringing net GHG emissions to zero by 2050. As the saying goes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
The built environment generates 40% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. 27% comes from building operations like space heating and cooling, and 13% comes from embodied carbon in building materials and construction operations. Bringing these numbers to zero requires the construction industry to do two things over the next few decades: (1) Ensure all new buildings are carbon-net-zero or negative, and (2) retrofit existing buildings to require zero operational carbon.
“As the saying goes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.””
How will this be achieved?
The construction industry has already invented the tools that enable a net-zero-carbon future. New buildings can sequester carbon by limiting high embodied carbon materials like steel and concrete and choosing carbon-sequestering materials like sustainably harvested timber. Builders can eliminate operational carbon with airtight, well-insulated, all-electric buildings including supplemental on-site renewable power generation and storage. Existing buildings can undergo deep energy retrofits that improve thermal performance and air-tightness while moving to all-electric heating and cooling.
So why is this not happening at scale?
Manufacturing productivity has experienced a nine-fold increase from 1950 until present. However, productivity in the construction sector peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since. The construction industry is less productive per hour of labor than it was in 1950. Not surprisingly, the cost of delivering buildings has vastly outstripped inflation. Delivering basic, code-compliant buildings gets more complex and expensive every year, making net-zero-carbon buildings out of reach for most. In short, we aren’t building climate-friendly buildings because we can’t afford to.
If manufacturing as a whole is so efficient, why not make construction more like the rest of manufacturing? Industrialized offsite construction or modular construction has been attempted for decades as a way to bridge this gap. The idea is simple: bring the construction site into a factory, then control and automate processes to reduce cost. Adoption of offsite construction has doubled in the US from 2015 to 2021 due to 30% to 50% schedule savings and cost predictability. While direct cost savings have not been demonstrated at scale, there is significant innovation underway to drive costs down with automation and better process design. However, most companies in this space are replicating automotive manufacturing, which is low-mix, high-volume, and requires capital-intensive, inflexible production systems.
This approach has significant limitations. Buildings differ from highly standardized products (like TVs or cars) that most manufacturing systems produce cheaply and efficiently. The intersection of site conditions and zoning requirements largely defines building design requirements. A large, geographically diverse country like the US has many levels of jurisdiction, a range of weather and seismic conditions, and diverse customer preferences. This inherent variability makes it difficult to design and deliver a standardized product at scale. Good luck repeating the Henry Ford adage, “any color as long as it’s black,” in front of the municipal zoning board. Effectively, the construction industry delivers prototype products, and since prototypes are complex and not repeatable, the cost and productivity trends above should come as no surprise.
“Good luck repeating the Henry Ford adage, ‘any color as long as it’s black,’ in front of the municipal zoning board. ”
How will Reframe Systems reverse these trends?
We won’t try to fight the inherent variability in construction. Instead, we are building a product platform and production system that enable mass customization. We are borrowing principles of flexible automation that are low-cost, reconfigurable, and built to scale up or down from the e-commerce fulfillment industry. E-commerce has mastered high-mix, high-volume production processes in distributed and decentralized networks.
To achieve mass customization, we need to build a very different kind of production system. We will move away from large, capital-intensive, line-based automation and instead use rapidly deployable and reconfigurable robotic workcells. We will avoid material handling systems based on tight tolerances and geometrically accurate parts and instead use vision systems that can accommodate variation. We will keep human judgment in the loop with beautiful and intuitive human-machine interfaces. We won’t rely on wage-rate arbitrage and instead will design human-machine systems that increase productivity per factory sqft and allow us to pay our employees industry-leading wages. Finally, we will combine these ideas to develop a network of micro-factories that will produce modules for net-zero-carbon housing for the local market (target radius: 50 miles).
“We are borrowing principles of flexible automation that are low-cost, reconfigurable, and built to scale up or down from the e-commerce fulfillment industry.”
So what exactly are we building?
A leading approach to addressing the housing challenge in a climate-friendly way is to build more ‘missing middle housing’ and multifamily buildings in walkable neighborhoods. Reframe Systems is developing a modular building system to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs), triple-deckers, and multifamily buildings up to five stories. The building system uses volumetric modules: large, fully-finished boxes roughly the size of a tractor-trailer that can be stacked to create a larger structure. We are engineering our platform to meet Passive House energy efficiency standards and are maximizing the use of carbon-neutral and carbon-negative materials.
In a future blog post, we will share more details about our modular system and our Passive House Triple-Decker project.
What are the emergent outcomes?
The end goal is to deliver net-zero-carbon homes as a standard option at an attainable price point. By aligning clean-energy tax incentives and partnering with cities and leading developers, we believe we can significantly increase the availability of net-zero affordable homes for rent and purchase. We will play our part in spinning the flywheel of growth for modular construction, carbon emission reduction, affordable net-zero homes, and climate-friendly human progress.
“We will play our part in spinning the flywheel of growth for modular construction, carbon emission reduction, affordable net-zero homes, and climate-friendly human progress.”
Build with Us
We are looking for developers and city officials in Massachusetts who would like to partner with us to develop a range of ADUs, triple-decker, and low-rise multifamily projects that are net-zero-carbon and include affordable units. Please reach out to us at hello@reframe.systems or on LinkedIn.
We are also looking for engineers and operators to design, deploy, and scale our factory of the future. If you’re interested, please visit our job board.
References
https://architecture2030.org/why-the-building-sector/
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_TechnicalSummary.pdf
https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/does-construction-ever-get-cheaper
https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/goolsbee-and-syverson-on-construction
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c14735/c14735.pdf
