The Client Is Not the Referee: Inside Marmol Radziner

ALEX
Well, hey Mike, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I know everyone in this industry in general is super busy and everyone’s schedule is really valuable, so it’s greatly appreciated on my end.

MIKE
Yeah, thanks for having me, Alex. I always enjoy exchanging great ideas with other talented builders.

ALEX
Appreciate that. In some of the past episodes I’ve done my best to introduce people, only to realize that the best people to introduce themselves are you yourself. So why don’t you just give us a brief rundown of who you are, and we can start there.

MIKE
Sure. So I’m Mike Patterson. I’m the principal and vice president of construction here at Marmol Radziner. We are a design-build firm based in Los Angeles, but we have operations not only in Los Angeles but also San Francisco, Aspen and New York. We truly are a design-build firm at heart. We’re architects, we’re landscape architects, we’re interior designers, but we also have a full-service construction operation, which I oversee. We also have our own metal shop and wood shop. So we really do feel like the design-build approach has been a big part of what we see as our success over the last 35 years.

ALEX
Awesome. And I know you guys have been super involved in the AIA over the years. A lot of the publications I saw, some award-winning homes published countless times. You definitely exist in a certain end of the spectrum in terms of residential home building, if I’m not mistaken.

MIKE
Yeah, absolutely. I think our passion and what we like to do the most is high-end residential custom homes for clients. We really enjoy the process with clients and that really personal connection that we all establish throughout the life of a project. And we’ve also just found that projects with clients are better. We’ve done some speculative projects and development projects over the years, and those are great for what they are. But we really do love the kind of result that we get when we have that client input throughout the project.

ALEX
One of the things that I specifically am really interested to talk to you about, and I know we touched on it on the phone call that we had before this, is that you’ll be the first design-build firm that I’ve had on the podcast, and the concept of design-build has always been in my mind. In full transparency, we are just a GC company. We do not have in-house design. I have a design background. I’ve joked many a time that that makes me dangerous, but also a resource to some. But I think that the value add, at a very high level, is this singular trajectory of design and construction shaking hands. It makes sense at a very high level to a lot of people. In my experience, a lot of design-build firms have been contractor first and then transitioned into design-build. I believe, if I’m not mistaken, you are actually the opposite, correct?

MIKE
Yeah, we are. We are an architect-led design-build firm. And I think our story of coming into that is a bit interesting. We started our practice back in 1989, and one of our first major projects was a renovation of the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, which was a Richard Neutra home, a beautiful project. The home was in poor shape and needed a lot of love, to put it lightly. We began that project as the architect, but very quickly grew into also being the contractor on the project, to solve what we felt were some deficiencies with what we were seeing with local contractors and subcontractors. So in a way, we grew into the design-build model to solve a problem that we were having. I don’t think on day one we said, oh, we want to be a design-build firm, as if it’s a buzzword. We really felt like design-build improved some deficiencies in the process that we were experiencing as architects. Which certainly isn’t to say that there aren’t many talented builders out in the desert and talented builders everywhere. It’s not to say that at all. It’s just that we felt like, as we had control of the entire process, it would give us a bit better control over schedule and quality. And ultimately, I think our main goal is giving our clients the most enjoyable process possible. Having that single source of responsibility, from the client perspective, is something we have found our clients do enjoy and like about the design-build process.

ALEX
It’s interesting to hear you say that, because yesterday I actually did an interview with a friend of mine who’s a very accomplished local general contractor here, an incredible resume. And we were talking, because we have a shared background and passion for design, about how on every project the requirements of the design and GC scopes are a little bit different. On some, it’s very important that the contractor stays in its lane. The design team is very forward thinking and able to take those reins. There are other times when they actually rely on us to give that design input. And I thought that he did a really great job at articulating something that, in today’s day and age, is so easy for people to think about in blanket statements: that design-build is either good or bad, high level or low level, premium or not premium GC. The reality is that there are so many different ways to do this. And I think it’s always a better approach to solve a unique problem. There are multiple ways to do that, and if people can have insight into that process, I think it oftentimes makes it more approachable for them as well.

MIKE
Right. I think you bring up a really good point, which is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, probably in any industry, but certainly in construction. Each project is unique. And while we love design-build, it’s not necessarily the right approach for every project. We actually have a number of projects where we are building for other architects. We’re building homes for Walker Warner and for [second firm, name unconfirmed] and other architects. We’re happy to bring expertise to projects in that capacity where it makes sense. So the point you bring up, I appreciate a lot: thinking openly and creatively about the project at hand, and how, as a builder or a design-builder, we bring value to this project for the client and for the team. For us, that tends to come in a lot of different permutations, maybe as just a builder. We’re also happy to have our cabinet shop build cabinets for other general contractors if that’s useful to a project. So we’re always looking at it as: we offer this breadth of services, how do we deploy those in a way that’s most helpful to a project or a client?

ALEX
So I would assume you probably added the different divisions over a period of time, the metal shop, the cabinet shop and things like that. Was that almost a doubling down on the design-build method working for you, the more control you could have, the better the product was? Or what was the motivation for that? Because frankly, I think that sometimes people think, oh, having the cabinet shop is this giant money maker or something like that, and I can assure you it’s not. There are other problems that need to be solved.

MIKE
Yeah, that’s spot on. Similar to how we grew into general contracting is how we grew into building cabinets. We felt like maybe we weren’t getting the quality and control that we wanted on some of our cabinets, and so we said, hey, let’s build cabinets ourselves. And to your point, I wouldn’t even say that building our own cabinets is necessarily... look, it’s a lot more to manage. It’s a whole other business, and there’s risk in that. It creates a fair amount of work for us to do that. But we think that the benefit on the back end, of having that control and really being able to control the quality, is worth the upfront headache of running a cabinet shop. And we’ve similarly grown into some other parts of the trade world as well. We have our own concrete crew, structural concrete and architectural concrete. We have our own finish carpentry crew. We have our own landscape installation crew. And all of those internal trades came about in the same way, or for the same reason, which was just us trying to solve or improve what we felt could be a better part of the building process for us.

ALEX
How many people are on staff for you?

MIKE
On the construction end we currently have about a hundred staff members total. That includes, as a general contractor, project managers and site supervisors, but then all of our internal trades and our shops. It’s about a hundred total. One thing that’s nice is that we have our own internal skilled utility guys as well. As you know, the last month or two of a project is the hardest. Closing a project out, for us, that’s the time where we really need to be locked in. Everything has to happen on schedule, things need to get done. So we really value that we have a number of utility guys who can do drywall, they can do painting, they can do concrete. When it comes time to punch list projects, we really like having that internal capability to just knock out the punch list and be done.

ALEX
Oh my gosh. Having that in your quiver, your tool belt, that’s the ultimate at the end of a project. That reduces stress tenfold. I’ve joked that the best site super I could ever have could also do a little bit of drywall work at the same time, which is such a weird thing to ask of somebody, but it is such an important part of project closeout.

I hear all these different phases, and I’ve talked to other builders, people in the business who really focus on the business side of building, who have made the opposite argument. And again, I don’t think that one is more right than the other. But what I do always find interesting is how the Marmol Radziner model of everything in-house, or as much as possible, caters to the user experience, in your opinion. Because from my perspective, I think that that’s the biggest sell of everything that you’re accomplishing.

MIKE
I think that’s exactly the way we view it as well. At the end of the day, this is all in service of providing a service to a client. Certainly with custom residential design and construction, it is a service-based industry. Clients are coming to reputable firms like yourself and Marmol Radziner because they know that the project is going to be handled well. We’re always looking to make decisions about our operations and how we approach projects through that lens: how do we deliver the client the most seamless experience that they can have? Because even in its most perfect incarnation, construction is still construction, and things are going to happen and mistakes will be made. For us, in many ways, we obviously want to avoid those mistakes to the greatest extent possible, but it’s almost more important how we deal with mistakes and move past them than the mistake happening in the first place.

ALEX
It’s interesting. I did client work for a lawyer at one point in time, and he was of course asking how I execute contracts with subcontractors and things like that, and the concept of subrogation came up. He actually conveyed to me that he didn’t want that much subrogation, basically passing the liability and responsibility down the line to the next person, to the next person, to the next person. If he had been my lawyer, he would want all that subrogation. But as the client, he wanted a single source, a single person to talk to, because everything else in his experience showed to be a heavy lift, a point of stress, when those inevitable moments come along. And I think there are obviously multiple ways to handle that. But when everything is in-house, there is a serious sell: that is as self-evident a process as possible. Which in my mind also means efficiency, cost savings, schedule drivers, things like that. Would you say that with the approach that you have... the word cheap is never meant to be a part of this, but I think efficient is an appropriate term. As time has gone on and you have brought these things in-house, would you say that efficiency has become a part of it, or is it more so just solving a different problem?

MIKE
I think efficiency is certainly a part of our belief in the design-build process. Even from a financial perspective, if a client comes to us from day one and says, we’d like to hire you for design and construction, we actually lower our fees on both sides of the project. Our construction fee is lower and our architectural fee is lower, because we’re doing both, and for us as a business it’s a larger project. So overall the client ends up paying less architectural fee and less construction fee than they would if they were to hire two separate entities. The reason we do that, and justify it with our clients, is that there is an efficiency to the process when we’re the architect and the builder. We maybe spend a little bit less time on circular communication, or waiting for questions to get answered, than we would otherwise. We pass those savings on to the client because we’re spending a percentage less time on the project due to that efficiency. If we’re in the middle of construction and we have an issue that really needs a quick conversation to solve, to keep things moving on site, I can walk over to the desk of the architect here in our office and say, hey, can we sit down and look at this real quick? And we solve a problem that might otherwise linger through a few days.

ALEX
I have always been, let’s say, jealous of the design community for their ability to be iterative in the geography that they can work in. You could be based out of San Francisco and do projects in Aspen, New York, anywhere in the world, without the physical presence required if you were on the general contracting side of things. Most of the companies that I know that have a national presence, with a few exceptions obviously, I think it’s always really hard for a builder to have that national presence. You have to have almost a commercial approach and be really efficient with those systems. And I also think there’s probably an economy of scale associated with it as well. I don’t know, off the top of my head, in the residential world, obviously a lot in the commercial, of design-build companies that have been able to iterate different locations in the United States, especially when you have as much in-house as you guys do. How does that work? Because I think some of your shops are in LA, right?

MIKE
Yeah, our cabinet shop and metal shop are here in Los Angeles, as well as our main office. And then we have our satellite operations in Aspen, San Francisco and New York. I think that’s a really good point you make. Construction especially is a unique industry that is difficult to grow into new markets, at least quickly. Our belief as a general contractor is that we’re only as good as our relationships with our subcontractors, and good relationships take years and years and years to build and establish, because there’s so much trust that’s required in construction between subcontractors and general contractors. So as we have grown into markets like New York and San Francisco and Aspen, we’ve done so over a long period of time. The model in Los Angeles, of us building a lot of homes down here and having a deep subcontractor pool and a lot of relationships, is not easy to just clone in other markets. You have to grow it in the same slow way. And that’s the way we approach it.

ALEX
Was it that you guys went design first into a market and then had the construction teams follow behind? Because I’m assuming that you need some capital, some presence, some networks, right? I just got an email yesterday to do a project in Summit County, and I thought, I don’t even know who I would call for a foundation. I can’t be doing that project. So I’m fascinated by how you’ve done it.

MIKE
Right. Whereas on the design side, if a project comes up in a market that’s outside of your normal region, as long as you learn the local building codes and understand the zoning laws, then architecturally it’s maybe a bit easier to grow quickly into other markets. Construction is so rooted in people and materials that it’s not a matter of a digital reproduction of a business operation. It’s very people heavy, and people and relationships take time to grow. But to answer your question about growth into new markets and what leads with us, we’ve actually done it both ways. New York and San Francisco, we grew into those markets primarily as architects and then got into the building side of it in those areas as well. Whereas in Aspen, we grew into that as a builder, a builder-only operation. We only have a construction office in the Rocky Mountains, and all of our projects out there are building for other architects, which we also very much enjoy. Getting exposure to building for other architects, you see different materials, different ways of drawing, just fresh ideas. And I think the value we bring to other architects as a builder is that they can have that design-build process, or language, without having to start a construction company. They can just have us come in. We speak an architectural language. I myself am an architect by training. I’ve just always enjoyed the construction side of the profession. But when we start working with other architects as a builder, I think they appreciate that we speak the same language, and there’s a synergy in the way we work with them.

ALEX
I think that that’s actually, because Aspen is such a unique place, and I’m sure there are other markets that you guys exist in as well, where people have access to the world market if you are building in a place like that. As you guys have grown to a hundred people, I’m assuming there are benefits that happen for a market like Aspen, that you’re able to bridge those gaps. I’m sure that there are also some that I’m not even thinking of. In your experience, is that the case? Because it scares me to try to build in a place like that.

MIKE
Yeah, it definitely does. Some of these Rocky Mountain markets, Aspen, Bozeman, Jackson Hole, are interesting markets, and I think there are similarities between them, in that there are some very, very talented subs and great craftsmen in all these areas, but they’re limited. Whereas in a market like Los Angeles there are twenty great electricians at any given time that we could rely on if we had to, in a market like Aspen you maybe have one or two that you really would want. So there are just limited resources. We do very much supplement our construction operations in Aspen with our own internal trades. With cabinetry and finish carpentry, we’ll oftentimes build the cabinets in our shop and either send our guys out to install them or partner with a local installer to install cabinets. We’ll oftentimes send our finish carpentry crew out, or in many cases our concrete crew will send our concrete foreman out to Aspen to help oversee and manage the subcontractors on site, to make sure that the level of quality is being executed in the way that we would like. So we do see a benefit of having a robust number of tools, as you mentioned, to draw from, so that we can deploy those to some of these markets where the local resources are a bit more limited.

ALEX
You said something on our call that I found absolutely fascinating. You mentioned that a lot of your clients had actually built before, maybe in the separate designer, builder, architect model, and then are transitioning to the design-build model. And there is some kind of rationale from their perspective as to why to transition specifically over to the model. I’m fascinated to know more about that and to have you elaborate on it. But I want to contextualize that by saying that I don’t think that that, in any way, shape or form, is a commentary on one model versus the other. If anything, there are probably tons of takeaways that I as a GC can be more aware of. Like, what is the mechanism there that one model is maybe a little bit more prone to come short on versus another? And I’m sure that that works in both directions.

MIKE
Right, totally. And I want to preface this by echoing exactly what you said. We don’t view this as a zero-sum game where, because design-build works, it means that other models don’t work. Everything can work, and when they’re done well, it all does work. These are just different ways of approaching the same problem. So for us, we have a number of clients who have gone the traditional route with a separate architect and builder and ended up coming back to us, because I think they sometimes would see that they would get pulled into almost being a mediator in conflict in a project. If there’s an issue on site, you can sometimes get into the traditional contractor blaming the architect, the architect blaming the contractor, and the owner gets pulled into that to have to make a decision on who they feel the problem is. Whereas in a design-build model, if something happens on site, it’s our fault. There’s only one person to point the finger at. We can’t say, oh, well, the detail wasn’t clear in the drawings, because we did the drawings. We can only point the finger at ourselves. And we’re not perfect, so we do sometimes end up pointing the finger at ourselves and saying, hey, we made a mistake, and we’re going to step up and resolve the issue. So some of our clients have definitely come back to us with that perspective. But as you said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the separate architecture and contractor. Some of our clients appreciate the separation of those two parties. We have no mandate about how we work. We have the things we enjoy doing, and if we can do both design and construction, wonderful, but we’re just as comfortable working in a more traditional setup as well.

ALEX
If you don’t mind me asking, do you operate on a cost plus contractual basis or fixed?

MIKE
I would say the bulk of our projects, we work in cost plus fee. Probably 75 percent of our construction work is cost plus fee. We’re always open to doing stipulated sum projects, and we discuss it with the client at the time of bidding: what’s important to you? Because there are pros and cons to both. We approach the estimating process the same either way, whether it’s going to be a stipulated sum or cost plus fee. Our goal in estimating the project is to build it on paper, in our heads, really understand what all the costs are, and give a budget that we feel is comprehensive, accurate, honest, whether we’re going to bill stipulated sum or cost plus fee. And so then the question just comes down to the client, which we’ll always ask: is it more important to you to just not have to worry about cost, and you’re going to write off X amount of dollars for the project and not worry about it? Or would you like the opportunity to possibly save some money and only pay the actual costs incurred? Our budget is the same either way. We don’t take the approach of trying to estimate a project to present the lowest number we possibly think the project could be. We’re always looking to present what we think is the realistic budget. Even if that number is a tough pill to swallow, we would rather have that conversation at the beginning of a project with a client and be open, set a realistic expectation. Otherwise, I think we always find that we’ll be chasing that problem. A low budget from the beginning can be something you have to chase through the whole project, and it rears its head in a number of unsavory ways throughout a job.

ALEX
Everything is about managing expectations in this business. Would you say that you’re more inclined to do or offer a fixed price if design is in-house, as opposed to it being a third party?

MIKE
I would say we’re happy to offer fixed as long as the drawings are what we feel is complete and accurate. The projects we do stipulated sum, more often than not, are new construction projects, where it’s easier to see the scope. Everything is new. We know that it’s not a renovation where we’re going to get into the project and find out that there are things in the walls, as there always are. So most of the projects we do stipulated sum are new construction that have really good, full, complete construction documents, whether we’re the architect or not. As long as we have that set of drawings to go off of, then we’re happy to go stipulated sum. And in many ways we like the simplicity of stipulated sum as well, from a billing perspective. Cost plus fee bills are 200 pages of backup, and there’s administrative support that is required to put those very long, detailed bills together. Whereas stipulated sum billing is just billing percentage of progress on the pre-agreed numbers. So there is a nice simplicity to stipulated sum. When we do those projects, we’re like, oh yeah, this is nice.

ALEX
I’ve only worked with an owner’s rep one time, but anytime that there’s a potential for one to be involved, I actually lower that bookkeeping and admin number, because I know that there’s somebody who has that expertise, bringing it to the position and interpreting that information with that lens for the client. The other thing, kind of segueing off that owner’s rep model, that’s the other big sell for me of a design-build approach. Because a word I love, from a business model standpoint, but that I also think the industry could maybe do a little bit better job at adopting, is being a steward of these projects for people. At a certain point in time, I try to convince people that my job is not to build. I’m not a contractor, let’s just pretend. My job is to advocate for you as my client. The way that I’m going to do that is by building you a home. That’s just the mechanism I use to do that. Communication is the biggest part of that. For you, when you’re in that design-build model, is it more so a central point of communication that the client is receiving? Because for me, to put things in easy-to-interpret, easy-to-digest information or documents for a client, it’s just so much easier and better for the user experience than one set of documents coming from the construction team and one set of documents coming from the architecture team, where we’re hoping that they are cohesive and in perfect alignment, but oftentimes that’s not a realistic expectation given deadlines.

MIKE
Yeah, for sure. When we are doing a project in the design-build scenario, really the construction project manager does become the tip of the spear, the point of contact for the owner or the owner’s rep throughout construction. Certainly, like all projects, the owner may want to change things or make alterations to the design during construction. If they do, then we have the architectural team involved in helping make those decisions. But the construction PM really is the single point of contact for all things related to the project. And having built for a long time and done very big projects, it’s always staggering to me how much of a teamwork profession construction is. The PM sometimes... gets credit isn’t the right word, but everyone thinks the PM is the construction operation. It really is like an iceberg. When you look below the water, the number of people that it takes, moving in sync, to make a project succeed is staggering. Project engineers, our accounting staff. On any given project there are probably twenty people behind the scenes who have a really important hand in the success of the project, and it only works if that team is in sync and speaking the same language.

ALEX
I struggle with that in terms of the client relationship side at times, because, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it as well, you almost want the client to feel the muscle behind everything and see all the people, all the hard work, everything. But it’s almost overload for a client who also has their own life. They have other things to be worrying about at the same time. So it’s this fine line that I’m always walking, and I’m sure it is for you too, where you’re trying to show that muscle but then also make it perfectly digestible, to where they feel confident, have enough information to feel confident in that process. And that’s where that PM... whether that person’s trained in architecture or something else, I’ve always thought that the best PMs I’ve ever worked alongside actually had their background in architecture, not construction. And I say that growing up in the trades. But that point person being able to articulate that whole story is just such a pivotal piece of the client journey.

MIKE
Yeah, absolutely. That question you bring up, we talk about this internally all the time, and I’m not so sure we have an answer one way or the other on what we feel is right. Is the right approach to really polish everything perfectly for a client to see? Or is it actually valuable for them to see all of the work, and the things that were considered and ruled out one way or the other, to come to this suggestion for them? I think we’ve found over the years that we’ll learn early on in the process what the personality of our client is. We have some clients who take the approach of, we’re paying you a lot of money to handle this for us, so just handle it. When we come to them with a design or a construction issue, they just want the polished suggestion: hey, we think we should do this, are you good with that? Whereas other clients want us to come and say, we think you should do this, but here are the four other things we considered in this process, and we ruled them out for X, Y and Z. We have a few clients who like to see that as well, just to understand that there was diligence and a decision-making process in how we got to this suggestion. So I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. It all plays into the client’s personality and what they want.

ALEX
I think I’m up to twenty-some episodes now, over the last year and a half, two years that I’ve done this, with a few more that have been recorded that haven’t been released. The one constant thread, no matter who I am talking to, that is always brought up, maybe not articulated with this word, but always brought up as being crucial to the process, is the trust mechanism. At the end of the day, the successful project is based on there being trust between the people involved to actually make it, and the client going through the process itself. And when I heard you just now, that is what that is about: what does trust look like for the client, and the ability to cater to that specific need.

MIKE
Yeah, absolutely. I would echo that a hundred percent. At the end of the day, general contracting, construction, there are a lot of contracts. There are subcontracts, there are prime contracts, and there’s a lot of language and jargon. And no contract is worth anything if there’s not trust and a strong relationship. I think the culture of a project is such an important thing, both to make the project work, but also to make the project enjoyable for the client. It’s important to us that not only does the client trust us, but that they like us. We enjoy working on the project together, and our belief is that building a home should be a joyful process. It should be as fun as it was to design it. A huge part of that is trust, but also having that nice culture around the project, and the client seeing that everybody enjoys what they’re doing. We like it when a client walks onto one of our job sites and sees the passion and the joy that the team has for building the project. It’s not just a job. Our finish carpentry team, they live and breathe wood. I think clients feel that when they walk onto a job site, and hopefully they enjoy seeing that.

ALEX
Well, Mike, I want to be sensitive with your time, but there’s one last question that I did want to touch on before I let you go, because it’s something that I think is unique that you guys are taking on as an endeavor, and it’s also something I’m personally very fascinated with. I know you have done some modular building, if I’m not mistaken. I would love for you to touch on that. What was the motivation to get into it? Because I do think that modular, panelization, whatever iteration of it, stands the test of time. I do think it is going to have a very, very large place in the future of building, especially when you take into consideration the shortage of trades, people entering the trades, resource issues that we have going on in the world today, and all that kind of stuff. But I’d love to know why Marmol Radziner chose to invest in those processes, those types of projects.

MIKE
Yeah, great question. We’ve been doing prefab, modular construction since 2005, really. Where we see prefab really providing a lot of value to the industry is exactly what you said: in areas where maybe the local resources are limited. So we’ve done both panelized and prefab projects in Hawaii, in Moab, Utah, in these areas where the local trades, one, there’s a limited number of them, so they maybe can’t keep up with the demand. But you also run into some areas, we saw this in Utah, where the local trades weren’t really used to building high-end modern buildings. So if we can do a prefabricated approach where we build the modules, and in that case we built them in Los Angeles, we can tap into the local expertise here in LA and really execute at a high level, but then ship those to markets like Moab, Utah. And then you have this beautiful, wonderfully built modern building in the middle of the desert. That’s the advantage. Most recently, where we’re using prefabrication is in the fire rebuild area, like the Pacific Palisades, because similarly, obviously, there’s a huge tax on local subcontractor labor. Everybody’s just very, very busy. So by moving some of the work off site and building the modules, in this case we’re building them in Washington and shipping them to the Palisades, we’re able to take some of that pressure off of the local labor market, and also get the homeowner back into their house quicker, which is an important thing to many of our clients who are rebuilding. They want to move past this really, really [word unclear] event that happened and get back into their homes. Prefabrication allows us to be doing all the site work and foundations at the exact same time that the modules are being built, and we find that we can compress the construction timeline by 40 to 45 percent in most cases.

ALEX
Wow. To what extent are you prefabbing? I’m sure it’s different on every project, but since I didn’t know that you had the concrete division, are you precasting foundations and things like that, obviously in settings that allow for it? And I’m assuming wall panels. How far does that modular approach, panelization, go?

MIKE
Right now we’re not doing any concrete prefabrication. All the foundations and concrete work is traditional on-site construction, but we’re fully prefabricating the home in modules. They’re wood frame construction modules, in varying sizes depending on the design, but they come out in pieces that are 10 feet wide by 20 to 30 feet long, and we crane them into place. The most recent project we completed was actually part of the Case Study Adapt program in the Pacific Palisades, which is a reboot of the classic Case Study program from back in the sixties in Los Angeles. We did a prefabricated home for a musician here in Los Angeles. He and his wife both play the violin and cello. We did this really great little prefab house for them that came out on semi trucks in about ten pieces and was set in a day. They got to see their home come together over the course of a morning and an afternoon, which is exciting. For them, there’s something a bit performative about prefab, in a way: the choreography of the crane, and the event of crane day, that I think really tapped into their personalities in a cool way. It was fun.

ALEX
What an interesting analogy. It’s this moment of culmination. What percentage of the projects you guys are doing is prefab?

MIKE
It’s pretty small. I would say maybe 5 percent of our projects are prefab. Like I said, I think we deploy it like all things. Prefab isn’t inherently right or wrong, or good or bad. It’s about how it’s deployed. We find that there are specific projects, like these ones in the Palisades, where it does make sense to suggest to the client, maybe we should do this prefab. So we’re just always looking to deploy the solution that makes the most sense for the problem.

ALEX
That’s fascinating. Well, like I said, I want to be sensitive with your time. I really, really appreciate this. I find this topic, everything with the end goal of just building the best product and having the best relationships possible with the great clients that we have, is such a vast experience and pool of knowledge to be pulled from. Hearing it from your perspective was very interesting, specifically for myself. So I really appreciate it.

MIKE
I appreciate you having me. And I really appreciate your perspective and insight. It’s fun to hear how other builders are approaching the problem and have found the solutions that work best for them. I appreciate the conversation.

ALEX
Awesome. Well, thanks a bunch.

MIKE
Yeah. Thanks, Alex.