For me personally, there are three things about Katerra that have energized me and kept me motivated to work harder than I have in my career.
One.
The opportunity to make a societal impact at scale. Our industry, specifically the design and construction of buildings, is woefully behind every other major industry in productivity gains and technological improvement. The Katerra model can help to change this, with the result being a solution to the workforce housing crisis in the US, one of our most significant social crises of our time.
Two.
To reduce the environmental impact of the US building industry through the implementation of mass timber as a preferred method of construction.
Three.
To positively impact the architecture profession by providing tools and open-source data to architects, enabling real time costing and quality assurance of manufactured assemblies, greatly reducing time consuming and conflict-laden processes such as value engineering and traditional cost estimating led by contractors.
MASS TIMBER LEADER
In 2016, I introduced the idea of incorporating mass timber into Katerra’s plans for optimized, off-site manufactured building assemblies. This ultimately led to the largest investment made by the company, including the world’s most sophisticated CLT manufacturing plant, and the acquisition of Michael Green Architects and Equilibrium Engineering.
I have continued to help lead Katerra’s commitment to mass timber, specifically CLT. This includes participating in companywide decisions regarding our product line, supporting recent Chain-of-Custody certification for FSC, SFI and PEFC labels and approval from the ILFI for a Declare label for our CLT.
Katerra CLT Factory
Katerra’s Spokane Valley CLT factory occupies 29 acres in eastern Washington state. The 270,000 sq. ft. facility features one of the largest CLT presses currently in operation globally. The factory has the capacity to manufacture more than 6.5MM cubic feet of CLT annually – more than 2x any North American competitor.
KATERRA BUILDING PLATFORMS
Key to the business proposition for Katerra are our Building Platforms. Through this configurable kit-of-parts approach, our curated supply chain is wed with off-site manufacturing capabilities to produce manufactured assemblies. This results in a new way of design, manufacturing and field assembly of buildings, akin to virtually every other product based industry from consumer electronics to automobiles.
I have led the early stage development of the following building platforms at Katerra.
Mid-Rise Commercial Office
Developed to compete head to head with steel and concrete, this configurable building platform is designed to target the 3-6 story market but can be adapted to buildings up to 12 stories. An efficient and economical structural frame is key to success, with the platform designed specific to the capabilities of the Katerra CLT factory.
Light Commercial
Our goal is to provide a low carbon alternative to tilt-up concrete construction. As e-commerce and data center demand continues to grow, further emphasized by the effects of Covid-19, coupled with some of the largest users of these building making carbon emission commitments, this is a market sector with tremendous opportunity for change.
Low-Rise Multi-Family
This is the most sophisticated of the Katerra Building Platforms and is going to market in 2020. A three-story walk-up housing product, used ubiquitously across America. The product launching in 2020 is called K3 and is an evolution of building plans from our launch customer. The workforce product is more interesting to me and we anticipate launch of it in 2021. (K4 Image)
Single Family Residential
The single-family market share is 5X the multi-family market in the US. This is also an ideal market sector for an open-source approach to a kit-based building platform. Applying a design approach of mass customization, the Katerra single family platform aims to provide architects and homebuilders with a catalog of factory-built assemblies, delivered to site. The focus is on rental communities, a rapidly growing market sector of housing.