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Transcript

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: I think we're good. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the prefab review podcast. And in this case YouTube page or video or whatever. I'm Michael Frank the host, and I'm excited to be joined by Toby Long from Clever Homes. Just a quick note on this. Toby and me have been talking about this for a while, but we're going to do a little bit at least a short series of a couple of these podcasts, trying to demystify certain parts of the prefab, building apparatus, talk about industry issues, answer questions we get a lot.

Toby came to me and said, Hey, I want to do something new as a resource for people in the industry. So hopefully we succeed at that. But please give us feedback and even suggestions for a name for this, because it's all still work in progress. Anyway, Toby, thanks for joining.

Toby Long, Clever Homes: Yeah, Michael. Thanks. I'm excited. Like you said, I think this is a chance to just share some experiences. I think both of us probably get a lot of similar questions. And I like this notion of demystifying parts of what we've been working on together and collectively for so long.

It's exciting to see the continued evolution of this process. And I think people continue to get really excited about how to apply these types of building strategies to projects. Clearly there's some current topics that I think are going to continue to drive people to explore prefabrication and offsite construction methods.

And I've always felt like a lot of the things I talk about with prospective clients or people that are motivated, at least shared by a lot of people. So hopefully this is a way to create a little repository of additional information to help people continue to think about how this might apply to their projects.

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Yeah, totally. Just to give everyone a little context on Toby and I. Toby is a true expert in this. Toby can give his bona fides in a second, but he's been one of the leading architects in prefab and modular housing for, whether it's 20 years or more, but longer than I've been in this space.

He can give a little more context in a second, but he is intimately involved in all parts from entitlement, planning, designing and then actually helping on overseeing and working on the construction part. I and this, our site prefab review is not that. We are involved with a tremendous number of projects because we have, hundreds of thousands or millions of users a year and we help them with projects, but we really take the perspective of doing deep research, but also being hyper pragmatic.

So I expect that I'll occasionally push back, but a lot of these conversations will actually be me representing the user and kind of collectively trying to tap into Toby's expertise. With that being said there, we'll do this on a lot of topics, but unfortunately though honestly not unexpectedly, there's another fire in the news.

As I said, prefab review has been around for seven or eight years. And this is at least the third or fourth considerable fire in California alone, where we've had to deal with. There's the Tubbs fire. There's been a bunch of stuff in Wine Country. And now there's been a series of fires in different parts of Los Angeles, particularly in the Pacific Palisades area.

And unsurprisingly there's a lot of motivated people who want to rebuild their house as quickly and beautifully. Cost effectively as possible. So we've been getting a lot of inbound traffic and I know Toby has as well with lots of questions. Yeah, we're going to dive into all things fire rebuild on this podcast.

With that being said, Toby, do you think you can give people a little bit more perspective on your background and your experience with fire rebuilds? 

Toby Long, Clever Homes: Yeah, for sure. And I love Michael that you also have this sort of unique perspective because you are at the front of all of this, I think people that are curious about what this industry is, which surely is something to be curious about.

They find you and they seek you out and they, benefit from your ability to see this community grow and define itself. And I think what we both know from being in this space is there's a lot of variation. There's not a lot of consistency, I think, in how prefabrication is understood.

At least in the United States I don't pretend to have worldview around this. But I think, in the. Yes. This has been a frothy churning kind of community that's tried to define itself for a long time. And certainly it's been fun to participate in this kind of renaissance moment. But being at the very front, understanding the market at large is a unique perspective.

So I hope through some of this banter that I get to ask you some questions too, because my perspective is important, but also, in a different moment where I think people have understood to some extent how these ideas and these concepts for building may apply to what they're doing and have understood to some extent where these resources live.

And then they can start to talk more specifically with me and, of course, other colleagues and cohorts in our space who have, equal and meaningful contributions as well. So like you said, a little background, I'm an architect. I'm a licensed architect. I grew up in architecture.

Pennsylvania nerdy kid, stepfather was a builder, found my way into this industry as a teenager been around it most of my life. I trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, moved out to California after school and really tried to build a practice from an early point in Professional life that was driven to things that were a little maybe less conventional, started in green building, quickly found our way into the offsite space.

And I've formed up a company and a bit of a brand working with clients on var