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Listen to the episode

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Transcript

.Michael Frank, Prefab Review: All right. Welcome to the Prefab Review podcast. I'm Michael Frank from Prefab Review and very excited to be talking to Alexis Rivas. Is it Rivas? From Cover. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah. Rivas. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: I've known about Cover for a long time, but, this is honestly the first time me and Alexis have ever spoken.

I'll be learning the nuances of Cover and their business along with you. Alexis, it would be great to just hear a little bit about Cover, and, again, we have computer screens here. If, at some point you want me to jump to the Cover website so we can walk through visuals, happy to do that as well. But, thanks for joining. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Thanks. Thanks for having me, Michael. So we started Cover in 2014. My co-founder and I started cover in 2014 and our mission is to make better homes for everyone. Thoughtfully designing well-built homes for everyone. And, prefab isn't a new idea, we've looked at a lot of companies that have tried to solve this problem before, and one of the big opportunities we saw was to actually do a ground up redesign of the process and the home itself, to be geared towards manufacturability and rapid assembly from the start. And so that's what we're doing at cover. It's a complete ground up redesign of the whole process. It's an all steel panelized building system. Most of what we've built has been custom, we talk custom, like custom floor plans. And they're built on a production line here at our factory and then assembled on site. So the panel remains factory flat packed on a regular truck, no big cranes needed, and then rapidly assembled on site. And, we're currently serving Southern California.

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: That's awesome. Makes total sense. So one of the things I think about is what parts of the process do you do? So it sounds like you definitely do the design, you do the panels, you do the framing, like it sounds like you do the full shell of the house.

I see you have on your website, like a CSLB contractor, the class B or whatever it's called. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Does that mean, are you general contracting on the project once it hits the site as well? 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah, so we do We can do it all. So we do design, engineering, permitting as well with the city interaction, getting the permits back and forth, all that stuff.

Very fun. And then, manufacturing on the production line, transportation, and then yes, the installation too. So we are the general contractor and we will also manage, and depending on the scope, if it's a simple foundation, we'll do it ourselves. If it's a multiple foundation, we will subcontract it up, but we'll manage it for the homeowner.

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: All general contractors are sort of paper general contractors to some extent, right? I assume, right, someone else will come in and do it. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: No we actually do it. Like it is our own staff. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Oh, so you guys will actually have your staff doing the electrical, the plumbing, the mechanical on site, et cetera. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah. The only stuff like, sometimes we'll sub out grading and more complex foundation work. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: You guys aren't doing like crazy drilling or stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: We're not not gonna do like a deep pile foundation. We've done projects like that, but it's always with, subcontractor partners. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Yeah. No, that, that makes total sense and honestly, like what I see, I have a couple close friends who work for, I don't know if you know about the sort of the way, like the Larry Pages of the world build projects. They have builder rep services that essentially manage the architect plus general contractor. And I think 90% of the time the general contractors they hire in those situations are actually, like even less scaled, more scaled down than you because they're just trying to hire like the top subs in each of the verticals.

So that makes sense for sure. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah, we're very vertically integrated. The people who install these Covers on site are full-time employees with, healthcare, with some ownership in the company. It's our team.

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Cool. Nice. Interesting. So I guess one of the questions, and this is partly like my sort of startupy person hat, and partly a consumer, is like a lot of times startups are like, "Hey, we want to innovate at this one part, and we wanna do that better than everyone else. And sort of parts that are more commoditized, we don't." Why is it important that you guys actually go totally vertical and take on the sort of whole stack including things like electrical or siding or waterproofing, which, again, to an uneducated person like me might seem like they're more standardized parts of the process.

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah, it's a result of our goal, which is to make better homes. 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Yeah. 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: And just the coordination, 

Michael Frank, Prefab Review: Like not having to worry about labor shortages, stuff like that? 

Alexis Rivas, Cover: Yeah. So there's, a labor shortage and the coordination, if your average, conventional home has 24 different subcontractors, that's a big part of why it's expensive, time consuming, and unpredictable in terms of quality. With us, we ha