The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and industrialised construction consultancy MOD X Advisory have been engaged by the US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) on a series of connected research and pilot projects examining how offsite construction can play a greater role in addressing the US housing supply and affordability crisis
Established by the US Congress in 1974, NIBS brings together government, industry, labour and regulatory agencies to address challenges in the built environment. MOD X has supported the work as a research and delivery partner across all three projects sponsored by HUD.
Research roadmap
The first of the three projects was the Offsite Construction for Housing: Research Roadmap, funded by HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research (PD&R) and published in January 2023.
NIBS contracted with MOD X to chair the Project Technical Committee, which brought together academics, manufacturers, developers and policy specialists.
A stakeholder workshop involving more than 40 industry experts helped validate the findings.
The roadmap identified six domains in which knowledge gaps are constraining the sector:
- Regulatory framework.
- Standards and system performance.
- Capital, finance and insurance.
- Project delivery and contracts.
- Labour and workforce training and management.
- Business models and economic performance.
It also found that permitting and inspection processes remain poorly aligned with factory-based delivery, with unfamiliarity among Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs) contributing to confusion, delays and cost overruns.
Accelerating offsite construction for housing
The second project, HUD’s Past, Present & Future Role in Accelerating Offsite Construction for Housing, compared HUD’s role with that of peer agencies in Japan, Sweden and the UK.
It examined the policy mechanisms and regulatory frameworks that have supported more developed offsite sectors in those markets and culminated in a formal HUD Offsite Action Plan recommending three parallel strategies: standard federal award criteria to aggregate demand, a housing system certification framework and a longer-term shift toward performance-based building codes.
The research team concluded that these actions were factors in fostering essential national innovation systems and a high technology housing sector. The comparative research included in-country visits to Japan, Sweden and the UK, including a delegation visit to England and Scotland in December 2022. UK organisations Homes England and Scotland’s Built Environment-Smarter Transformation (BE-ST) were important partners in this phase and continue to inform this ongoing work.
As an outcome of this second project, housing system certification is actively being developed by MOD X and NIBS, working with a steering and technical committee comprised of leading experts from industry, government, academia and related NGOs.
The concept has historical roots in the US dating back to when HUD explored a form of system certification during the early 1970s as part of Operation Breakthrough, though it was not sustained due to various economic and political factors of the time.
In Japan, by contrast, factory certification has operated continuously since the 1970s and is widely cited in the research as a key factor in the growth and resilience of that
country’s offsite housing sector. The work is examining how a comparable framework could be adapted for the contemporary US context.
Breakthrough Pilot Handbook
The third and current project is the HUD Breakthrough Pilot Handbook: Growing Offsite Construction for Housing Through Regional Pilot Projects, in which NIBS is the prime contractor and MOD X the lead technical and research partner.
It is running across six US regions — Minnesota, Virginia, Greater Boston, Utah, Washington state and California — with each region working through a structured methodology covering coalition building, stakeholder engagement, offsite construction education, demand aggregation analysis, regulatory assessment and action planning.
A Regional Pilots Summit was held at NIBS in Washington DC in April 2026, with a technical assistance handbook for HUD due later this year.
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