Build Ahead
What's Critically Missing in the Road to Housing Act
Blog | Feb 16, 2026
The Center for Offsite Construction supports the ROAD to Housing Act’s intent to treat housing supply as urgent national infrastructure, and applauds its push toward repeatable, scalable delivery through offsite production, innovation grants, and pre-reviewed pathways. But the bill risks recreating fragmented, program-by-program pilots that still force manufacturers and builders into bespoke coordination—slowing adoption and blocking interoperability—because it implicitly gestures toward Configure-to-Order (CTO) without naming or building the market infrastructure CTO requires. To make the Act’s ambition cohere, Congress should explicitly fund CTO-enabling infrastructure: accelerate ANSI-accredited interface standards, pull conforming products through federal procurement first to create reliable demand and performance data, then use incentives to open those catalogs and interfaces to private builders at scale.
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The CfOC's Lessons from Advancing PreFab 2026
Blog | Feb 16, 2026
Fresh off Advancing PreFab 2026, Jason Van Nest sat down with Senior Research Fellow Connor Bailey to unpack what he heard while chairing the conference’s Business Strategy track... what executives are finally willing to admit, and what they’re still avoiding. Clearly, a growing share of the industry is actively looking past Engineer-to-Order pain management toward Configure-to-Order market logic, even if the catalogs, contracts, and installation discipline aren’t fully there yet. If 2025 was about tools and workflows, 2026 sounded like a scramble for a new business model, and the interview captures the tells.
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CfOC at Advancing Prefabrication 2026
Blog | Feb 01, 2026
The Center for Offsite Construction (CfOC) is pleased to announce that its Executive Director, Jason Van Nest, will serve as Track Chair for Track Seven: Business Strategy at Advancing Prefabrication 2026, taking place February 2–5 in Dallas, Texas. Jason will chair the Business Strategy track during the main conference days on Tuesday, February 3 and Wednesday, February 4.
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Steve DeWitt Named Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Offsite Construction (2025–2026)
Blog | Dec 12, 2025
The Center for Offsite Construction has named Steve DeWitt a Senior Research Fellow for 2025–2026, recognizing his leadership in rules-based design and building configurators that translate theory into working software for offsite construction. As owner of Custom Building Configurators and a co-author of the CfOC’s Configurator File Type whitepaper, Steve will contribute applied research defining open rule schemas, reference workflows, and interoperable configurator infrastructure that supports Configure-to-Order delivery. His work will help advance the CfOC’s Research Roadmap by bridging BIM and VDC environments with productized, manufacturing-informed systems that enable scalable, repeatable building.
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A Milestone in the Making of CfOC-ICC-1220: Seating the Consensus Committee
Blog | Nov 26, 2025
The CfOC has completed the next major step in developing the CfOC-ICC-1220 Modular Interface Standard by seating a carefully selected, fully balanced Consensus Committee. After a month of independent review and deliberation, the Advisory Committee unanimously chose members whose collective wisdom, diverse experience, and broad representation will guide the creation of a fair, open, and industry-shaping standard. This milestone marks the transition from preparing the team to beginning the technical work that will strengthen the offsite construction ecosystem nationwide.
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Advisory Board Votes Unanimously to Launch the Next Phase of CfOC-ICC-1220
The CfOC Advisory Board has unanimously approved launching the next phase of the CfOC-ICC-1220 Modular Interface Standard, marking a significant milestone in the organization’s growth as an ANSI-accredited standards body. This vote authorizes the formation of an Advisory Committee that will immediately begin selecting the most qualified experts to serve on the forthcoming Consensus Committee, accelerating the technical work needed to build a national CTO marketplace. With unprecedented momentum and its most productive quarter to date, the CfOC is now actively raising funds to sustain this fast-moving standards effort.
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CfOC Invited to Present Handshake to the Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Real Property Acts
The CfOC has been invited to present Handshake to the Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Real Property Acts (JEBURPA), a nationally influential body that shapes real-property law and advises the Uniform Law Commission. This rare invitation signals growing recognition of the CfOC’s leadership in modernizing legal frameworks for offsite construction and accelerating housing delivery. Our latest article explains why the presentation matters and invites supporters to share ideas or connect us with UCC-focused legal experts.
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Updated Draft of Handshake: A Framework for Modernizing Construction Law
The CfOC has published a major new draft of Handshake, a whitepaper calling for modern legal frameworks to support offsite manufacturing and a true Configure-to-Order (CTO) marketplace. This edition introduces a powerful new Appendix that organizes the key questions statutory reviewers must study to align contracts, warranties, and risk allocation with product-based building delivery. The article on Build Ahead explains why this matters now—and how clarifying the legal “mateline” can accelerate housing production, reduce disputes, and modernize the foundations of construction.
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