Over the past several weeks, the Center for Offsite Construction has been in active conversation with its Senior Research Fellows and industry partners about a gap that has become harder to ignore in panelized offsite construction: the absence of shared interface standards for how panels join to one another, and how panelized assemblies join to the structures they serve.

That gap has consequences that are market-wide. Across the industry, similar panel edge conditions are still being redesigned from project to project. Engineering teams repeatedly solve recurring joining problems under the language of local variation, jurisdictional complexity, and one-off building demands. Some variation is real. But much of this work is repetitive, and its repetition slows procurement, coordination, design, and delivery.

The whitepaper now taking shape at the CfOC argues that this is one of the hidden reasons panelized offsite construction has struggled to scale as quickly and reliably as it should. A healthier market will require more than better products. It will require shared rules at the edges of products—stable interface expectations that make systems easier to specify, compare, coordinate, and trust.

The paper distinguishes between two broad domains. One involves panel-to-panel conditions, more aligned with smaller load-bearing buildings such as single-family homes and duplexes. The other involves panel-to-structure conditions, more aligned with larger multifamily buildings where panels connect to primary frames such as steel or mass timber. In both cases, the goal is the same: reduce repeated coordination work, create clearer design baselines, and prepare the industry for a more organized Configure-to-Order marketplace.

This draft whitepaper is the standard project's starting point. We expect to revise and strengthen it several times in the months ahead as we continue recruiting for a new consensus committee, gather input from colleagues across the offsite sector, and raise support for the work. As with the CfOC’s other standards and whitepaper efforts, the aim is to build open market infrastructure that helps offsite construction become more legible, interoperable, and scalable.