Robert: Alright, well, welcome back everybody. The context exec is here again. I've got a very, very special guest, Felipe Polito of Reframe. And I hope I got to the name the Polito, right? Yeah. Okay,
Felipe Polido: Perfect.
Robert: good, good. I'm I'm on a roll. I'm on a roll today. Felipe, you've got had a bit of a journey to where you are now. you were with what did you do? DARPA products, in the in robotics back in the that back in the day. And then you were with you're with Amazon for quite a few years in the
Felipe Polido: That's correct. Yep.
Robert: in the kind of the robotics domain over there. And then all of sudden, out of nowhere, suddenly you decide, hey, here's a good idea. Let's go build some houses, but we're gonna use robots instead. Like, seriously, I have been in the construction business thirty five years. I've never seen this pathway. how did you get here?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, no, that is a great question. That is a very good question. so I was in the DAP Robotics Challenge. I actually used to do development for the old Boston MS Atlas robot.
Robert: Okay.
Felipe Polido: so the the big humanoid robot. I used to write software for that, motion planning controls. and then at Amazon I was the technical lead for their bin picking solution. so imagine Robot Arms using vision and machine learning to pick up objects, anything you can buy on Amazon, basically move it, identify it, pack it. so that was really cool. I mean, that organization we went from like four people to about three hundred by the time I left, like on that program. Sparrow was like it was quite quite quite on the the the ramp up path by the time I left. It was really exciting. But I was really looking for a way to have more impact. one of the the big catalysts for me, I have a seven year old daughter, but I also have twin boys that are now four. And they were born in the same month that we started the company. so we actually they th that that happened later on the same day. And I was I was, yeah, really looking for a way to to help with kind of carbon emissions was one of the first things we started to toy with, but then really the affordability crisis that we have in this in this country. so we felt very important about a way to drive that personal pressures, pressures with friends, folks that really could not find housing because it was just very, very expensive. And y you mentioned robotics and like I I do think robotics is a big piece of it. We we have a very strong thesis around like long-term automation, but in a lot of ways what was most interesting from the Amazon world is really the software that drives the process. so when you talk about manufacturing, right? My my vest the the the microwave, my laptop, less than 10% of most of these goods, the cost of it is labor. housing has been a 50-50 since the 70s and actually has gotten slightly worse in that time frame. That is to say that There are plenty of room for making things more efficient to build. and it really it is about how do you do you actually build something that everybody wants to use and it's compliant. which goes to this other piece on the construction space, which is everybody is aware of this, right? Like there are over thirty thousand different zoning jurisdictions in the US. So before you get to local site conditions, before you get to customer preferences, you're in a world that every single house that goes up is a one-off prototype. Every single house is built uniquely, right? Like that they're all different than each other. And really the the lessons coming from Amazon is like how do we build the software that lets you generate the instructions to build that house without paying the cost of actually designing that? Because today architects, right, like they're designing a rough recipe of what the building needs to look like. Like outlet go here, but you're not describing how the wire is gonna be run. You're not gonna describe where the the staples are, you're just giving it like this rough idea. And
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: it's really up to the trades on the floor to to figure out how to put it together.
Robert: You say on you say on the floor. So you gotta understand I started out I I started out in the field. My first job, I mean my very first job was framing carpenter, for a custom home builder
Felipe Polido: Nice. Yep.
Robert: in in Indiana. And, you know, I know exactly what you're talking about. You get that set of plans that it's a I'd like to call this nice reference guide to what needs to go on, but
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: in the field you truly are saying, okay, we have to do this first, this first, this first, but this is how we do it. I think the im your important part about it is a manufacturing process and it's basically custom every time you do it.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: Because
Felipe Polido: So
Robert: of it being, you know, you're out there in the weather, you d y you know, you've got maybe maybe missing some parts and pieces over here. You gotta wait on those by the time you get to that, maybe you get this other part done over here. It's never the same process every
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: time.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. And I I I got my taste of it too. I actually worked as an electrician for three summers in high school. That's how I paid for college. so so I definitely yeah, b being exposed and and really being exposed to all the different constraints too. Like every project is very unique. Every single outlet that you install, every single light that you put in, it's it's a different set of things that you're trying to work through and doing it in a way
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: that yeah, that is compliant, that demeets the the code, that is right, yeah. so yeah, so really like the the software that I'm describing here basically generates the shot drawings that then let the folks that are in our factory, which I'll show you. I'm currently in our pilot facility. this is about seventeen thousand square feet is I think the smallest modular manufacturing factory in the world, I would make a bet. we're actually moving away from this facility. we're currently we signed a lease and we're about to move into a facility that's about a hundred and fifteen thousand square feet, right up the road, which I'm very, very excited about. That's where I'm spending most of my time nowadays.
Robert: Yeah. Well that's a whole project in itself. You know, I've you know, we moving a shop, right, manufacturing facility of any ba that that is a whole nother animal. I mean, like
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: you're taking on a project inside of a project, inside of a project.
Felipe Polido: And and I mean we like so our our vision for for reframe is to build a network of these factories across the country. I think ultimately they're gonna be somewhere between fifty and eighty thousand square feet each.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: so as we get demand and today we have a few folks that we've been really close talks with in Utah, British Columbia and LA. And the idea here is is like as we build up the demand, we then go and build this factory again and again and we just copy and paste, which is what we were doing at Amazon with fulfillment centers. Like we we got to a world where we're deploying these robotic systems three, four times a year on different facilities and just kind of rinse and repeat. Yeah.
Robert: So not to get too far into your business here, but I w I wanted to the this new facility, are you treating it as another facility or is are you truly moving equipment from the seventeen thousand square feet to the other space?
Felipe Polido: This one is a full move. this is really this facility was a pilot facility. it's it served
Robert: I see.
Felipe Polido: us really well. we were producing like six hundred, seven hundred s yeah.
Robert: So you're gonna be moving Yeah, so you're gonna be moving the robots and the and the machinery that you've got in that facility over to the hundred and fifty. There's are you getting new machinery or more machinery for that hundred and fifty square foot
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah. No, we're doing that too. yeah. new full size bridge crane, we have a hund dagger which is a it's a very nice German automated saw for coring and cutting lumber. more robots, yeah. it's gonna be a whole new ramp up but We are f fully moving out of this facility into the new facility in the next five weeks. And I we're going from sign lease to operational in the new building in seventy days. so we're we're moving quick on those ones to make sure we get yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going well. Yeah,
Robert: Yeah, good luck with that.
Felipe Polido: yeah, yeah. yeah. It's been fun.
Robert: All right, so you you got into the house building business because of you wanna look out for your kids, right? You you're thinking there's some challenges ahead and you decided to apply your technology experience to the construction world, right?
Felipe Polido: That's correct. Yeah. The cost of housing again we talked about that the the the cost of labor that goes into a product, right? Ultimately the cost of like my dad is an electrician, my father in law is an electrician, they're both just retired, there's a massive labor shortage. Houses getting more complicated to being built in order to meet the the demands, right? You're now requiring ERVs in a lot of buildings. You're required more anyhow. So they used to say that houses are getting more complicated. There is a massive labor shortage that you see and a lot of the automation that we have put together is really driving the type of labor that can do their work in a factory to avert like folks that don't need to have a masters certificate, right? Like so for example, even today, we hire several folks from Lawrence Technical School right up the road. and because we've built this kind of software layer on top of our factory, that operators are using iPads to get their instructions for what steps they're doing next, the these guys are just as as as effective as anybody else that is doing the work. So you could really we still hire master plumbers, master electricians, right? But we have a very different ratio of like number apprentices. and over time we can really see that drive in the efficiency on the factory, which ultimately drives the cost of the product. So really driving the cost of homes down is is obviously our our biggest target.
Robert: I see. So you've got so I you know, looking at the website, you've got the house design, the modulars, kinda coming out of the factory. You've got basically pieces and parts, right? I got a wall unit, right? you got a wall unit that's designed, it goes in as that modular piece or a box so it looks like they kinda go together. And then you've got folks out in the field, you know Obviously you're utilizing the crane and you're you you know kind of putting everything into place. You've still got the foundation that you've got to put in place. You still got your rough plumbing that you gotta do, you got your rough electrical that you gotta do before it ever gets there. some of that stuff, the underground work, you know, you've got all that still. But the the component that you're talking about here is kinda that that frame shell kind of piece. Cause then I was wondering, are you thinking about utilizing because I noticed you got finishes inside of here? I was like, is that kind of part of the robotic piece. Like how does that all go together?
Felipe Polido: It's it's a great, great question. So talk a little bit about reframe is vertically integrated. We own everything to delivering the keys. So it's our own electricians and our own subs. We're GC in the project all the way to to handing off the keys. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
Robert: So you're considered self perform, basically. Okay.
Felipe Polido: yeah. and I mean we do higher subs like concrete work, for example, something we don't do today, but generally we're self performed all the way.
Robert: Now where you guys are at, it's it's pretty heavy union. Are you guys utilizing union contractors?
Felipe Polido: We do not today now. All of our projects are non-union today. we have built and again early in our stages, right? We've built one unit in Arlington. We have two triple deckers in Somerville, which is a pretty tough area to build. we're currently building twelve farmhouses. So these are single family, two thousand square foot homes that are going to Devon's mass. and
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: then later this year we're kicking off a project for sixty-eight kind of hospitality. Cabins that are going to New Hampshire. so that that should be a fun, fun change. Yeah. So these modules and I'm sitting on kind of a little showroom that we put together last year,
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: or actually two years ago now. They are leaving the factory with cabinets installed, lights, windows, doors. The finish is basically really high, like kind of a high level of finish. so we're installing all the cabinetry, sprinkler systems, all of your electrical in the factory. they get stamped, so they get actually like certified in the factory through NTA. and then they just get to the field. Now The triple decker building, right? Imagine a three-story, 3400 square foot building, three apartments. we built it all in a factory, and then we started with the crane on a Tuesday morning, and by Friday afternoon, the whole building was in place.
Robert: Okay. What about the okay, this I might got my brain working over here. I'm
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: thinking about how the build process goes. You got inspectors ready to go there, like you that same kind of week, same kind of day, they're probably in there checking those joint connections, things like that. Especially when you're talk talking about the plumbing and electrical, making sure all those fits and the connections are there, right?
Felipe Polido: So the way it works with modular, and I think there are thirty-five states that support this. And again, these buildings, right, higher performance than the stretch code formats, right? So these are high performant buildings, they meet the same kind of insurance, liability, leasing as anything that's
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: built on sites, stick built, right? but The pieces that are built in the factory get certified by NTA, which is a we use a third-party inspector and we you know. so all of the work that's done in the module does not have to be re-inspected once it comes on site. So you're really only inspecting the connections from one module to another or from the module to the street. So that is what we're getting inspected on with the local inspector. So in a lot of ways it's very minimal, right? Like we're talking about
Robert: Right.
Felipe Polido: just a hook up like for the the cabins that are a single unit, it's literally just a hook up to to the ground and that's it.
Robert: Right. I I'm more thinking about like the the three piece units, you got your multi decker kind of thing, and
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: are you using sub panels on each floor, like for the electrical sub panels, and then just s one connection into the main panel?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, so we so that one in particular, so for you to have some notion, right? That one we really broke it down. Each floor was actually eight different modules that came together.
Robert: Okay.
Felipe Polido: so some of them were They look almost like a donut. It was just two walls, a roof and a ceiling. So you can get some really like large open spaces because we're we're shipping these smaller units. And the reason we can ship these smaller units is because our factories tend to be near where the projects are.
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: we're not trying to ship them from Canada or from PA to here, right? Like we're only going a few miles, so we can actually design much smaller units because the same truck can run Robin in the same data to deliver them. yeah. Now between those we have some schemes on how to like leave some openings and basically have places where we're connecting all those wires together. In an ideal world in the future, something more like a click to connect type of connector would be ideal. but
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: we're all about cost and cost reduction and that is right like it it's about how do you find the the the right way to design these buildings so they're they're easy to to make, but they're also not costing our our customers any further.
Robert: That so I did I small project, you know, I do it I st I own a little little interior company. and
Felipe Polido: Please.
Robert: we had a small we had a small project we're putting in a just a fireplace unit, right? The electric fireplace unit, kinda just is kind of the visual. Still puts out a little bit of heat, but it's they're more aesthetic than they are anything. But I just noticed in the instructions this has you have two ways you can connect it. You can put a tail on it and plug it into the wall. Which is exactly what I did. But it also had a feature on it where it had that kind of what you're talking about, that connector. And
Felipe Polido: Okay.
Robert: so you design it right, right? Again, it the precision has to be there, but you s basically like a Lego, it snaps into place and when it snaps into place it connects that electrical connection. And I thought, okay, that's cool, because that's what I started to think about when I started thinking about modular construction. we're putting those walls together, you're putting the you know, the different modules together, you want it to kinda clip together and everything kinda be done because we don't want to get in that situation where it's like, okay, we've done all that, but now we've gotta still gotta rewire, we're still gotta do all this other thing. I think
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Now what's really interesting about that is that like yes, I mean I I'm an engineer by by trade, right? Like that's where my brain goes, and I think that's where most people's brains goes, is like we should just be designing like stamped walls that you can just click together and you're done, right? And
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: there are There have been a lot of folks in this industry that have tried that with venture capital. And on
Robert: Sure.
Felipe Polido: paper, like if you design this strategy was like, hey, I'm gonna build this like fully engineered wall panel that like autoclecks and whatnot, on paper at some point, like on their growth, it makes financial sense. Like it's actually cheaper. Nobody has been able to get to that point. Basically the the the the traverse to scale that from a single prototype to being able to produce ten thousand homes, that
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: That is what everybody dives on, like trying to get to that state. so we felt very, very strongly looking at those and talking to those folks when we started reframe that we were not gonna do that. We were gonna really think about the process and how to engineer a way to do a better building, but using the same materials as everybody else. So like we yeah.
Robert: Yeah. I bet you had some challenges of working with again, the imperfection of lumber.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I that had to have been the kind of like first on the list when you start, you know, got your robotics, you got your computer software. Everything's got rules, but guess what doesn't have rules? The lumber. It's got no rules.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, I would yeah, I I love to talk about that one. I 'cause that that's a great great example. And we're one the the the robotics really makes a difference. So a lot of the automation equipment that you can buy today to build houses comes from Europe. It's all designed to work with spruce, which is a much, much straighter, cleaner wood.
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: and it actually a lot of folks that have tried to import those pieces of equipment, they struggle to run it out of grade two SPF, right? Like So we built all of our automation system in-house. So we have a robotic system that does wall framing. so we pack up two by four, two by sixes, we put them together, we nail them together. we do bundles, so we can handle like up to six wide stud packs. we're currently pushing towards bringing on sheathing. so we're actually placing OSB sheets over those panels and actually like doing the the the the schedule nailing on it. Next down the road is probably gonna be routing. so actually routing like the doors and window fenestrations out of those. Now that system, we've really had to think hard about how to make it very easy to reproduce, but also to be able to handle the lumber that we have coming in. And like context, right? At Amazon, one of my research teams was working on item identification and damage detection. So their their whole job was like how do I identify if something that is in this box is broken? And it's actually a really, really hard problem, right? Because in the Amazon context, like jeans, for example, is a great example. I I'm wearing jeans right now. some genes come from the factory ripped and some are not supposed to be ripped. How do you write an algorithm that says, okay, for this one, like you're looking for a ripped thing and this one on it's fine, don't worry about it. That's the right rip.
Robert: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's the extra fifty dollars you pay, yeah, I guess.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, exactly. So figuring out how the quality of the lumber, it is an order of magnitude or maybe two orders of magnitude easier of a technical problem. Measuring if it's twisted, if it's bowed, if it's cusped like that, that's actually a much easier problem. You still have to manage it, but at least you can detect it, and that's nice. The next step was like how do we design this robotic system to account for that? And if you look at a carpenter framing a wall with twisted lumber. Generally they will pick the better boards to make the outer edge, and then for the
Robert: Do that. You don't do that. You don't you don't do that, Felipe. I am I gotta tell you, man, I spent my first I probably my
Felipe Polido: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: first two weeks of being on the job site at you know, working for a custom builder. All
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I did, all I did the whole time, I I went through bunks of lumber and marked up straight. I mean, they would not like you don't frame with with junk lumber. Yeah.
Felipe Polido: And just select and throw it. Yeah. No, not take it. Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. We we do that too. I mean we we do filter out a lot. But we like a carpenter, he can pick up a piece of lumber and twist it and nail it, especially for the inner boards, right? Like to to make it so yeah.
Robert: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, again again, if it's got a little bit of a bow to it, yeah, you can still use it in this in the straight, but you're not gonna use it for a king stud or door frame. You're not gonna you know what I mean, you want the straight stuff for that.
Felipe Polido: Correct. With that, yeah. So we're doing the same thing in that our robot system places these pieces of lumber on the the place where they're meant to be, and then it basically has a gripper that just goes to the edge. So you have your your your base plate and you have your your stud and it pushes that stud into the right shape based on where it's supposed to be on the drawings, right? So this is based on that CAD, that twin model, like digital model of the building. And then we fire those nails. And this thing has a whole lot of force. So very much like a carpenter using a two by four to push it or a a a hammer to push it into place. We do that and then we fire the nails. so you get that precision, even though the lumber might actually be like somewhat twisted in the middle and like yeah. so it's been working out well. We we've been getting a lot of yeah.
Robert: So you go so the system doesn't necessarily it it has a bit of a sorting feature, but it doesn't really I mean, again, I would say the variable there would be, you know, how bowed does a piece have to be? Like I could take a look down a a ten foot two by six and I go, that thing's below to three quarter in the last three feet. You know what I mean? Or I won't use that on the does the system have kind of that kind of vision to be able to go I can use that on a door. I can't. I can use it in the middle of the wall. Okay,
Felipe Polido: So yeah.
Robert: great.
Felipe Polido: So today we do that selection prior to feeding them into our smart like miter saw. so we use a system from EasyFrame, it's called. It's from they're owned by Simpson Strongtai. it we have a carpenter that looks through that lumber before it feeds in and he knows, right, like if this is a King stud or this is a he will like pick higher quality lumber, but we print right onto the lumber the instructions of what it's meant to be. so the idea here is is right like he's doing that selection today. At some point in the near future I will start scanning those boards and then making that selection over time, but using his expertise to figure out what like what is a threshold, right? He knows exactly this is as far as we can go and still build a nice wall, right? Like we need to like basically codify that and then have the the the the saw actually make that choice.
Robert: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it w and I wanna ask you about that because this is one of those things we are trying to find a balance here, between what do robots and and AI kinda really need to do versus what's still good for humans to do. I mean, what's your what's your thought on that? And kinda as you're gu I mean, you're involved in this every day, it says like, hey, it's probably just better if we just do it this way or l you know, let us handle this part.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. No. That's a great question. I mean I'll reminder, like we're we just are out of labor. I think that that's one piece that we should keep in mind, right? Like we need folks that are doing this to be able to be able to build ten times more homes with the same person, right? so that's one piece of it. In terms of the work in in a robotic space we use dull, dirty, and dangerous. Those are the three D's that you go after. The rough framing, you're generally moving much larger pieces of lumber, you're doing stuff that is very repetitive and stuff that's gonna be hidden inside of the walls. obviously framing is say fifteen percent of the labor and materials that go into a building. So we felt strongly about using automation there first. And then we can let our carpenters do a lot more of the finishing work. And that's stuff that robotics is not gonna be able to do anytime soon, right? Like finished carpentry, like building the environment that I am in, right? Like doing cabinetry work. Like these are the things that still require very much a human touch. And they're the things that other humans are gonna work with and touch with day in and day out. And it is yeah. very, very unlikely that it will be automated anytime soon.
Robert: Yeah. You've got some you've got some folks out there, I might be one of them that says you kinda need to know the basics before you move to the more detailed stuff. What's your thoughts on that? Where you're you've got carpenters, you've got folks that are kind of stepping into the role. We know we don't have enough of right? We know that. But they're kind of stepping into a role that's that maybe they should had some basics in in front of it first.
Felipe Polido: To learn it. Yeah. No, I think it's a totally fair point. I mean, be honest with you, right? Like it is not going away. Like we we're framing today we're doing about like thirty, forty percent of wall panels with the robot. The other sixty are still framed manually. The floor cassettes that we do are all manual. The the ceilings are still manual, right? Like the roofs, that work is not going to weigh. And then there are other skills that come into play. So we do all of our drywall, we actually run it through a CNC machine. so we actually pre-cut all the hose and we mark them and all that. So subfloor same thing. Like so when we set up the subfloor
Robert: I love this idea.
Felipe Polido: for one of these modules, we draw on them. Like there's gonna be a light right above you right here. This is where the door is going to open. I don't know you've ever seen Dusty Robotics, any of those guys? The printing, yeah. So
Robert: Sure, the the layup machine the guy, yeah.
Felipe Polido: we do the same thing, but we do it at a per sheet basis. and the idea is is like somebody still has to run that machine, somebody has to still know how to operate it, and then somebody still has to build that frame. so
Robert: Well, and somebody's gotta take that order. Somebody's gotta take that order. So back in the day we used to do this with the the roofing. you know, we you used to do the all of the different trusses and things like that. So you get a truss package, right? This is kind of the same idea, but you
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah. Same thing, yeah. Yeah.
Robert: gotta build it in order to make the trust package work out right. You get that thing out of order and you're in real trouble.
Felipe Polido: You're in trouble, yeah.
Robert: So I see it the same kind of way if you're laying out their you know, your four by eight or four by ten sheets of plywood or your or your drywall. Yeah, you gotta get that stuff in order. You gotta get it there in right spot in the right place, you know. So it's still still gotta think
Felipe Polido: If you miss it, you're gonna yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: about it.
Felipe Polido: But but it's an interesting so I'll give an example that we've we've talked through, like I I I like this one 'cause it's pretty clear. Normally and again, electrician background, right? Like normally you would be paying an electrician, even on an odder modular factory, you're you're paying an electrician $150 an hour to run the outlets inside of your module or site he has to drill the hole to run that wire to get it back. So over here, because we know where that wire is gonna be like run through, we can pre-drill that on the CNC. So not only he knows that that outlet has to go here, he's now look up and there's a single hole and it's like that's where the wire's gonna run and run through it. So you're you're augmenting his ability to do work. And reducing the stuff that is really annoying and not helpful and not add value, right? So it's it's all about like making folks that are doing the work do more add value work unless I'm driving to Home Depot, I'm flipping to the drawings to figure out what is supposed to be here, right? Like you're trying to just yeah, really, really.
Robert: Yeah. No, and I think I think it eliminates a lot of great things in it. I I love it. I mean quite honestly, I really love the idea of it because again, I'm all about planning, right? Everything that I talk about when I post on LinkedIn and I talk about how we can do things better and we need to be able to do things better and faster, one of the big things is that we don't do is we don't plan well enough. Everybody wants to get to the build stage. Right. But we're in this world of, you know, construction tech, right? The whole the whole world is talking about how construction needs to be involved better with technology so that we can then be better. Well, here's the thing about technology, it requires a plan, it has a structure. it has rules, it has things that you need to follow. And if you're going to imitate any sort of workflow, guess what? You're going to have to define what that workflow is, which is what your software kind of does, right? The software part defines, hey, this is the workflow, and here's the intricacies within that workflow that you need to a either decide and be part of it, or you know, send it out elsewhere so it can be done later or whatever, however that works. And
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I I feel like we've totally lost touch with that because we We keep looking at construction as this whole thing of well this is how we've always done it over here and we don't necessarily want to change our process, but we wow, you know, we wanna use technology.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. And and and there and and there is room for the creativity. There is room for the the the the the the craftsmanship on on inside of that. And I think that's one thing that gets lost sometimes when we're talking about technology, right? Like w we're just kind of putting a harness to help kind of guide the work and to to schedule it. But within the work itself, like that's still happening. It's still very much like a yeah. It's still definitely a craft.
Robert: Yeah. No. But I do love the idea, like stop and think of all the blocking that doesn't have to be there if you put right, you don't have a guy going to blocking for for like electricians, right? Stop thinking about that. the the stud is already where it needs to be, you know what I mean, and the blocking is, you know, already there. You don't have to go back after the framers been in there and do your own blocking.
Felipe Polido: Do your own exactly.
Robert: Right. And you don't have to worry you don't have to write an RFI to go, Hey, by the way, this calls this wall calls for two outlets over here. Is it two and whatever? That's already in the plan. It's done.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Even better. I mean we rely a lot on printing, inkjet printing. So all of our two by fours and two by six we print instructions on them. we do the same thing with sheet goods. So not only you're not pulling the drawings to look at how this thing is gonna come together, you're literally just looking at the work in front of you and it's describing, right, like this is where the box is gonna go, this is how you're gonna run it, yeah. so really, really trying to simplify, yeah.
Robert: So I know you're kind of in that residential space you got a lot of work ahead of you, right? Anyway. Right. It's it's it's its own animal. I've worked in the commercial space for many years after being in the residential space. Commercial space, do you think that there's room for something like what you're doing in the commercial space with metal stud framing and those types of things?
Felipe Polido: Don't yeah, I mean the the co forum steel is don't get me wrong, like from a robotics perspective, I would love, love to be doing that. My life would be so much easier and we are actually investing on it. I think we're gonna buy a a CFS machine by the end of the year, to start doing some experiments. but to your actual question Ultimately I I think the answer is very much yes. I think What's crazy about construction is that it's such a large industry, right? Multi-trillion dollar. There is such a deficit of homes already. Like we have so much room to to really grow and to make an impact. And I think like looking at the big players, right, like Lenar and Dear Horton, right, like they're they cannot it they're doing an amazing job building homes. They do it at a very large scale. They're not operating near existing city centers or where people want to live, like the missing middle. And I think we have a very good opportunity here to build a solution that lets you build houses near Boston, near Austin, near Salt Lake City, right? Like we just shipped a home to LA from here. like th there is a lot of opportunity of this kind of custom dedicated to these kind of higher density environments and like I I feel very strongly that we if we don't do nothing else, we got plenty of work in front of us for the next like decade at least.
Robert: Yeah, I mean, I always find it seems that y there is a big challenge. I and I I gotta be honest, I don't I don't know. I I see people say that there's too many houses in the real estate market right now. And then I see folks in some and I think it's a lo it's depends on where you are. Right?
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: in the Texas market maybe we've got too many houses, right?
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: But kind of to your point, you know, in the in the in the northeast or, you know, or maybe even out west, who knows? Like maybe there's just not enough of and I think it's it's to the point of that affordability point. We have a lot of houses, but are they at that affordability point? Or are they just too old? You know, is the stock too old where you end up you've got the complexities of bringing things up to code, especially if you're going to do anything and remodel or you know, those types of deals. So it's a very weird Weird it it seems like a stranger dynamic right now.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah. I mean to your point, right? the LA home that we've put together and very, very proud of that project. we were getting quotes in the area for like six hundred to nine hundred dollars a square feet. Because there is a six thousand home shortage after the fires and nobody can build. So that market is very, very in need of of support. here where we are, my parents have been trying to move from New York up and It's it's hot it's hard to find a house that is affordable. Like you're you're either talking about a two million dollar home or something that is gonna take our lot of love for you to get through it. And like I've done that as somebody coming out of college, yes, like I put the sweat equity in, like swap the windows, doors, did a roof, siding, build a deck, right? Like you can do that, but it is not for everybody and I think there are many folks that that are just looking for an affordable way to yeah, be recommended.
Robert: Yeah, I think again, more and more though, Felipe, really more and more. There's not that many people that can do that kind of thing. They they don't they don't have the skills of that. They they're more focused on the other parts of their life that they didn't learn maybe like you and I learned over time. It's like You know, my dad was famous for waking me up in the morning, you know, ready to go pour concrete. You know, it was that was you know, so it was like that was a good time for him. I I built my first barn at fourteen, you know.
Felipe Polido: That's amazing.
Robert: So it's one of those things. It's like not everybody comes out of the womb, you know, ready to go do a a house remodel. Most people lose their ass when they do it and so they're like they're very, very gun shy to try to do it, you know, a second time.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Again, yeah. Yeah.
Robert: so it's just a weird, you know, it's a weird thing. And it's like I think it's it's interesting how we're trying to apply solutions, you know, kind of to this and needing it, but again I think it's very, very to the locality, you know, who needs it where?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: that might be your biggest challenge, like who needs it where? And what developers are ready to kind of include you into the mix.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah. And we've been having some really good conversations and building relationships with some large developers that that have been supporting us. But again, yeah, it it is in those areas that that are there are shortages and and the prices are very much skyrocketing because of it. yeah.
Robert: What do you think about what do you think about 'cause I know it goes around a lot here, you know, multifamily. I know you did a that three unit. do you have ideas of scaling it even bigger for kind of multi unit?
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah yeah. so no, we we're actually in a design contract for a l larger like twenty unit multifamily starting in Q one. so I think the real unlock from our system, right, from a tech perspective, is that we really want to be able to build anything through that factory without having to retool. Which is a lot closer to what a G C working out of his truck would do, right? It's just like y you're not building mechanisms, you're not you don't have like equipment to deliver that. You're really just using that softer backbone to to drive the differences. so yeah, we were gonna be building these sixty eight cabins in New Hampshire and at the same time we're building a Do strongly about it. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun ride.
Robert: Yeah. Well, okay. So again, you get into and you get into the same things here. And this is this is why what I was excited to talk to you about this because you're getting into the the the real meat of the problem here, right? Because not only utilizing the technology to do better planning and you know kind of better product, right? more I'll say more standard product. Right? Something that you know when it comes off the truck, it was it's great. You know, it's ready to go.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: So the the quality is there, the exactness, the planning is behind it, but you're still running into the same things like assets on the ground. You still gotta staff that job, right? You still gotta coordinate permits on that deal, you still gotta go in and get finish work done, you still got, you know, inspections, all the different things that All of that's part of it and it's the challenges that we see out here and and people don't realize that well Elon Mess said it the other day, you can design and plan all you want. He goes, but you know, 10x times that is the manufacturing process, right? It's the actual build itself will eat your lunch at any point during the day.
Felipe Polido: Actually I yeah, I I feel like so we've we've been again building now going to ten plus units. we're about to build our twentieth but ten on the ground. Our in factory labor efficiency, so how well we've been able to produce a a square foot of house has been drastically decreasing and we see that curve keep going. The things that potentially will stop us long term, I think are the things you're pointing out, which is it's the permitting, is the concrete or like the the foundation work. It's all the things that the industry has struggled to be efficient, but it has been okay because everything else was inefficient about it. So in a lot of ways, like if I had a magic wand and if there was one thing that I could like clean away is like how do we make that process go smoothly? And we are solving it by first going to municipalities and going to developers that have that already pre-digested and we're executing on them. But
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: that is not the long term goal. The long term goal is to be able to build houses everywhere. And we can only do that if those legislators, the the the the whole system itself starts to become more streamlined. yeah, I mean multi week approvals for permitting, right? Like or one idea that I heard is like you're automatically approved after three weeks if there's no review. Right like it's how do you set up those those mechanisms so like the approval process itself and the permitting process itself like can be a lot more streamlined 'cause 'cause that At the end of the day I think that that is the the the next big lever that we have to go after once we we get the cost of the housing down.
Robert: Well, I know you probably got some proponents of that. I had AJ Waters on the program just a few weeks ago and you know, AJ is now working for Procor on the public side of the world, right? And I asked him s you know, straight point blank, I said, Why can't we get better technology on the public side of the world? I mean, especially for permitting. I mean, it would seem so easy to, you know, stop this, you know there's programs out there they're using software, but it it feels like it's legacy software, it's not very efficient, it's very bottlenecked in these different things. I I see that as the quite honestly, there's a big part of me that sees that as the the next layer that we really need to tackle is that is that process, the approval process, the permitting process and how we expedite.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. So yeah. It's really interesting, like I mean we're really big AI proponents, like we we use it day in and day out. And that is one step that we have on our process is like every time we're gonna submit, we actually have AI go through all of the local code, our submission package and test for collisions or things that are not And it it pops up, we get like things that
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: our very, very expertise, like expert team that has been doing this for years missed.
Robert: No he
Felipe Polido: how how do you make that into a tool that then is used right like so you just automatically you can check it three times, right? Like you before having anybody involved, yeah.
Robert: I ha I mean I ran into it several years ago, Fort Worth, right here in my home hometown kind of area. it the inspector everything was to code, right? But the inspector was like, I don't think so. You know? It was very, very you know, I had to have
Felipe Polido: Humbling.
Robert: You know, I had to have three meetings. I, you know, had to go to the site, had to look at it with him, I had to talk to him about it, and you know, he was it just seemed like there was this disconnect. And I don't know if it was a sort of a power play or whatever, but whatever it is, it was a very human thing, a very a very bottleneck portion of the process that seemed to be, why are we even discussing this? We've you know,
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: this thing this works, you know, the design
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: works, the build works.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I y you remind me of like there was a quote from somebody that fire spreads differently from town to town. Like like how how do we design yeah, like why is fire sprinklers and fire solutions not nation or statewide at least, and not doesn't have to be nationwide, but it's statewide. So we're we're either we are up to code and it's approved, or we're not. And but like Today we're going to the local fire chief and we're talking to them and getting and again like it
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: most of the time everybody's super friendly, works, but it adds friction, it adds time, right? Like there are yeah.
Robert: That's the thing. It doesn't matter if they're friendly and it works, okay? It's the time that it takes to go, okay, we need to meet on site to do this inspection to talk about whether we're gonna approve this or not.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: and I'm like Okay, well everything's up to code, but I think it is to your point when they're sitting there taking the industrial building code on on you know, the commercial side and
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: per municipality there's little changes here and there that may have been grandfathered in from somewhere, we've got we've still gotta have that because, you know, Joe still needs his job.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I I don't know.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
Robert: love this. I I like I said, I I was looking forward to this conversation. You know, forty five minutes runs fast, I always say it. but yeah, you're in the thick of it, man. And I I'm sure you're feeling it some days.
Felipe Polido: You Yeah yeah yeah no it's been fun. You should if you're up in Boston you should come over and check us out. Actually, yeah we'll we'll we do tours about once a month. Not for the next two months because we're moving, but starting October again I think we'll do it and we'll we'll love to to show you around and and yeah, let you tour the robots and and get to see our floor.
Robert: Yeah, I would love that. Love that. If I get up to Boston and my wife wants to go up. She wants to she wants to go up and see the y the the the changing of the fall colors. We don't get much of that here in Texas, so w you know. So
Felipe Polido: It's yeah, it's fair. Yeah. No, it's beautiful. yeah, no, I I highly recommend it.
Robert: Very good. Well, Felipe, it has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for being with me. I hope you guys come back. Maybe I'll come up to Boston when maybe we can do a podcast live from the brand new facility. That would be awesome. Yeah, that would be great. All
Felipe Polido: That would be amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robert.
Robert: right. Thank you.
Felipe Polido: Perfect.
Robert: good, good. I'm I'm on a roll. I'm on a roll today. Felipe, you've got had a bit of a journey to where you are now. you were with what did you do? DARPA products, in the in robotics back in the that back in the day. And then you were with you're with Amazon for quite a few years in the
Felipe Polido: That's correct. Yep.
Robert: in the kind of the robotics domain over there. And then all of sudden, out of nowhere, suddenly you decide, hey, here's a good idea. Let's go build some houses, but we're gonna use robots instead. Like, seriously, I have been in the construction business thirty five years. I've never seen this pathway. how did you get here?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, no, that is a great question. That is a very good question. so I was in the DAP Robotics Challenge. I actually used to do development for the old Boston MS Atlas robot.
Robert: Okay.
Felipe Polido: so the the big humanoid robot. I used to write software for that, motion planning controls. and then at Amazon I was the technical lead for their bin picking solution. so imagine Robot Arms using vision and machine learning to pick up objects, anything you can buy on Amazon, basically move it, identify it, pack it. so that was really cool. I mean, that organization we went from like four people to about three hundred by the time I left, like on that program. Sparrow was like it was quite quite quite on the the the ramp up path by the time I left. It was really exciting. But I was really looking for a way to have more impact. one of the the big catalysts for me, I have a seven year old daughter, but I also have twin boys that are now four. And they were born in the same month that we started the company. so we actually they th that that happened later on the same day. And I was I was, yeah, really looking for a way to to help with kind of carbon emissions was one of the first things we started to toy with, but then really the affordability crisis that we have in this in this country. so we felt very important about a way to drive that personal pressures, pressures with friends, folks that really could not find housing because it was just very, very expensive. And y you mentioned robotics and like I I do think robotics is a big piece of it. We we have a very strong thesis around like long-term automation, but in a lot of ways what was most interesting from the Amazon world is really the software that drives the process. so when you talk about manufacturing, right? My my vest the the the microwave, my laptop, less than 10% of most of these goods, the cost of it is labor. housing has been a 50-50 since the 70s and actually has gotten slightly worse in that time frame. That is to say that There are plenty of room for making things more efficient to build. and it really it is about how do you do you actually build something that everybody wants to use and it's compliant. which goes to this other piece on the construction space, which is everybody is aware of this, right? Like there are over thirty thousand different zoning jurisdictions in the US. So before you get to local site conditions, before you get to customer preferences, you're in a world that every single house that goes up is a one-off prototype. Every single house is built uniquely, right? Like that they're all different than each other. And really the the lessons coming from Amazon is like how do we build the software that lets you generate the instructions to build that house without paying the cost of actually designing that? Because today architects, right, like they're designing a rough recipe of what the building needs to look like. Like outlet go here, but you're not describing how the wire is gonna be run. You're not gonna describe where the the staples are, you're just giving it like this rough idea. And
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: it's really up to the trades on the floor to to figure out how to put it together.
Robert: You say on you say on the floor. So you gotta understand I started out I I started out in the field. My first job, I mean my very first job was framing carpenter, for a custom home builder
Felipe Polido: Nice. Yep.
Robert: in in Indiana. And, you know, I know exactly what you're talking about. You get that set of plans that it's a I'd like to call this nice reference guide to what needs to go on, but
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: in the field you truly are saying, okay, we have to do this first, this first, this first, but this is how we do it. I think the im your important part about it is a manufacturing process and it's basically custom every time you do it.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: Because
Felipe Polido: So
Robert: of it being, you know, you're out there in the weather, you d y you know, you've got maybe maybe missing some parts and pieces over here. You gotta wait on those by the time you get to that, maybe you get this other part done over here. It's never the same process every
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: time.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. And I I I got my taste of it too. I actually worked as an electrician for three summers in high school. That's how I paid for college. so so I definitely yeah, b being exposed and and really being exposed to all the different constraints too. Like every project is very unique. Every single outlet that you install, every single light that you put in, it's it's a different set of things that you're trying to work through and doing it in a way
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: that yeah, that is compliant, that demeets the the code, that is right, yeah. so yeah, so really like the the software that I'm describing here basically generates the shot drawings that then let the folks that are in our factory, which I'll show you. I'm currently in our pilot facility. this is about seventeen thousand square feet is I think the smallest modular manufacturing factory in the world, I would make a bet. we're actually moving away from this facility. we're currently we signed a lease and we're about to move into a facility that's about a hundred and fifteen thousand square feet, right up the road, which I'm very, very excited about. That's where I'm spending most of my time nowadays.
Robert: Yeah. Well that's a whole project in itself. You know, I've you know, we moving a shop, right, manufacturing facility of any ba that that is a whole nother animal. I mean, like
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: you're taking on a project inside of a project, inside of a project.
Felipe Polido: And and I mean we like so our our vision for for reframe is to build a network of these factories across the country. I think ultimately they're gonna be somewhere between fifty and eighty thousand square feet each.
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: so as we get demand and today we have a few folks that we've been really close talks with in Utah, British Columbia and LA. And the idea here is is like as we build up the demand, we then go and build this factory again and again and we just copy and paste, which is what we were doing at Amazon with fulfillment centers. Like we we got to a world where we're deploying these robotic systems three, four times a year on different facilities and just kind of rinse and repeat. Yeah.
Robert: So not to get too far into your business here, but I w I wanted to the this new facility, are you treating it as another facility or is are you truly moving equipment from the seventeen thousand square feet to the other space?
Felipe Polido: This one is a full move. this is really this facility was a pilot facility. it's it served
Robert: I see.
Felipe Polido: us really well. we were producing like six hundred, seven hundred s yeah.
Robert: So you're gonna be moving Yeah, so you're gonna be moving the robots and the and the machinery that you've got in that facility over to the hundred and fifty. There's are you getting new machinery or more machinery for that hundred and fifty square foot
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah. No, we're doing that too. yeah. new full size bridge crane, we have a hund dagger which is a it's a very nice German automated saw for coring and cutting lumber. more robots, yeah. it's gonna be a whole new ramp up but We are f fully moving out of this facility into the new facility in the next five weeks. And I we're going from sign lease to operational in the new building in seventy days. so we're we're moving quick on those ones to make sure we get yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going well. Yeah,
Robert: Yeah, good luck with that.
Felipe Polido: yeah, yeah. yeah. It's been fun.
Robert: All right, so you you got into the house building business because of you wanna look out for your kids, right? You you're thinking there's some challenges ahead and you decided to apply your technology experience to the construction world, right?
Felipe Polido: That's correct. Yeah. The cost of housing again we talked about that the the the cost of labor that goes into a product, right? Ultimately the cost of like my dad is an electrician, my father in law is an electrician, they're both just retired, there's a massive labor shortage. Houses getting more complicated to being built in order to meet the the demands, right? You're now requiring ERVs in a lot of buildings. You're required more anyhow. So they used to say that houses are getting more complicated. There is a massive labor shortage that you see and a lot of the automation that we have put together is really driving the type of labor that can do their work in a factory to avert like folks that don't need to have a masters certificate, right? Like so for example, even today, we hire several folks from Lawrence Technical School right up the road. and because we've built this kind of software layer on top of our factory, that operators are using iPads to get their instructions for what steps they're doing next, the these guys are just as as as effective as anybody else that is doing the work. So you could really we still hire master plumbers, master electricians, right? But we have a very different ratio of like number apprentices. and over time we can really see that drive in the efficiency on the factory, which ultimately drives the cost of the product. So really driving the cost of homes down is is obviously our our biggest target.
Robert: I see. So you've got so I you know, looking at the website, you've got the house design, the modulars, kinda coming out of the factory. You've got basically pieces and parts, right? I got a wall unit, right? you got a wall unit that's designed, it goes in as that modular piece or a box so it looks like they kinda go together. And then you've got folks out in the field, you know Obviously you're utilizing the crane and you're you you know kind of putting everything into place. You've still got the foundation that you've got to put in place. You still got your rough plumbing that you gotta do, you got your rough electrical that you gotta do before it ever gets there. some of that stuff, the underground work, you know, you've got all that still. But the the component that you're talking about here is kinda that that frame shell kind of piece. Cause then I was wondering, are you thinking about utilizing because I noticed you got finishes inside of here? I was like, is that kind of part of the robotic piece. Like how does that all go together?
Felipe Polido: It's it's a great, great question. So talk a little bit about reframe is vertically integrated. We own everything to delivering the keys. So it's our own electricians and our own subs. We're GC in the project all the way to to handing off the keys. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
Robert: So you're considered self perform, basically. Okay.
Felipe Polido: yeah. and I mean we do higher subs like concrete work, for example, something we don't do today, but generally we're self performed all the way.
Robert: Now where you guys are at, it's it's pretty heavy union. Are you guys utilizing union contractors?
Felipe Polido: We do not today now. All of our projects are non-union today. we have built and again early in our stages, right? We've built one unit in Arlington. We have two triple deckers in Somerville, which is a pretty tough area to build. we're currently building twelve farmhouses. So these are single family, two thousand square foot homes that are going to Devon's mass. and
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: then later this year we're kicking off a project for sixty-eight kind of hospitality. Cabins that are going to New Hampshire. so that that should be a fun, fun change. Yeah. So these modules and I'm sitting on kind of a little showroom that we put together last year,
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: or actually two years ago now. They are leaving the factory with cabinets installed, lights, windows, doors. The finish is basically really high, like kind of a high level of finish. so we're installing all the cabinetry, sprinkler systems, all of your electrical in the factory. they get stamped, so they get actually like certified in the factory through NTA. and then they just get to the field. Now The triple decker building, right? Imagine a three-story, 3400 square foot building, three apartments. we built it all in a factory, and then we started with the crane on a Tuesday morning, and by Friday afternoon, the whole building was in place.
Robert: Okay. What about the okay, this I might got my brain working over here. I'm
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: thinking about how the build process goes. You got inspectors ready to go there, like you that same kind of week, same kind of day, they're probably in there checking those joint connections, things like that. Especially when you're talk talking about the plumbing and electrical, making sure all those fits and the connections are there, right?
Felipe Polido: So the way it works with modular, and I think there are thirty-five states that support this. And again, these buildings, right, higher performance than the stretch code formats, right? So these are high performant buildings, they meet the same kind of insurance, liability, leasing as anything that's
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: built on sites, stick built, right? but The pieces that are built in the factory get certified by NTA, which is a we use a third-party inspector and we you know. so all of the work that's done in the module does not have to be re-inspected once it comes on site. So you're really only inspecting the connections from one module to another or from the module to the street. So that is what we're getting inspected on with the local inspector. So in a lot of ways it's very minimal, right? Like we're talking about
Robert: Right.
Felipe Polido: just a hook up like for the the cabins that are a single unit, it's literally just a hook up to to the ground and that's it.
Robert: Right. I I'm more thinking about like the the three piece units, you got your multi decker kind of thing, and
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: are you using sub panels on each floor, like for the electrical sub panels, and then just s one connection into the main panel?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, so we so that one in particular, so for you to have some notion, right? That one we really broke it down. Each floor was actually eight different modules that came together.
Robert: Okay.
Felipe Polido: so some of them were They look almost like a donut. It was just two walls, a roof and a ceiling. So you can get some really like large open spaces because we're we're shipping these smaller units. And the reason we can ship these smaller units is because our factories tend to be near where the projects are.
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: we're not trying to ship them from Canada or from PA to here, right? Like we're only going a few miles, so we can actually design much smaller units because the same truck can run Robin in the same data to deliver them. yeah. Now between those we have some schemes on how to like leave some openings and basically have places where we're connecting all those wires together. In an ideal world in the future, something more like a click to connect type of connector would be ideal. but
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: we're all about cost and cost reduction and that is right like it it's about how do you find the the the right way to design these buildings so they're they're easy to to make, but they're also not costing our our customers any further.
Robert: That so I did I small project, you know, I do it I st I own a little little interior company. and
Felipe Polido: Please.
Robert: we had a small we had a small project we're putting in a just a fireplace unit, right? The electric fireplace unit, kinda just is kind of the visual. Still puts out a little bit of heat, but it's they're more aesthetic than they are anything. But I just noticed in the instructions this has you have two ways you can connect it. You can put a tail on it and plug it into the wall. Which is exactly what I did. But it also had a feature on it where it had that kind of what you're talking about, that connector. And
Felipe Polido: Okay.
Robert: so you design it right, right? Again, it the precision has to be there, but you s basically like a Lego, it snaps into place and when it snaps into place it connects that electrical connection. And I thought, okay, that's cool, because that's what I started to think about when I started thinking about modular construction. we're putting those walls together, you're putting the you know, the different modules together, you want it to kinda clip together and everything kinda be done because we don't want to get in that situation where it's like, okay, we've done all that, but now we've gotta still gotta rewire, we're still gotta do all this other thing. I think
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Now what's really interesting about that is that like yes, I mean I I'm an engineer by by trade, right? Like that's where my brain goes, and I think that's where most people's brains goes, is like we should just be designing like stamped walls that you can just click together and you're done, right? And
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: there are There have been a lot of folks in this industry that have tried that with venture capital. And on
Robert: Sure.
Felipe Polido: paper, like if you design this strategy was like, hey, I'm gonna build this like fully engineered wall panel that like autoclecks and whatnot, on paper at some point, like on their growth, it makes financial sense. Like it's actually cheaper. Nobody has been able to get to that point. Basically the the the the traverse to scale that from a single prototype to being able to produce ten thousand homes, that
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: That is what everybody dives on, like trying to get to that state. so we felt very, very strongly looking at those and talking to those folks when we started reframe that we were not gonna do that. We were gonna really think about the process and how to engineer a way to do a better building, but using the same materials as everybody else. So like we yeah.
Robert: Yeah. I bet you had some challenges of working with again, the imperfection of lumber.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I that had to have been the kind of like first on the list when you start, you know, got your robotics, you got your computer software. Everything's got rules, but guess what doesn't have rules? The lumber. It's got no rules.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, I would yeah, I I love to talk about that one. I 'cause that that's a great great example. And we're one the the the robotics really makes a difference. So a lot of the automation equipment that you can buy today to build houses comes from Europe. It's all designed to work with spruce, which is a much, much straighter, cleaner wood.
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: and it actually a lot of folks that have tried to import those pieces of equipment, they struggle to run it out of grade two SPF, right? Like So we built all of our automation system in-house. So we have a robotic system that does wall framing. so we pack up two by four, two by sixes, we put them together, we nail them together. we do bundles, so we can handle like up to six wide stud packs. we're currently pushing towards bringing on sheathing. so we're actually placing OSB sheets over those panels and actually like doing the the the the schedule nailing on it. Next down the road is probably gonna be routing. so actually routing like the doors and window fenestrations out of those. Now that system, we've really had to think hard about how to make it very easy to reproduce, but also to be able to handle the lumber that we have coming in. And like context, right? At Amazon, one of my research teams was working on item identification and damage detection. So their their whole job was like how do I identify if something that is in this box is broken? And it's actually a really, really hard problem, right? Because in the Amazon context, like jeans, for example, is a great example. I I'm wearing jeans right now. some genes come from the factory ripped and some are not supposed to be ripped. How do you write an algorithm that says, okay, for this one, like you're looking for a ripped thing and this one on it's fine, don't worry about it. That's the right rip.
Robert: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's the extra fifty dollars you pay, yeah, I guess.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, exactly. So figuring out how the quality of the lumber, it is an order of magnitude or maybe two orders of magnitude easier of a technical problem. Measuring if it's twisted, if it's bowed, if it's cusped like that, that's actually a much easier problem. You still have to manage it, but at least you can detect it, and that's nice. The next step was like how do we design this robotic system to account for that? And if you look at a carpenter framing a wall with twisted lumber. Generally they will pick the better boards to make the outer edge, and then for the
Robert: Do that. You don't do that. You don't you don't do that, Felipe. I am I gotta tell you, man, I spent my first I probably my
Felipe Polido: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: first two weeks of being on the job site at you know, working for a custom builder. All
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I did, all I did the whole time, I I went through bunks of lumber and marked up straight. I mean, they would not like you don't frame with with junk lumber. Yeah.
Felipe Polido: And just select and throw it. Yeah. No, not take it. Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. We we do that too. I mean we we do filter out a lot. But we like a carpenter, he can pick up a piece of lumber and twist it and nail it, especially for the inner boards, right? Like to to make it so yeah.
Robert: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, again again, if it's got a little bit of a bow to it, yeah, you can still use it in this in the straight, but you're not gonna use it for a king stud or door frame. You're not gonna you know what I mean, you want the straight stuff for that.
Felipe Polido: Correct. With that, yeah. So we're doing the same thing in that our robot system places these pieces of lumber on the the place where they're meant to be, and then it basically has a gripper that just goes to the edge. So you have your your your base plate and you have your your stud and it pushes that stud into the right shape based on where it's supposed to be on the drawings, right? So this is based on that CAD, that twin model, like digital model of the building. And then we fire those nails. And this thing has a whole lot of force. So very much like a carpenter using a two by four to push it or a a a hammer to push it into place. We do that and then we fire the nails. so you get that precision, even though the lumber might actually be like somewhat twisted in the middle and like yeah. so it's been working out well. We we've been getting a lot of yeah.
Robert: So you go so the system doesn't necessarily it it has a bit of a sorting feature, but it doesn't really I mean, again, I would say the variable there would be, you know, how bowed does a piece have to be? Like I could take a look down a a ten foot two by six and I go, that thing's below to three quarter in the last three feet. You know what I mean? Or I won't use that on the does the system have kind of that kind of vision to be able to go I can use that on a door. I can't. I can use it in the middle of the wall. Okay,
Felipe Polido: So yeah.
Robert: great.
Felipe Polido: So today we do that selection prior to feeding them into our smart like miter saw. so we use a system from EasyFrame, it's called. It's from they're owned by Simpson Strongtai. it we have a carpenter that looks through that lumber before it feeds in and he knows, right, like if this is a King stud or this is a he will like pick higher quality lumber, but we print right onto the lumber the instructions of what it's meant to be. so the idea here is is right like he's doing that selection today. At some point in the near future I will start scanning those boards and then making that selection over time, but using his expertise to figure out what like what is a threshold, right? He knows exactly this is as far as we can go and still build a nice wall, right? Like we need to like basically codify that and then have the the the the saw actually make that choice.
Robert: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it w and I wanna ask you about that because this is one of those things we are trying to find a balance here, between what do robots and and AI kinda really need to do versus what's still good for humans to do. I mean, what's your what's your thought on that? And kinda as you're gu I mean, you're involved in this every day, it says like, hey, it's probably just better if we just do it this way or l you know, let us handle this part.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. No. That's a great question. I mean I'll reminder, like we're we just are out of labor. I think that that's one piece that we should keep in mind, right? Like we need folks that are doing this to be able to be able to build ten times more homes with the same person, right? so that's one piece of it. In terms of the work in in a robotic space we use dull, dirty, and dangerous. Those are the three D's that you go after. The rough framing, you're generally moving much larger pieces of lumber, you're doing stuff that is very repetitive and stuff that's gonna be hidden inside of the walls. obviously framing is say fifteen percent of the labor and materials that go into a building. So we felt strongly about using automation there first. And then we can let our carpenters do a lot more of the finishing work. And that's stuff that robotics is not gonna be able to do anytime soon, right? Like finished carpentry, like building the environment that I am in, right? Like doing cabinetry work. Like these are the things that still require very much a human touch. And they're the things that other humans are gonna work with and touch with day in and day out. And it is yeah. very, very unlikely that it will be automated anytime soon.
Robert: Yeah. You've got some you've got some folks out there, I might be one of them that says you kinda need to know the basics before you move to the more detailed stuff. What's your thoughts on that? Where you're you've got carpenters, you've got folks that are kind of stepping into the role. We know we don't have enough of right? We know that. But they're kind of stepping into a role that's that maybe they should had some basics in in front of it first.
Felipe Polido: To learn it. Yeah. No, I think it's a totally fair point. I mean, be honest with you, right? Like it is not going away. Like we we're framing today we're doing about like thirty, forty percent of wall panels with the robot. The other sixty are still framed manually. The floor cassettes that we do are all manual. The the ceilings are still manual, right? Like the roofs, that work is not going to weigh. And then there are other skills that come into play. So we do all of our drywall, we actually run it through a CNC machine. so we actually pre-cut all the hose and we mark them and all that. So subfloor same thing. Like so when we set up the subfloor
Robert: I love this idea.
Felipe Polido: for one of these modules, we draw on them. Like there's gonna be a light right above you right here. This is where the door is going to open. I don't know you've ever seen Dusty Robotics, any of those guys? The printing, yeah. So
Robert: Sure, the the layup machine the guy, yeah.
Felipe Polido: we do the same thing, but we do it at a per sheet basis. and the idea is is like somebody still has to run that machine, somebody has to still know how to operate it, and then somebody still has to build that frame. so
Robert: Well, and somebody's gotta take that order. Somebody's gotta take that order. So back in the day we used to do this with the the roofing. you know, we you used to do the all of the different trusses and things like that. So you get a truss package, right? This is kind of the same idea, but you
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah. Same thing, yeah. Yeah.
Robert: gotta build it in order to make the trust package work out right. You get that thing out of order and you're in real trouble.
Felipe Polido: You're in trouble, yeah.
Robert: So I see it the same kind of way if you're laying out their you know, your four by eight or four by ten sheets of plywood or your or your drywall. Yeah, you gotta get that stuff in order. You gotta get it there in right spot in the right place, you know. So it's still still gotta think
Felipe Polido: If you miss it, you're gonna yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert: about it.
Felipe Polido: But but it's an interesting so I'll give an example that we've we've talked through, like I I I like this one 'cause it's pretty clear. Normally and again, electrician background, right? Like normally you would be paying an electrician, even on an odder modular factory, you're you're paying an electrician $150 an hour to run the outlets inside of your module or site he has to drill the hole to run that wire to get it back. So over here, because we know where that wire is gonna be like run through, we can pre-drill that on the CNC. So not only he knows that that outlet has to go here, he's now look up and there's a single hole and it's like that's where the wire's gonna run and run through it. So you're you're augmenting his ability to do work. And reducing the stuff that is really annoying and not helpful and not add value, right? So it's it's all about like making folks that are doing the work do more add value work unless I'm driving to Home Depot, I'm flipping to the drawings to figure out what is supposed to be here, right? Like you're trying to just yeah, really, really.
Robert: Yeah. No, and I think I think it eliminates a lot of great things in it. I I love it. I mean quite honestly, I really love the idea of it because again, I'm all about planning, right? Everything that I talk about when I post on LinkedIn and I talk about how we can do things better and we need to be able to do things better and faster, one of the big things is that we don't do is we don't plan well enough. Everybody wants to get to the build stage. Right. But we're in this world of, you know, construction tech, right? The whole the whole world is talking about how construction needs to be involved better with technology so that we can then be better. Well, here's the thing about technology, it requires a plan, it has a structure. it has rules, it has things that you need to follow. And if you're going to imitate any sort of workflow, guess what? You're going to have to define what that workflow is, which is what your software kind of does, right? The software part defines, hey, this is the workflow, and here's the intricacies within that workflow that you need to a either decide and be part of it, or you know, send it out elsewhere so it can be done later or whatever, however that works. And
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I I feel like we've totally lost touch with that because we We keep looking at construction as this whole thing of well this is how we've always done it over here and we don't necessarily want to change our process, but we wow, you know, we wanna use technology.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. And and and there and and there is room for the creativity. There is room for the the the the the the craftsmanship on on inside of that. And I think that's one thing that gets lost sometimes when we're talking about technology, right? Like w we're just kind of putting a harness to help kind of guide the work and to to schedule it. But within the work itself, like that's still happening. It's still very much like a yeah. It's still definitely a craft.
Robert: Yeah. No. But I do love the idea, like stop and think of all the blocking that doesn't have to be there if you put right, you don't have a guy going to blocking for for like electricians, right? Stop thinking about that. the the stud is already where it needs to be, you know what I mean, and the blocking is, you know, already there. You don't have to go back after the framers been in there and do your own blocking.
Felipe Polido: Do your own exactly.
Robert: Right. And you don't have to worry you don't have to write an RFI to go, Hey, by the way, this calls this wall calls for two outlets over here. Is it two and whatever? That's already in the plan. It's done.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Even better. I mean we rely a lot on printing, inkjet printing. So all of our two by fours and two by six we print instructions on them. we do the same thing with sheet goods. So not only you're not pulling the drawings to look at how this thing is gonna come together, you're literally just looking at the work in front of you and it's describing, right, like this is where the box is gonna go, this is how you're gonna run it, yeah. so really, really trying to simplify, yeah.
Robert: So I know you're kind of in that residential space you got a lot of work ahead of you, right? Anyway. Right. It's it's it's its own animal. I've worked in the commercial space for many years after being in the residential space. Commercial space, do you think that there's room for something like what you're doing in the commercial space with metal stud framing and those types of things?
Felipe Polido: Don't yeah, I mean the the co forum steel is don't get me wrong, like from a robotics perspective, I would love, love to be doing that. My life would be so much easier and we are actually investing on it. I think we're gonna buy a a CFS machine by the end of the year, to start doing some experiments. but to your actual question Ultimately I I think the answer is very much yes. I think What's crazy about construction is that it's such a large industry, right? Multi-trillion dollar. There is such a deficit of homes already. Like we have so much room to to really grow and to make an impact. And I think like looking at the big players, right, like Lenar and Dear Horton, right, like they're they cannot it they're doing an amazing job building homes. They do it at a very large scale. They're not operating near existing city centers or where people want to live, like the missing middle. And I think we have a very good opportunity here to build a solution that lets you build houses near Boston, near Austin, near Salt Lake City, right? Like we just shipped a home to LA from here. like th there is a lot of opportunity of this kind of custom dedicated to these kind of higher density environments and like I I feel very strongly that we if we don't do nothing else, we got plenty of work in front of us for the next like decade at least.
Robert: Yeah, I mean, I always find it seems that y there is a big challenge. I and I I gotta be honest, I don't I don't know. I I see people say that there's too many houses in the real estate market right now. And then I see folks in some and I think it's a lo it's depends on where you are. Right?
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: in the Texas market maybe we've got too many houses, right?
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: But kind of to your point, you know, in the in the in the northeast or, you know, or maybe even out west, who knows? Like maybe there's just not enough of and I think it's it's to the point of that affordability point. We have a lot of houses, but are they at that affordability point? Or are they just too old? You know, is the stock too old where you end up you've got the complexities of bringing things up to code, especially if you're going to do anything and remodel or you know, those types of deals. So it's a very weird Weird it it seems like a stranger dynamic right now.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah. I mean to your point, right? the LA home that we've put together and very, very proud of that project. we were getting quotes in the area for like six hundred to nine hundred dollars a square feet. Because there is a six thousand home shortage after the fires and nobody can build. So that market is very, very in need of of support. here where we are, my parents have been trying to move from New York up and It's it's hot it's hard to find a house that is affordable. Like you're you're either talking about a two million dollar home or something that is gonna take our lot of love for you to get through it. And like I've done that as somebody coming out of college, yes, like I put the sweat equity in, like swap the windows, doors, did a roof, siding, build a deck, right? Like you can do that, but it is not for everybody and I think there are many folks that that are just looking for an affordable way to yeah, be recommended.
Robert: Yeah, I think again, more and more though, Felipe, really more and more. There's not that many people that can do that kind of thing. They they don't they don't have the skills of that. They they're more focused on the other parts of their life that they didn't learn maybe like you and I learned over time. It's like You know, my dad was famous for waking me up in the morning, you know, ready to go pour concrete. You know, it was that was you know, so it was like that was a good time for him. I I built my first barn at fourteen, you know.
Felipe Polido: That's amazing.
Robert: So it's one of those things. It's like not everybody comes out of the womb, you know, ready to go do a a house remodel. Most people lose their ass when they do it and so they're like they're very, very gun shy to try to do it, you know, a second time.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Again, yeah. Yeah.
Robert: so it's just a weird, you know, it's a weird thing. And it's like I think it's it's interesting how we're trying to apply solutions, you know, kind of to this and needing it, but again I think it's very, very to the locality, you know, who needs it where?
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: that might be your biggest challenge, like who needs it where? And what developers are ready to kind of include you into the mix.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah. And we've been having some really good conversations and building relationships with some large developers that that have been supporting us. But again, yeah, it it is in those areas that that are there are shortages and and the prices are very much skyrocketing because of it. yeah.
Robert: What do you think about what do you think about 'cause I know it goes around a lot here, you know, multifamily. I know you did a that three unit. do you have ideas of scaling it even bigger for kind of multi unit?
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah yeah. so no, we we're actually in a design contract for a l larger like twenty unit multifamily starting in Q one. so I think the real unlock from our system, right, from a tech perspective, is that we really want to be able to build anything through that factory without having to retool. Which is a lot closer to what a G C working out of his truck would do, right? It's just like y you're not building mechanisms, you're not you don't have like equipment to deliver that. You're really just using that softer backbone to to drive the differences. so yeah, we were gonna be building these sixty eight cabins in New Hampshire and at the same time we're building a Do strongly about it. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun ride.
Robert: Yeah. Well, okay. So again, you get into and you get into the same things here. And this is this is why what I was excited to talk to you about this because you're getting into the the the real meat of the problem here, right? Because not only utilizing the technology to do better planning and you know kind of better product, right? more I'll say more standard product. Right? Something that you know when it comes off the truck, it was it's great. You know, it's ready to go.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah.
Robert: So the the quality is there, the exactness, the planning is behind it, but you're still running into the same things like assets on the ground. You still gotta staff that job, right? You still gotta coordinate permits on that deal, you still gotta go in and get finish work done, you still got, you know, inspections, all the different things that All of that's part of it and it's the challenges that we see out here and and people don't realize that well Elon Mess said it the other day, you can design and plan all you want. He goes, but you know, 10x times that is the manufacturing process, right? It's the actual build itself will eat your lunch at any point during the day.
Felipe Polido: Actually I yeah, I I feel like so we've we've been again building now going to ten plus units. we're about to build our twentieth but ten on the ground. Our in factory labor efficiency, so how well we've been able to produce a a square foot of house has been drastically decreasing and we see that curve keep going. The things that potentially will stop us long term, I think are the things you're pointing out, which is it's the permitting, is the concrete or like the the foundation work. It's all the things that the industry has struggled to be efficient, but it has been okay because everything else was inefficient about it. So in a lot of ways, like if I had a magic wand and if there was one thing that I could like clean away is like how do we make that process go smoothly? And we are solving it by first going to municipalities and going to developers that have that already pre-digested and we're executing on them. But
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: that is not the long term goal. The long term goal is to be able to build houses everywhere. And we can only do that if those legislators, the the the the whole system itself starts to become more streamlined. yeah, I mean multi week approvals for permitting, right? Like or one idea that I heard is like you're automatically approved after three weeks if there's no review. Right like it's how do you set up those those mechanisms so like the approval process itself and the permitting process itself like can be a lot more streamlined 'cause 'cause that At the end of the day I think that that is the the the next big lever that we have to go after once we we get the cost of the housing down.
Robert: Well, I know you probably got some proponents of that. I had AJ Waters on the program just a few weeks ago and you know, AJ is now working for Procor on the public side of the world, right? And I asked him s you know, straight point blank, I said, Why can't we get better technology on the public side of the world? I mean, especially for permitting. I mean, it would seem so easy to, you know, stop this, you know there's programs out there they're using software, but it it feels like it's legacy software, it's not very efficient, it's very bottlenecked in these different things. I I see that as the quite honestly, there's a big part of me that sees that as the the next layer that we really need to tackle is that is that process, the approval process, the permitting process and how we expedite.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. So yeah. It's really interesting, like I mean we're really big AI proponents, like we we use it day in and day out. And that is one step that we have on our process is like every time we're gonna submit, we actually have AI go through all of the local code, our submission package and test for collisions or things that are not And it it pops up, we get like things that
Robert: Yeah.
Felipe Polido: our very, very expertise, like expert team that has been doing this for years missed.
Robert: No he
Felipe Polido: how how do you make that into a tool that then is used right like so you just automatically you can check it three times, right? Like you before having anybody involved, yeah.
Robert: I ha I mean I ran into it several years ago, Fort Worth, right here in my home hometown kind of area. it the inspector everything was to code, right? But the inspector was like, I don't think so. You know? It was very, very you know, I had to have
Felipe Polido: Humbling.
Robert: You know, I had to have three meetings. I, you know, had to go to the site, had to look at it with him, I had to talk to him about it, and you know, he was it just seemed like there was this disconnect. And I don't know if it was a sort of a power play or whatever, but whatever it is, it was a very human thing, a very a very bottleneck portion of the process that seemed to be, why are we even discussing this? We've you know,
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: this thing this works, you know, the design
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: works, the build works.
Felipe Polido: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I y you remind me of like there was a quote from somebody that fire spreads differently from town to town. Like like how how do we design yeah, like why is fire sprinklers and fire solutions not nation or statewide at least, and not doesn't have to be nationwide, but it's statewide. So we're we're either we are up to code and it's approved, or we're not. And but like Today we're going to the local fire chief and we're talking to them and getting and again like it
Robert: Mm-hmm.
Felipe Polido: most of the time everybody's super friendly, works, but it adds friction, it adds time, right? Like there are yeah.
Robert: That's the thing. It doesn't matter if they're friendly and it works, okay? It's the time that it takes to go, okay, we need to meet on site to do this inspection to talk about whether we're gonna approve this or not.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, yeah.
Robert: and I'm like Okay, well everything's up to code, but I think it is to your point when they're sitting there taking the industrial building code on on you know, the commercial side and
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: per municipality there's little changes here and there that may have been grandfathered in from somewhere, we've got we've still gotta have that because, you know, Joe still needs his job.
Felipe Polido: Yeah.
Robert: I I don't know.
Felipe Polido: Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
Robert: love this. I I like I said, I I was looking forward to this conversation. You know, forty five minutes runs fast, I always say it. but yeah, you're in the thick of it, man. And I I'm sure you're feeling it some days.
Felipe Polido: You Yeah yeah yeah no it's been fun. You should if you're up in Boston you should come over and check us out. Actually, yeah we'll we'll we do tours about once a month. Not for the next two months because we're moving, but starting October again I think we'll do it and we'll we'll love to to show you around and and yeah, let you tour the robots and and get to see our floor.
Robert: Yeah, I would love that. Love that. If I get up to Boston and my wife wants to go up. She wants to she wants to go up and see the y the the the changing of the fall colors. We don't get much of that here in Texas, so w you know. So
Felipe Polido: It's yeah, it's fair. Yeah. No, it's beautiful. yeah, no, I I highly recommend it.
Robert: Very good. Well, Felipe, it has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for being with me. I hope you guys come back. Maybe I'll come up to Boston when maybe we can do a podcast live from the brand new facility. That would be awesome. Yeah, that would be great. All
Felipe Polido: That would be amazing. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robert.
Robert: right. Thank you.
