Dozens of revolutionary corporations have sprung up over the previous 15 years, every vowing to revolutionize house constructing.
Many haven’t, don’t, and gained’t make it through the “early-stage” gauntlet of A, B, and C sequence capital raises, the place they will repay their debt, cowl their payments and sustainably generate internet earnings from their operations.
A pedigreed strategic and operational mind belief at FrameTec believes the enterprise can do what others have struggled with – efficiently scale operations whereas providing a sustainable different to builders that reduces cycle occasions and boosts employee effectivity. Based in 2022 and launched on-line in mid-2025, FrameTec now produces pre-cut framing techniques at its robotic manufacturing unit in Arizona, with plans to develop into Texas and different new-home-construction hotbeds, pending new funding.
Throughout a session final week at The SHIFT, an Orlando gathering of placemaking thought and follow leaders hosted by Tavistock Improvement Firm, FrameTec COO Josh Lewis mentioned how the corporate operates, what they consider they will contribute to homebuilders and the way they hope to deal with the expert labor scarcity in residential development.
How FrameTec works
FrameTec’s course of begins with reviewing and refining a builder’s undertaking plans and verifying that web site circumstances align with the design specs. As soon as FrameTec’s system finalizes and confirms the information, its 120,000-square-foot automated plant in Camp Verde, Arizona, makes use of that data to chop and assemble wall panels and framing elements.
The manufacturing unit manufactures wall panels, roof trusses and ground trusses with pre-marked studs, nail patterns, and format particulars.
The Camp Verde facility can produce about 3,500 properties every year and has been concerned in roughly 850,000 to at least one million sq. ft of housing in Arizona over the previous 12 months, Lewis mentioned.
FrameTec partnered with Swedish producer Randek, which develops and manufactures techniques and machines for prefabricated housing, at its Arizona facility.
The system makes use of automated robots to chop, body, sheath, glue, route, insulate, and stack structural elements with comparatively few employees. The robots comply with actual specs to deal with many of the course of, however on-site employees supervise the robotic gear and perform sure duties that aren’t but automated.
The manufacturing unit reduces waste by automating the reducing course of and reclaiming leftover wooden items by means of finger-jointed strategies. FrameTec, utilizing its factory-controlled, pre-cut framing techniques, claims to lower wooden waste to “near-zero”.
Based on the Environmental Safety Company (EPA), the development of a typical single-family house generates about 8,000 kilos of waste, with wooden making up roughly 20 to 30% of that waste.
“Any defect we take away is reduce out, and the remaining items go into the finger-joint course of… so as a substitute of throwing away materials, we’re utilizing these items to create steady lumber,” Lewis mentioned throughout the session.
A possible answer to development’s labor scarcity?
For builders, FrameTec’s capability to enhance cycle occasions is certainly interesting. Utilizing their automated manufacturing unit, the corporate can normally ship pre-cut frames to a development web site inside about 10 to 14 enterprise days.
As soon as the frames are on web site, FrameTec claims it may well speed up sure elements of the development course of by a number of days. It is because the wall panels and framing elements arrive with pre-marked studs, nail patterns, and format particulars.
“We will stand partitions, are available line and stack a roof in at some point on a 3,500-square-foot home. For many guys, that’s every week. We’re doing it in a day,” mentioned Lewis, who’d spent nearly 17 years working with homebuilders at pre-Builders FirstSource BMC and, extra lately, about 5 years at Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Firm.
FrameTec has documented instances the place a pair of electricians was in a position to rough-in a home, that means they put in outlet bins, junction bins, and routed electrical wiring by means of the wall studs and ceiling joists earlier than the drywall was put in, in as little as two hours. As compared, it usually takes about 10 hours for 2 electricians to finish the method with out utilizing FrameTec elements.
“Each stud that goes by means of our manufacturing unit is pre‑constructed. There’s a mark on the swap peak location and a mark location on each stud. That’s how these electricians get these 5 or 6 levels of productiveness… They don’t have to tug their tape, and so they don’t have to tug the opening hawg out of the truck to drill a gap. It’s easy, however we’re transferring directions to the purpose of labor,” Lewis defined.
Lewis views the FrameTec mannequin as an answer to the expert labor scarcity in residential development. Based on The Dwelling Builders Institute’s Fall 2025 Construction Labor Market report, the residential development sector should rent about 723,000 development employees every year to bridge the present hole.
FrameTec’s mannequin might assist remedy this scarcity by automating particular development duties. It could actually additionally streamline the on-site course of, permitting employees to construct quicker with much less coaching.
Lewis mentioned that introducing superior expertise might additionally inspire extra younger folks to pursue careers within the trades.
“That’s the opposite factor that including expertise into the method helps. It makes younger folks excited in regards to the trades. That is cool. It’s flashy,” he mentioned.
Framed resistance
FrameTec companions with homebuilders in Arizona, together with Mandalay Houses, to construct something from single-lot tasks to large-scale subdivisions.
Constructing on its early success, FrameTec is at present establishing a second, bigger manufacturing unit in Casa Grande, Arizona, to strengthen its operations. The 254,000-square-foot Casa Grande plant could have the capability for about 7,000 properties per 12 months, rising FrameTec’s annual output functionality to roughly 10,000 housing models.
Lewis cites this development and a profitable first 12 months of operations as proof of momentum. Nonetheless, he instructed The Builder’s Day by day that his staff nonetheless must put in some effort to persuade skeptical builders that this idea is sustainable.
“I’m promising so much, and so they fear about disrupting their present provide chains as a result of they’re so fragile. So, in the event that they had been to get on board with FrameTech, they’re going to burn a bridge with their present lumberyard and their present framing contractor, as a result of our course of type of requires a wholesale shift in these avenues,” Lewis mentioned.
He pointed to huge multi-billion-dollar failures within the off-site development business as one other impediment. Katerra, an organization that raised over $2 billion, constructed factories for modular elements and claimed to cut back development occasions, filed for chapter in 2021.
Proper now, FrameTec is testing its idea within the Southwest. Sooner or later, the FrameTec staff goals to develop into different quickly rising Solar Belt states comparable to Texas, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.
