Dave Clevenger, CEO of PreFab Innovations, believes Fresno could be the focal point of using modular home construction to fight the housing crisis. Photo by Frank Lopez

Along with trying to help solve the Central Valley’s, as well as the entire Golden State’s housing crisis, a local home builder has large ambitions to push the construction industry forward.

Prefab Innovations is a construction company in Fresno that focuses on factory built modular homes and neighborhoods.

Pocket homes, or pocket neighborhoods is a type of planned community that consists of a grouping of smaller residences, usually surround a courtyard or common garden.

PreFab Innovations builds modular homes and modular cabins, manufacturing them in their downtown Fresno factory site, and then transporting the structures to their permanent installation location.

PreFab Innovations was founded about two and a half years ago by serial entrepreneur CEO Dave Clevenger. He has started a number of businesses including a homeless rescue mission in Kings County, a thrift store, two recycling centers, two downtown cleaning crews.

He is also the CEO of Community Impact Corps, an asset management company focused on developing high quality rental housing.

Clevenger also served in the U.S. Navy for 22 years.

Clevenger founded the company after growing frustrated with barriers to jobs and housing opportunities for people he was serving.

Clevenger said that a lot of people that worked for him were making decent wages but couldn’t afford the homes they were living in, and wanted to use newer technology to quickly build affordable homes.

The way homes are built is not keeping up with the demand for homes in the state he said.

“Its directly related to the increase in homelessness,” Clevenger said. “There is a lot of innovative technology that could be applied to construction that’s not being applied. I decided to found a company and innovate in that space.”

One example of Prefab Innovations’ utilizing newer techniques is building walls with Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs). An SIP is a large, flat, panel-like sandwich, with two pieces of plywood or oriented strand board, and a layer of insulation between.

This technique provides better insulation, creating a 35% more efficient building envelope. SIPs allow for quicker construction than building with traditional wall studs.

Clevenger doesn’t think contractors are resistant to newer construction techniques, but believes the market is.

The market hasn’t bared the discussion of applying innovative technology to speed up the construction process and be more efficient from a cost perspective. Now is the time for it, Clevenger said.

A lot of people in the construction industry got used to building in a certain way, and it will take risks, including investment risks. Building homes in a factory and utilizing new ideas and technology costs a lot of money upfront.

“My mindset with everything we do on this factory floor is : high quality, high speed, price efficient. That drives a lot of our decisions.”

PreFab Innovations builds Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU), which are built to California Residential Code. The team can build a single family ADU up to 3,000 to 4,000 square feet that fits California codes.

They also build commercial modular buildings with that will meet California codes.

In the last few years there has been more interest in ADUs, or tiny homes, with the predominant customers either being aging parents that are moving into a backyard home as their children move into the main home, or people moving back in with their parents.

Prefab Innovations is currently building a 26 tiny home pocket neighborhood for the City of Fresno to be used by the Poverello House, with more of those type of projects on the queue.

Construction on the homes is expected to be completed within a few months.

Clevenger believes that local entrepreneurs, business leaders, and proponents of the Central Valley need to come together to discuss what they could do together to place Fresno as the construction innovation capital of the world.

“We have some talented builders and designers. If all of us come together, we really could pull of a big vision and drive change in this industry,” Clevenger said.