The National Association of Home Builders Research Center and Popular Science magazine have teamed up to produce an "Innovative Housing Technology" awards program that will single out the top industry advancements of the past year.

The purpose of the awards, literally, is get builders to start thinking more about "clicks" and less about "bricks."

Awards will be given in three categories:

• Technology solutions to help solve the labor crisis in housing;
• Successful transfers of technology into residential housing from other industries;
• Innovative Tech Home of the Year by a manufacturer or industry association.

Larry Zarker of the Research Center said applications would be evaluated on the basis of overall contribution to performance and/or cost improvements in each of three categories. All applications will be evaluated by an independent panel of judges. The deadline for entries is September 30, 2000.

In discussing the first category, Zarker said the research center was looking for more than just a hammer that could drive 10 nails at once.

"It's no secret that there's a labor shortage everywhere, not just in building," he said. "The idea behind this award is to see who is developing ideas that keep quality but reduce labor."

For example, he said, in historically builders had to hang doors by hand - which sometimes could take an individual the better part of a day to make sure it was perfect. Now doors are pre-hung in environmentally controlled shops, reducing the actual time to place a door to matter of an hour or less.

The category for transferring technology is to see whether other industry have develop processes that could be used in building. Zarker said, for instance, there have been dramatic improvements in fasteners in other industries, while builders still largely rely on nails. Likewise, concrete and steel are finding new uses in building and may be alternatives to wood.

"The point is we don't really watch what other industries are doing to see what might be adaptable to building, and we probably should be," Zarker said.

In the third category, Innovative Housing, the sky is the limit.

The recently developed high tech home built by Cisco Systems would be one example of that category, but other companies - including Owens Corning and MASCO also have developed homes that use sophisticated wiring. Applications may be downloaded from www.nahbrc.org. Questions can be sent to Zarker at: lzarker@nahbrc.org

Published: August 23, 2000

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