assemblies. For example, a standard electrical box assembly might include a wall bracket, a box, ½-inch plaster ring, a ground pigtail, and a 15-foot piece of MC cable with a connector at the end. An option to this standard assembly might be to have a 20-foot piece of MC cable in lieu of the 15-foot piece, or a 5/8-inch plaster ring in lieu of a ½-inch mud ring. This would limit the amount of standard designs and give you the ability to build repeatable, scalable, productive processes in your prefabrication facilities and only manage the changes of options from the standards.

During this process, you should also establish your preferred manufacturer for each of the parts and pieces used in the standard assemblies. The fewer manufacturers you can utilize, the better. Although there will be exceptions where a different manufacturer or product must be used, these will become the company standard materials and all efforts will be made to utilize this standard whenever possible. The use of consistent materials has some significant benefits. The first is that the workers in the field will see the same products over and over, thus reducing the learning curve on efficient installation of the product. Second, it becomes easy to include the standard materials in a purchasing agreement with the vendors for orders for the prefabrication shop and the field across the entire portfolio of similar work, thus increasing the buying power of the organization. Third, this will limit the amount of materials in the submittal package. While engineers may push back, requiring whatever products they specify, you may choose a material that is equal to, or even superior to the average required by that vertical market. In doing an analysis, you may find that the cost of a more expensive or higher quality material item is more than offset by the labor savings in the prefab shop and in the field.