Buffett Bullish on Homebuilders
November 19, 2009
From business, to investments, to philanthropy, Warren Buffett has his hands in quite a few industries—insurance, retail, and apparel, just to name a few. Within the past decade, his company Berkshire Hathaway, www.berkshirehathaway.com, Omaha, Neb., has had more involvement in the building products business with investments in Acme Brick, Benjamin Moore, Clayton Homes, and Shaw Industries—which also includes an investment in a homebuilding technology company.
In a current letter to the industry, he says the current economic environment is an opportunity for builders to retool business processes and prepare for the uptick—a message that Constructech magazine has strongly supported throughout the past year.
According to Buffett, the homebuilding industry of the past no longer exists and builders need to find new ways to become more efficient. This is one of the primary reasons MiTek, www.mii.com, Chesterfield, Mo., a Berkshire Hathaway Co., purchased Simpad, www.simpad.com, Woburn, Mass., a company that provides services to homebuilders to help improve the design, estimating, and building processes through the use of BIM (building information modeling).
Earlier this year, Simpad partnered with CG Visions, www.cgvisions.com, Lafayette, Ind., in an effort to help builders learn more about BIM and implement technology to enable the BIM process. Now, Simpad announced it has created a new BIM Service.
The technology provider has developed a new CAD (computer-aided design) BIM service, which will debut early next year. The Blackpoint Builder Services will help builders obtain home plans that reflect changes made during the sales and option process.
With this service, the plans are created in a 3D model. From this model, builders will be able to manage base plans and option libraries and generate ‘as-sold’ plans.
‘As-sold’ construction drawings will help lower costs, meaning changes to the master plan sets no longer have to been done manually for each home. According to Simpad, the savings will be significant, especially for any builder that has constructed homes based on inaccurate plans.
Beyond saving costs, this service will also help builders become more efficient, saving time. Overall, the aim is to help companies complete more accurate takeoffs by creating models based on standard plans and options that were selected during the sales process.
According to Richard Kashian, CEO, Simpad, consumers want homes that use space efficiently and are environmentally friendly, while government regulations are making the permitting process more cumbersome; this new service, according to Simpad, addresses both sides.
BIM has certainly been embraced in commercial construction, but has been a bit slow to takeoff in residential construction. With new services such as these, it will certainly be exciting to see how homebuilders will embrace technology and BIM in 2010.