Charting the future of construction from SE Calgary

Inside a nondescript industrial building Just off Barlow Trail in southeast Calgary, you’ll find Falkbuilt, a manufacturer of digital components for construction, its gleaming white factory and impressive timber office structures placed in the centre of the humming equipment. Welcome to Falkbuilt global HQ, home to more than 230 (and growing) enthusiastic Falkers and a new way to execute on an old idea.

Manufacturing construction components in a factory for a faster, easier and cleaner installation on the jobsite is a notion that stretches back more than 100 years. Sears started manufacturing prebuilt modular homes in 1915 to ship to families across North America. Over the decades, the world has seen thousands of modular approaches including several success stories right here in Calgary; ATCO Industries, Sprung Structures and DIRTT Environmental Solutions, a company co-founded by Mogens Smed and Barrie Loberg in 2004.

With Falkbuilt, Smed and Loberg are advancing the prefab idea from modular construction to Digital Component Construction—that is, the high-tech production of interior components that emulate the same stick-build components construction trades have been using as long as anyone can remember. These simple and familiar components, including Super Studs, digital horizontals and cladding, shorten construction schedules and virtually eliminate waste on the jobsite.

No wonder Digital Component Construction is taking off from Kuwait to Kansas City, with hundreds of beautiful installations in offices, healthcare settings and other environments across North America and around the world. Here in Calgary, Falkbuilt has completed dozens of installations from gyms to law offices to a COVID-19 field hospital in a Sprung Structure at Peter Lougheed Centre.

But Falkbuilt is as much a technology company as a construction company. Cloud-based AR/VR technology employing big data and machine learning reduces inefficiencies, saves architects and designers hundreds of hours and streamlines design, manufacturing and construction processes.

To learn more about Falkbuilt and Digital Component Construction, call Thom Hinton of Falkbuilt’s Calgary Branch. He’d love to show you around in person, or over Zoom.