U.S. construction spending in 2025 has been historically high as of March 2025. However, a labor shortage of about 439,000 workers is inflating costs and causing project delays. Aging workers, limited training, and geographic mismatches are worsening the labor issue. Prefabrication is proving to be a key solution, helping meet demand efficiently despite workforce challenges.

SurePods manufactures fully integrated bathroom pods off-site, ensuring quality and accelerating progress on the most resource-intensive parts of a project.

Aside from schedule compression, many advantages of prefabrication are often overlooked. When evaluating prefabrication against conventional methods, it’s essential to consider the full effect on cost, efficiency, and quality from design through completion. SurePods drives value across four key areas:

• Designer & Contractor Efficiency through early collaboration and standardized design
• On-Site Productivity by minimizing disruption and reducing labor needs
• Simplifying Trade Coordination by cutting non-productive hours and simplifying coordination
• Risk Mitigation with off-site fabrication that protects schedules and ensures quality

Designer and Contractor Cost/Time Savings

Early engagement and a single-source solution streamline design, construction, and mitigate project risks, creating both time and cost savings. SurePods off-site fabrication eliminates changes in on-site bathrooms by driving decisions earlier than traditional construction methodologies. In-the-field changes in traditional construction can delay the schedule and result in projects needing extra labor, as well as the added work in tracking costs on time and material tickets, processing subcontract change orders, and undergoing a review by the contractor, architect, and owner.

Utilizing SurePods streamlines submittal reviews by consolidating approvals from multiple trades into a single package, rather than piecemeal in traditional methods. This approach saves time for the General Contractor and Architect to process, document, transmit, receive, and return submittals.

SurePods early collaboration will give us an opportunity to standardize and optimize the layout of each pod before production begins, rather than having onsite installation teams coordinate resulting in variances from room to room. Design decisions are seamlessly integrated into our manufacturing process using advanced automation. We utilize CNC machines to precisely cut each wall component, ensuring accurate dimensions for every pod we produce. Another value of early collaboration is that it allows us, as subject matter experts, to guide and drive efficiencies through our mockup and first article processes, alongside the project team. This proactive approach allows owners, architects, and onsite trade partners to see the bathroom pod well before it delivers to the project site helping eliminate costly rework ensures that all necessary trade partners are involved from the start, sharing their expertise to meet project goals without compromise.

In addition to driving early collaboration, the mockup also allows us to complete functional testing on the pods before production begins, allowing us to identify and resolve any issues early in the production process. Using prefabrication is a way to reduce risk by ensuring the product is done correctly time and time again.

On-Site Workflow Productivity

When delivered to the jobsite, SurePods help declutter the project site. Scrap drywall from the bathroom, miscellaneous waterproofing, buckets of thin set, boxes of tile, boxes from plumbing and electrical rough in are all managed in our plant and not being forgotten in a bathroom. Materials in and out of the building, craft workforce traveling from the parking lot to their work area, are all reduced by manufacturing your bathrooms in one of our plants in Orlando or Phoenix.

SurePods supports our projects for the full lifecycle, including on-site delivery and installation. Our onsite scope requires 7 people on site for delivery and installation, compared to 35 crew members needed for the traditional onsite construction.

Furthermore, the stacking of trades within each bathroom can significantly hamper productivity and require additional supervision, QA/QC, and cleanup by the General Contractor and all trades involved.

Streamlining Trades Time Management

SurePods remove at least 100 labor hours per pod from the construction site. We are not just pulling the productive hours, but also downtime and other on-site activities. Examples of these on-site tasks include onboarding for jobsite orientation, safety briefings, badging processes, restroom breaks, setup time required for each trade entering each room, parking and busing to the job site, and travel time between the laydown yard and jobsite, especially if laydown is off-site. Our on-site crew requires an average of 7 team members to deliver and install the pods, a significant decrease in the number of people required for traditional construction methods. With the reduced amount of labor on site with prefabrication, the hours spent on these additional tasks are decreased.

Our prefabrication method provides a safer and more controlled environment for our team. We assemble the pods in a well-lit, enclosed space, significantly enhancing worker safety and improving the quality of each bathroom. Instead of working under temporary lighting conditions on a typical jobsite, where imperfections can be missed, we are completing the work in fully illuminated pods using the final lighting where quality is checked and managed at each stage of production. Additionally, we send the pods to the site equipped with a temporary electrical whip, enabling quick hook up to temporary power for lighting circuit verification and giving us the ability to inspect punch work in a fully illuminated bathroom.

Mitigating Unforeseen Challenges

By relocating the work off-site to one of our plants, project timelines can remain protected from unforeseen on-site conditions.

Our enclosed fabrication environment ensures that your team does not need to be concerned about on-site weather-related delays or equipment shutdowns. Our pods can withstand harsh weather conditions during delivery and once onsite with our waterproof and weatherproof pod wrapping.

Labor uncertainty, especially in rural areas, can drive up costs and slow progress. SurePods addresses this by operating in major metro areas with strong construction labor pools, such as Phoenix and Orlando, ensuring steady access to skilled workers. We have over 150 cross-trained employees providing coverage to help minimize delays.

Hear from DPR Construction and Banner Health about how utilizing SurePods reduced risk by securing labor using SurePods prefabricated bathroom pods on the Banner Desert Medical Center Women's Tower. 

Once the pods arrive on site and are set in place, our dedicated in-house team conducts a comprehensive quality checklist at each stage of the pod fabrication process. Leveraging our robust in house Quality Assurance Team to thoroughly inspect our pods before leaving our manufacturing facility, they arrive with minimal issues. In a recent hospitality project with 421 SurePods and 79 conventionally built bathrooms, our pods averaged just 2.92 punch list items per unit, compared to 34.13 in the conventionally constructed counterparts.

An example of our commitment to jurisdictional collaboration is with California’s healthcare Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), with whom we developed a Preapproved Prefabricated Components and Systems (PCS) manual that includes preapproved pod designs and structural criteria aligned with HCAI’s rigorous inspection standards. This manual also includes Testing, Inspection, and Observation (TIO) forms along with an inspection matrix. This proactive approach not only ensures regulatory alignment but also significantly streamlines the approval process for future hospital projects in California. This enables faster drawing reviews, clearly defined inspection protocols, and a shared understanding that enhances efficiency and predictability throughout the project lifecycle.

Prefabrication is shaping the future of construction by driving efficiency, quality, and risk reduction amid rising demand and labor shortages. SurePods leads this innovation, streamlining projects with off-site solutions that set new standards for speed, safety, and reliability.