Sometime in the mid-seventies, a senior housing agency in my town built a
six story prefab tower next to my Junior High School. They set a record by building it in something like seven days. It was fascinating to watch the building go up, which is pretty much all we did that week. It's still standing and in use today, about forty years later. At the time, the head of the agency, a woman who was close friends with my parents, said something that has always stuck with me. It was along the lines of, "In the US, for some reason people look down at pre-fab, but think about it. Would you rather live in something manufactured by a regular work force, working inside with all the equipment they need, or built by whomever they were able to get to show up at the site and with whatever equipment could be brought in?"