When it comes to building affordable houses, Habitat for Humanity has a lot to teach the industry. Few, if any, builders can match the organization's experience in the affordable segment of the market: building exclusively affordable houses, Habitat is currently ranked 21st on the Builder 100 list of top builders, with more than 3,000 closings in 2017 and upwards of a billion dollars in revenue.

On Site with Habitat Austin

View All 17 Photos

Habitat for Humanity volunteers frame a house in a day using prefabricated wall panels.

Play slideshow

Last month, JLC went on site with Billy Whipple, vice president of construction for the Austin, Texas, Habitat affiliate, to learn about Austin's approach to construction efficiency. Like other Habitat affiliates, Austin's chapter tries to rely on volunteer labor whenever possible. But Austin's taking an unusual path by panelizing its wall assemblies in the organization's warehouse before trucking the wall sections to site for a day of framing.

"It's done primarily for waste control," Whipple told JLC. "Our green building initiative was really the catalyst of it. When we panelize walls in our shop ourselves, we end up with one trash can full of waste. We can reuse cutoffs for trimmers for windows, or other components."

"It also takes the knowledge needed to frame walls out of the on-site work," Whipple notes. "It’s one staff person at the warehouse that does all the layouts, all the takeoffs, and figures everything out. He frames the walls there with one volunteer helper. When we bring it out to site, everything’s labeled. The plans are labeled, we chalk the slab, label where every wall goes, and then it becomes very volunteer-friendly at that point. You just gotta match the numbers and letters up, and it goes together pretty smooth from there."

Volunteers like setting up the walls on site, said Whipple (see slideshow). "Generally our volunteers don’t know much about home building, but they work hard. A typical panel for us is about 10 to 12 feet, and if it has headers or whatever in it, they are pretty heavy. So people move those around and they feel physically fulfilled."

For small homes, the work goes quickly. "We’ll get all the walls stood by lunch usually," says Whipple. "In four hours we have the walls in place, and then in another two hours we’ll have them braced and straightened and top plates done, and then we’ll load trusses by the end of the day. So over the course of about seven and a half hours with 35 people, we can go from a slab to trusses loaded, and sometimes trusses stood, depending on if everything goes extra smooth."

The project we visited was an 18-day "blitz build." By the third day, the site was a beehive of activity, with volunteers busy on all sides of the building installing Hardie Panel siding and Hardie trim, installing and flashing windows, and sheathing roofs and gables.