Habitat Pitch 2022
Thank you for talking last week. I’m excited by the potential of our Seed Eco-Home to magnify the impact Habitat for Humanity can have in the US in 2022 and beyond. I’ve also included my 4-minute TED Talk on the Global Village Construction Set for a short overview of OSE’s greater mission so you can understand why we believe we’ll be able to continue to innovate and evolve our model(s). Our main current project is the Seed Eco-Home, and the first model that we are releasing we’re calling Rosebud. It’s a colonial style, 1000 sf house with carport.
Our goal with the Seed Eco-Home work, starting with Rosebud, is to bring open source design and collaborative development to housing in order to eliminate inefficiencies resulting in an optimal, scalable product that is delivered for a fraction of the cost of traditional new build housing. By redesigning the house from the ground up for simplicity, efficiency and modularity, we have reduced the labor requirements of the build about 400% compared to a similarly sized structure using traditional design and build standards. Modular design allows us to compress overall build time about 1200% resulting in typical build times of 2 weeks instead of 6 months. Using our swarm build techniques, a team of lightly skilled people can work in parallel without getting in each other's way. Because we pay attention to ease of build as one of the key requirements in our design choices, the need for skilled labor or trade requirements is reduced significantly. This allows both DIY builders and professionals to build with our techniques. This also lends itself well to builds that will be dependent on volunteers with broad ranges of skill or experience. We are also using the incremental housing concept so that our 1000 sf model is designed for easy expansion to a 2000 sf version.
We can offer the 1000 sf model, including the foundation, to Habitat for Humanity for $100k per model. This assumes that a minimum of 24 Habitat for Humanity volunteers would be provided to us to finish the house in 2 weeks (8 hour workdays) - by using our swarm build techniques. The cost breakdown is about $50k in materials, and up to a $50k OSE service fee per unit. The $100k cost does not include land, utility hookups, or permits/legal etc. Habitat's role would include providing the volunteers for the 2 week build, and coordinating efforts with OSE in advance of the build effort. The build is expected to take a total of 1000 man-hours - translating to the equivalent of 5 full work days with 24 builders each day. We are allowing a good safety margin to accommodate working with volunteers of wide ranging skill levels and experience.
If Habitat is interested in learning how to manage builds using OSE swarm build techniques, we can also offer training to individuals or teams from Habitat so as to be able to manage future builds without OSE on site. We can offer a one-week, hands-on, intensive course where we can teach OSE techniques to your construction managers and foremen. Once training is completed, we can offer whole-home Rosebud building material kits (not including the concrete for the slab) for $60k per home + shipping - which would be drop shipped to the build location you designate. We think that our techniques can result in drastic time reduction for each build and a meaningful reduction in the cost of each home built to the benefit of Habitat more quickly realizing your mission.
The efficiencies and pricing get even better if we run 4 builds at one time on the same site. I would like to propose our services for 10 builds to be done over a 6 week period as a trial to show the magnitude of the impact our partnership can have on Habitat, if you can provide us with volunteers to do this. We would be ready to do this starting in August. If you would prefer us to train your staff instead of relying on OSE for the actual build management, we can do that starting in April. It’s exciting for me personally to explore the opportunity to align with an organization that believes, as I do, that we build strength, stability and self-reliance through shelter.
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Thank you for talking last week. I’m excited by the potential of our Seed Eco-Home to magnify the impact Habitat for Humanity can have in the US in 2022 and beyond. I’ve also included my 4-minute TED Talk on the Global Village Construction Set for a short overview of OSE’s greater mission so you can understand why we believe we’ll be able to continue to innovate and evolve our model(s). Our main current project is the Seed Eco-Home, and the first model that we are releasing we’re calling Rosebud. It’s a colonial style, 1000 sf house with carport.
Our goal with the Seed Eco-Home work, starting with Rosebud, is to bring open source design and collaborative development to housing in order to eliminate inefficiencies resulting in an optimal, scalable product that is delivered for a fraction of the cost of traditional new build housing. By redesigning the house from the ground up for simplicity, efficiency and modularity, we have reduced the labor requirements of the build about 400% compared to a similarly sized structure using traditional design and build standards. Modular design allows us to compress overall build time about 1200% resulting in typical build times of 2 weeks instead of 6 months. Using our swarm build techniques, a team of lightly skilled people can work in parallel without getting in each other's way. Because we pay attention to ease of build as one of the key requirements in our design choices, the need for skilled labor or trade requirements is reduced significantly. This allows both DIY builders and professionals to build with our techniques. This also lends itself well to builds that will be dependent on volunteers with broad ranges of skill or experience. We are also using the incremental housing concept so that our 1000 sf model is designed for easy expansion to a 2000 sf version.
We can offer the 1000 sf model, including the foundation, to Habitat for Humanity for $100k per model. This assumes that a minimum of 24 Habitat for Humanity volunteers would be provided to us to finish the house in 2 weeks (8 hour workdays) - by using our swarm build techniques. The cost breakdown is about $50k in materials, and up to a $50k OSE service fee per unit. The $100k cost does not include land, utility hookups, or permits/legal etc. Habitat's role would include providing the volunteers for the 2 week build, and coordinating efforts with OSE in advance of the build effort. The build is expected to take a total of 1000 man-hours - translating to the equivalent of 5 full work days with 24 builders each day. We are allowing a good safety margin to accommodate working with volunteers of wide ranging skill levels and experience.
If Habitat is interested in learning how to manage builds using OSE swarm build techniques, we can also offer training to individuals or teams from Habitat so as to be able to manage future builds without OSE on site. We can offer a one-week, hands-on, intensive course where we can teach OSE techniques to your construction managers and foremen. Once training is completed, we can offer whole-home Rosebud building material kits (not including the concrete for the slab) for $60k per home + shipping - which would be drop shipped to the build location you designate. We think that our techniques can result in drastic time reduction for each build and a meaningful reduction in the cost of each home built to the benefit of Habitat more quickly realizing your mission.
The efficiencies and pricing get even better if we run 4 builds at one time on the same site. I would like to propose our services for 10 builds to be done over a 6 week period as a trial to show the magnitude of the impact our partnership can have on Habitat, if you can provide us with volunteers to do this. We would be ready to do this starting in August. If you would prefer us to train your staff instead of relying on OSE for the actual build management, we can do that starting in April. It’s exciting for me personally to explore the opportunity to align with an organization that believes, as I do, that we build strength, stability and self-reliance through shelter.
