Inside Clayton Conway’s new home building facility, construction looks a little different with an approach that brings modern manufacturing efficiency to home building, while placing an increased emphasis on team member experience.  

Clayton Home Building Group recently opened the 220,000-square-foot facility following a $42 million investment in Conway. At full production, Clayton Conway is expected to employ more than 250 people and have the capacity to build approximately 3,000 homes each year. Reaching that scale requires a carefully coordinated process. 

As a home moves through the facility, each station represents another step toward completion. The production line creates a predictable flow, allowing teams to build at their stations rather than continually relocating around a traditional construction site. 

Construction is physical work, and over the course of a day, seemingly small movements add up. The Clayton Conway operation considers that demand throughout the production process. Workstations are designed around the tasks performed there, with tools and materials positioned for easier access. The result is a more ergonomic approach to home building. Efficiency, in this sense, is about more than speed. It is about creating a process that works better for both the home and the team members building it. 

Clayton Conway’s production process focuses on more than how quickly a home moves through the line. It also considers how the work is performed and how to create an environment that allows team members to do their best work. Building the right culture is an important part of that effort, to help employees feel valued, take pride in what they do and understand how their work contributes to the quality of the homes the company builds and the success of the entire team.

A climate-controlled environment supports that approach, providing consistent working conditions while protecting homes in production from weather and other factors common to traditional construction sites. It also creates greater consistency throughout the building process as each home moves toward completion. The coordinated process creates opportunities to monitor quality throughout production, with each phase building on the work completed before it. 

The process is different, but the fundamentals of home building remain. Each home requires skilled people, attention to detail, and a series of interconnected steps completed correctly and in the right sequence. Clayton Conway’s production process is designed to support craftsmanship while finding opportunities to make the work more efficient and ergonomic. 

Production is currently averaging 6.5 homes per day, with the facility working toward a full-buildout target of 12 homes per day. From the start of production through completion, an individual home takes approximately 3 days to move through the facility. These numbers demonstrate how a coordinated production process can bring individual stages of construction together to support greater homebuilding capacity. 

Increasing that capacity ultimately comes back to the people the homes will serve. Every house Clayton Conway builds is someone’s home, and as production continues to grow, the company has an opportunity to serve more families and help meet the growing need for attainable housing.

Modern manufactured housing continues to evolve as a critical part of the nation’s housing market, with today’s homes offering greater variety in design, materials, and features. That evolution comes as communities across the country look for ways to increase housing supply while keeping homeownership within reach for more families. 

Meeting that need will require a range of housing types and approaches. The role of manufactured and modular housing is also receiving greater attention in national housing policy, including provisions in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act focused on expanding housing supply and reducing barriers to homeownership. 

Clayton Conway provides a local example of how that larger conversation is taking shape. The facility adds capacity to a housing market that needs more quality, attainable options while bringing together skilled craftsmanship, modern manufacturing, and a production process focused on efficiency and the team member experience. As housing needs continue to grow, approaches like this help create more opportunities for attainable homeownership. 

Editor’s note: This article is sponsored content, paid for by Clayton Conway. For more information, visit claytonhomebuildinggroup.com/clayton-conway.