R&D · A Consolidated Building Group company
The R&D shop for prefab.
prefab.labs is where architects, engineers, and our Tally plant prototype new prefab systems together. Volumetric modules, pods, chassis-free homes: drawn, built, tested, then handed to production.
How work reaches us
Load-bearing or bypass CFS panel? Tally builds it today. Anything new starts here.
How ideas graduateWho's at the bench
Good prefab ideas die between the drawing and the shop floor. We put the people who design them next to the people who build them.
01
Architects
Bring the typology and the design intent. Leave with a system that can actually be fabricated.
design intent
02
Engineers
Structural and MEP partners test connections, code paths, and load cases on real mockups.
structure, MEP, code
03
Owners and developers
Bring the schedule, cost, or labor problem worth solving, and a site to pilot on.
problems worth solving
04
Tally
Our CFS panel plant. Brings ideas from the floor and most of the capacity to build them: fabrication, detailing, crews.
ideas plus build capacity
On the bench
4 open · Updated Oct 2026
Chassis-free two-story home
Can a steel-framed upper floor ship lighter and set like modular under the new HUD rules?
Bathroom and utility pods
Finished, plumbed volumetric pods for healthcare and hospitality, developed with trade partners.
Stackable volumetric rooms
Hotel and student-housing rooms as steel-framed volumes. Where does volumetric beat panels?
ADU and infill kits
Small homes sized to newer infill zoning, as a kit a local builder can stand up fast.
Prove it small. Build it big.
01
Sketch
The question, framed with the architect and engineer.
02
Mockup
Critical details built at full scale and broken on purpose.
03
Prototype
A complete unit built with Tally's plant and crews. Measured.
04
Pilot
One real project, one partner, success criteria agreed up front.
05
Graduate
Into production at Tally or Halyard, out to a licensee, or shelved with the lesson filed.
Policy watch · Federal
The chassis mandate is gone. Now what?
For fifty years, every HUD-code home had to ride on a permanent steel chassis. That changed in 2026. LAB-01 studies what a manufactured home looks like when it no longer has to.
Ask for the LAB-01 briefHUD proposes dropping the chassis requirement for upper floors of multi-story manufactured homes.
The ROAD to Housing Act removes the chassis requirement from the federal definition entirely.
HUD writes implementing standards. Zoning, appraisal, and financing still decide where these homes can go.
For architects, engineers, and owners
Bring us the detail nobody will build yet.
If your design needs a prefab system that doesn't exist, we'll prototype it with you, with a plant behind us that can build it at scale.