Going "On Line"

Talked with John at Res4 today about a number of things. I'd received the structural engineer's approved drawings in the mail and wanted to review some little things. As John has explained to me, Simplex takes Res4's drawings and turns them into a "factory building set," which is then sent off to a structural engineer for approval/tweaking. The structural engineer's recommendations (re: sheer walls, truss design, how best to affix the box to the foundation, etc.) are then incorporated and the drawings go to a third party reviewer, which has authority to review the drawings and issue stamped approvals on behalf of municipalities (showing, in our case, that we meet West Virginia code).

Simplex has our box slotted to begin construction next week. This was a surprise to me, as I thought it had begun eight weeks ago. Turns out I had misunderstood the "twelve weeks" of production to mean that they were building the box for twelve weeks; in reality, it only takes two. The balance of that time was the drawing/engineering/approval phase. Hard to believe. Res4 is going to go out to Simplex each of the next two Fridays to monitor progress (we're invited; we'll see if we can make it). Then there will be an inspection by Simplex and Res4 together (to generate the inevitable punch list), and then Sarah and I show up after that for a final inspection and sign-off that we're ready to take possession of the box.

Apparently Res4 has a number of other projects in the works that will try to approach this level of completion out of the factory, which accounts for why they'll be keeping such a close eye on how smoothly the production of our box goes. We're sort of the guinea pigs...