By Mary James

Predesigned home plans have been available since the early 1800s, used generally as a tool for making home ownership more accessible. In recent years, the appeal of stock plans has broadened, bringing the potential of smoothing the pathway to higher-performing, more resilient housing. Their advantages can be particularly appealing in communities that have been hit by climate-related and natural disasters.

The city of Fort Collins, Colorado is one community that is exploring the benefits of predesigned plans in its efforts to streamline new high-performance, all-electric housing that meets its 2030 climate goals. The Designed to 2030 – Pre-Approved High-Performance Home Plans Pilot Program is developing permit-ready plans to simplify the delivery of above-code residential buildings.

“There's really two things we're trying to achieve with the pilot program: encouraging and educating people to build high-performance housing with panelized systems and offering affordable, attainable homes so that more people can buy their first home,” says Karen Ramsey, founder and principal of Building Wellness, a Fort Collins-based high-performance building consultancy. Ramsey is project lead of the Designed to 2030 Pilot Program. She is leading an interdisciplinary team that includes Steven Winter Associates, Inc., B.PUBLIC Prefab, and Hereabout Home. Steven Winter Associates is well known for its experience in high-performance building consulting; B.PUBLIC produces prefabricated, low-embodied-carbon panelized building envelopes; and Hereabout Home specializes in predesigned home plans.

Last year Ramsey had participated in a stakeholder group convened by the city of Fort Collins’ utilities to discuss how best to achieve the city’s proposed 2030 energy code. The outcome of that process was a proposal to the city council asking for funding for the pilot program. Explaining why the city funded the pilot, Ramsey says, "The goal is to get the building community comfortable with high-performance construction now, so that by 2030, it's simply the way things are done, and in the process, increase the availability of affordable, attainable housing right here in Fort Collins."

While the Designed to 2030 pilot represented a new kind of leadership challenge for Ramsey, she had little trouble assembling her team. She had worked previously with both B.PUBLIC and Hereabout Home, and her involvement with the Reimagine Buildings Collective had connected her with the Steven Winter Associates team. "The Collective has been an incredible professional resource," says Ramsey. "It's how I found some of the best people in the industry."

With her team in place, Ramsey is focused on two parallel workstreams: identifying the home sizes and types that will resonate most with the community, and building the broad coalition needed to make the program succeed. To that end, she is leading a stakeholder engagement process to bring community voices into the program's design.

“We'll be providing three to four home plans later this year, and we describe that as Phase 1, or the foundation of the program,” she notes. All of these permit-ready plans will be designed in collaboration with Hereabout Home to work specifically with B.PUBLIC’s panels. Steven Winter Associates will do the energy models for all of the pre-approved plans and the mechanical designs.

Altogether, the work involved to get these plans permit ready will hugely benefit lot owners, with significant savings in design and engineering fees, not to mention the time required to get a permit. This opportunity to shortcut the permitting process and reduce design fees is attracting interest not only from many homeowners, but also from local developers. One in particular envisions building out these predesigned plans on at least 10 lots in their 400-lot development as a way to gain experience with a residential code that will be required in the not-too-distant future.

The pilot program is intended to be the first step in a longer process. Looking ahead, Ramsey envisions expanding the plan portfolio through an open design competition that would invite architects and panelized building companies from across Colorado, maybe even nationwide, to contribute. Future phases of the program are expected to bring additional panel manufacturers into the fold, widening the range of options available to builders and homeowners alike. "We want to open this up to the wider design and building community and get more plans added to the portfolio," she says.

To the southwest of Ft. Collins, the survivors of the Altadena and Pacific Palisades fires also have the opportunity to explore the benefits of predesigns. The Foothill Catalog Foundation, a nonprofit created shortly after the fires to assist displaced residents to rebuild affordably and resiliently, has been compiling a catalog of predesigned plans to choose from.

Both Irwin’s and Barry’s plans are eligible for the recently announced RISE Homes (Rebuilding Incentives for Sustainable Electric Homes) program in California, which incentivizes lower-carbon, all-electric, and Passive House rebuilds of residential properties destroyed or red-tagged due to a wildfire or other natural disaster. The homes must be located in the service areas of any of six investor-owned utilities in California. All types of residential buildings, from accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to multifamily units are eligible, and the new build does not have to be the same type as the home that was lost.