And by that I mean, you have spent a good deal of thought on a pretty marketing page, but your spiel doesn't really demonstrate knowledge of the wooddust and nails that make up homebuilding. You're not being careful with which codes you satisfy, you're not talking physical tolerances (earthquake? hurricane? heavy rain? wind?), you're not discussing the existing prefab systems and what makes yours better.
There is, of course, potential in prefab. But I would suggest more sweat of talking to carpenters and other tradespeople. Hiring a top carpenter for 6 months to throw darts at the thing would be useful. willyt provides some good feedback, but I think its revealing that you don't treat that kind of information, in that kind of depth, in your current information copy. You can get there though!
Seems like they're aware, if not super upfront about it. Under the R&D tab, the #1 challenge listed is structural testing and documentation.
Quote: "In order to make it easier for engineers, building control officers and mortgage companies to do structural calculations and to certify WREN in projects, we need structural engineers to do further R&D, structural lab testing and documentation of the system’s structural performance."
So a couple of points in reply to your comment:
This looks to be an open source development model, and so appearing to be professionally designed may help attract the needed expertise, instead of having said people get the impression the project isn't going anywhere and not see a point in joining/helping.
As for carpenters/tradespeople - and I've worked as a residential carpenter so please don't take this the wrong way - but from what I can tell this project is pushing the mold enough that they need structural/materials engineers more so than tradespeople. Tradespeople have a lot of practical knowledge about how easy/hard it will be to build what the engineers put in front of them, and that knowledge is valuable, but to use a car analogy, you wouldn't ask a mechanic to design you an electric car. And sticking with the car analogy, this project looks far closer to an electric car than your standard internal combustion engine car (ie standard 2x6 framed pine style construction, which most zoning laws assume)[0].
[0] In America. I see this projects hails from the UK, dunno what their zoning laws or standard construction practices look like.
In manufacturing, the best way to build a device for effective fab on the factory floor is to have a senior assembler involved in the creation. They will point out amusing errors like "You can't run wires there or no one will be able to build it", or, "If you rearrange the widget over 2 inches, it'll cut time to put the widget in by well over half". Obviously they don't run the show, but they should be involved in the entire design-build phase to ensure the effectiveness of the system when the rubber is deployed on the travelway.
Physical product development is an entire skillset in and of itself, and the skill gaps are pretty big when you're coming in from the software world. As I'm sure you know. :)
And by that I mean, you have spent a good deal of thought on a pretty marketing page, but your spiel doesn't really demonstrate knowledge of the wooddust and nails that make up homebuilding. You're not being careful with which codes you satisfy, you're not talking physical tolerances (earthquake? hurricane? heavy rain? wind?), you're not discussing the existing prefab systems and what makes yours better.
There is, of course, potential in prefab. But I would suggest more sweat of talking to carpenters and other tradespeople. Hiring a top carpenter for 6 months to throw darts at the thing would be useful. willyt provides some good feedback, but I think its revealing that you don't treat that kind of information, in that kind of depth, in your current information copy. You can get there though!
best of luck.