Dozens of innovative companies have sprung up over the past 15 years, each vowing to revolutionize home building.
Many haven’t, don’t, and won’t make it through the “early-stage” gauntlet of A, B, and C series capital raises, where they can pay off their debt, cover their bills and sustainably generate net earnings from their operations.
A pedigreed strategic and operational brain trust at FrameTec believes the venture can do what others have struggled with – successfully scale operations while offering a sustainable alternative to builders that reduces cycle times and boosts worker efficiency. Founded in 2022 and launched online in mid-2025, FrameTec now produces pre-cut framing systems at its robotic factory in Arizona, with plans to expand into Texas and other new-home-construction hotbeds, pending new investment.
During a session last week at The SHIFT, an Orlando gathering of placemaking thought and practice leaders hosted by Tavistock Development Company, FrameTec COO Josh Lewis discussed how the company operates, what they believe they can contribute to homebuilders and how they hope to address the skilled labor shortage in residential construction.
How FrameTec works
FrameTec’s process begins with reviewing and refining a builder’s project plans and verifying that site conditions align with the design specifications. Once FrameTec’s system finalizes and confirms the data, its 120,000-square-foot automated plant in Camp Verde, Arizona, uses that information to cut and assemble wall panels and framing components.
The factory manufactures wall panels, roof trusses and floor trusses with pre-marked studs, nail patterns, and layout details.
The Camp Verde facility can produce about 3,500 homes each year and has been involved in roughly 850,000 to one million square feet of housing in Arizona over the past year, Lewis said.
FrameTec partnered with Swedish manufacturer Randek, which develops and manufactures systems and machines for prefabricated housing, at its Arizona facility.
The system uses automated robots to cut, frame, sheath, glue, route, insulate, and stack structural components with relatively few workers. The robots follow exact specifications to handle most of the process, but on-site workers supervise the robotic equipment and carry out certain tasks that are not yet automated.
The factory reduces waste by automating the cutting process and reclaiming leftover wood pieces through finger-jointed methods. FrameTec, using its factory-controlled, pre-cut framing systems, claims to decrease wood waste to “near-zero”.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the construction of a typical single-family home generates about 8,000 pounds of waste, with wood making up approximately 20 to 30% of that waste.
“Any defect we remove is cut out, and the remaining pieces go into the finger-joint process… so instead of throwing away material, we’re using those pieces to create continuous lumber,” Lewis said during the session.
A potential solution to construction’s labor shortage?
For builders, FrameTec’s ability to improve cycle times is definitely appealing. Using their automated factory, the company can usually deliver pre-cut frames to a construction site within about 10 to 14 business days.
Once the frames are on site, FrameTec claims it can accelerate certain parts of the construction process by several days. This is because the wall panels and framing components arrive with pre-marked studs, nail patterns, and layout details.
“We can stand walls, come in line and stack a roof in one day on a 3,500-square-foot house. For most guys, that’s a week. We’re doing it in a day,” said Lewis, who’d spent almost 17 years working with homebuilders at pre-Builders FirstSource BMC and, more recently, about five years at Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company.
FrameTec has documented cases where a pair of electricians was able to rough-in a house, meaning they installed outlet boxes, junction boxes, and routed electrical wiring through the wall studs and ceiling joists before the drywall was installed, in as little as two hours. In comparison, it often takes about 10 hours for two electricians to complete the process without using FrameTec components.
“Every stud that goes through our factory is pre‑built. There is a mark at the switch height location and a mark location on every stud. That’s how those electricians get those five or six degrees of productivity… They don’t have to pull their tape, and they don’t have to pull the hole hawg out of the truck to drill a hole. It’s simple, but we’re moving instructions to the point of work,” Lewis explained.
Lewis views the FrameTec model as a solution to the skilled labor shortage in residential construction. According to The Home Builders Institute’s Fall 2025 Construction Labor Market report, the residential construction sector must hire about 723,000 construction workers each year to bridge the current gap.
FrameTec’s model could help solve this shortage by automating specific construction tasks. It can also streamline the on-site process, allowing workers to build faster with less training.
Lewis said that introducing advanced technology could also motivate more young people to pursue careers in the trades.
“That’s the other thing that adding technology into the process helps. It makes young people excited about the trades. This is cool. It’s flashy,” he said.
Framed resistance
FrameTec partners with homebuilders in Arizona, including Mandalay Homes, to build anything from single-lot projects to large-scale subdivisions.
Building on its early success, FrameTec is currently constructing a second, larger factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, to strengthen its operations. The 254,000-square-foot Casa Grande plant will have the capacity for about 7,000 homes per year, increasing FrameTec’s annual output capability to approximately 10,000 housing units.
Lewis cites this growth and a successful first year of operations as evidence of momentum. However, he told The Builder’s Daily that his team still needs to put in some effort to convince skeptical builders that this concept is sustainable.
“I’m promising a lot, and they worry about disrupting their current supply chains because they’re so fragile. So, if they were to get on board with FrameTech, they’re going to burn a bridge with their existing lumberyard and their existing framing contractor, because our process kind of requires a wholesale shift in those avenues,” Lewis said.
He pointed to massive multi-billion-dollar failures in the off-site construction industry as another obstacle. Katerra, a company that raised over $2 billion, built factories for modular components and claimed to reduce construction times, filed for bankruptcy in 2021.
Right now, FrameTec is testing its concept in the Southwest. In the future, the FrameTec team aims to expand into other rapidly growing Sun Belt states such as Texas, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.