Falkbuilt: Future-proof interior construction

The next time you walk into a Calgary health care provider’s gleaming new space, you may also be experiencing the future of construction. Falkbuilt, a Calgary-based manufacturer of offsite prefabricated solutions, has provided beautiful interiors for scores of health care clinics, offices and other clients across the city.

Prefab, where digital construction components are produced in a factory and shipped to the jobsite for assembly, has been on the go for a century or more. An early example is Sears selling “kit homes” through catalogues.

But Falkbuilt doesn’t have a catalogue. With its powerful Echo Cloud platform, Falkbuilt can create pretty much whatever the client is looking for—and do so faster, at a competitive cost, with far fewer materials and less waste, improving the current construction process dramatically.

Take, for example, Foundation Oral Surgery. Dr. Kevin Robertson’s new dental surgery clinic near Chinook Mall needed a “complicated operating room” that combined Falkbuilt’s components with some conventional construction. No problem.

Robertson also wanted a crisp looking space with a little flourish here and there. “Typical hospital facilities are usually kind of clean, white kind of sterile looking. I wanted the clinic to still have that medical feel, but with some images printed on the walls and marble touches,” he says. With Echo Cloud technology, the surgeon was able to experience his clinic while it was being designed, walking through the space virtually to suggest changes.

Once it was exactly as Robertson wanted, Echo Cloud instantly translated the design files into an engineering accurate 3D model, with all the data the factory needs for making the digital components—super studs, digital horizontals, cladding and millwork. Cladding and millwork are hermetically sealed in durable Falkskin, which is available in marble and other stone finishes, as well as a plethora of different colours and woodgrains.

SABI Mind Clinic in the Beltline selected Falkbuilt to help create a warm feel in their treatment rooms and gorgeous central area, the SABI Room. It’s “one of the most beautiful features of the space,” says the clinic’s designer Mikaela Blain, who had a clear vision from SABI’s owners. “They knew the energy they wanted the space to have based on the philosophy of SABI, which appreciates distinct character,” she says. “They wanted the space to be extremely cozy, personal and comfortable.”

With Echo Cloud, architects and designers work with the software tools they’re already used to, often Revit™, and Echo empowers the industry-standard software in the cloud. Echo Cloud makes the upfront design process, decision-making and submittals for Falkbuilt projects much simpler and faster. The end-to-end technology also speeds up the process in the factory, organizes shipping and finally, makes it easy for the technicians on the job site to install the space.

“Onsite, installers use Echo’s 3D model viewer to break apart the project into all its thousands of components. It’s a gamechanger for us. It really helps speed the process on the job site,” says Amit Ramji, one of the project managers at the Falkbuilt Calgary Branch. "Echo lets them see on their phone or iPad the exact location of each component. It streamlines the project, saves a lot of phone calls and puts us all on the same page."

Falkbuilt, combined with Echo Cloud, are bringing Calgary, and the world, the latest and greatest in interior offsite prefab construction—where what’s designed is exactly what’s built, sustainably, for a competitive price in a fraction the time of conventional construction. The future of construction is now, and it’s at Falkbuilt—your friendly, neighbourhood, offsite prefab manufacturer.