What will you regret 20 years from now?

I have a question for you.

What is something you wish you had done 20 years ago?

Bought Apple stock in 2006?

Purchased Bitcoin when it was worth pennies?

Invested in Amazon before e-commerce became mainstream?

Bought a home before prices doubled and tripled across much of the country?

Most people can instantly think of opportunities they missed. Not because they were impossible to see, but because they felt risky, unfamiliar, or too early at the time.

The interesting thing about regret is that it rarely comes from taking action. More often, it comes from waiting too long. I see the same thing happening in construction today. For decades, the industry has struggled with labor shortages, cost overruns, project delays, weather disruptions, material waste, and declining productivity. We know the problems. We've been talking about them for years.

Yet many builders, developers, municipalities, and housing advocates continue to rely on the same site-built processes that created many of these challenges in the first place. Meanwhile, modular construction continues to gain momentum. Projects are being completed faster. Quality is becoming more predictable. Waste is being reduced. Skilled labor is being utilized more efficiently. Housing is being delivered in markets that desperately need it.

Will modular solve every problem? Of course not. But neither did e-commerce solve every retail problem. Neither did cloud computing solve every technology challenge. Neither did automation solve every manufacturing issue. What those innovations did do was create a better way forward.

The question isn't whether modular construction will become a larger part of the future. It already is. The question is whether you'll be one of the people who embraced it early enough to benefit from the advantages, or one of the people looking back 20 years from now saying, "We should have started sooner."

The biggest risk today may not be adopting modular construction. 

The biggest risk may be continuing to do things the same way while expecting different results.

What construction practices do you think the industry will regret holding onto over the next 20 years?