Drew Heimerl

Continuity from sketch to completion

I have sixteen years in the AEC industry, five of them deep in modular. Those five came from building an in-house architecture and engineering function at a modular manufacturer, where I learned how a production line actually behaves, where designs break against process, and what it takes to keep a factory and a developer pointed at the same result. The decade before that I spent owner-side, running capital projects and writing the checks. Few people have seen modular from both seats, and it's exactly the perspective most projects are missing.

From the factory floor, the failure pattern was easy to spot: promising projects unraveled by drawings that ignored the capabilities and constraints of modular construction. When the factory can't build it as drawn, the promised savings evaporate into redesign, change orders, and a schedule nobody can hold. My work closes that gap. The concepts I hand your design team already account for transport widths, crane picks, and the realities of a production line, and I stay on through fabrication and set as the translator between developer, design team, manufacturer, and general contractor, so everyone's work describes the same building.

The name says it. A datum is the fixed point every measurement refers back to. My job is to keep the design team, the factory, and the field all working from the same one.