housing-innovation
(2)
Factory OS
Factory OS is a Vallejo, California modular-housing manufacturer that builds wood-frame multifamily apartments inside a former Mare Island Navy shipyard. Co-founded in 2017 by affordable-housing veteran Rick Holliday and contractor Larry Pace, the company treats apartments like cars: rolling them down an assembly line with union labor, cutting build times by ~40% and costs by 20–40% compared with conventional construction.
Rick Holliday
Rick Holliday is a San Francisco Bay Area real estate developer and social entrepreneur with nearly 50 years of experience building affordable and market-rate housing. He co-founded Factory OS in 2017 to revolutionize multifamily housing production through factory-based modular construction, securing $77.7M in funding from Google, Autodesk, Facebook, and Citi. His career spans co-founding Eden Housing (1978), BRIDGE Housing (early 1980s), and Holliday Development (1988), where he pioneered live-work loft conversions in SoMa. Factory OS, located in a former WWII submarine shipyard on Mare Island in Vallejo, demonstrated 40% faster delivery and 20-30% cost savings over traditional construction.