Operation Breakthrough

In the United States, the 1968 Housing Act defined the need for 26 million housing units over the next decade, with 6 million for low- and moderate-income families. Operation Breakthrough was initiated in 1969 by the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), George Romney. It was intended that Operation Breakthrough would result in the much wider use of factory-based industrialized methods of prefabricated house construction. The favorite analogy was the mass production of automobiles. Mass production of factory-built houses was seen as necessary to quickly produce sufficient, good-quality housing at low cost. At that time, it appeared that Europe had achieved great success following such an approach.

Complementing the need for faster development of housing production technology itself was the need to remove obstacles in the way of an aggregated, large, and continuous market. The lack of such a market was seen as the greatest obstacle to accelerating the application of industrialized methods to house construction. Capital-intensive methods of house construction were also needed because of the shortage of skilled labor in the traditional building process. For these various reasons, Operation Breakthrough was directed not only at technological advancement of housing but also at breaking through the various nonhardware constraints to more efficient production of housing.

Thus, Operation Breakthrough was a multifaceted program aimed at the following:

• Encouraging industry to propose ideas available for volume production methods
• Encouraging conventional housing system advancement through support of applied research and development
• Aggregating the market for housing, including both the demand for housing and the available land for such housing
• Encouraging state and local governments to adjust building codes and zoning codes that contributed to fragmentation, high cost, and the difficulty of producing for a broad market
• Improving methods of financing
• Making more effective use of the total workforce
• Conducting tests and evaluations with authoritative test validation that would serve as a basis for approval of advanced housing concepts and for development of performance standards for housing systems

The program's primary objective was to include the production of at least 1,000 dwelling units per year for 5 years, using up to five different technologies as called for by Section 108 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968. To assist in reaching the primary objective, the program was also to stimulate the modernization and broadening of the housing industry through increased emphasis on better design and greater use of improved techniques within the housing industry and through increased participation by other organizations that possess the necessary talents, interest, and capabilities for such a commitment.

The reference to “other organizations” included companies that had a large-scaled manufacturing [Page 537]capability. Operation Breakthrough was designed to help industrial companies develop new building materials and new construction techniques. The assumption was that cooperation among leading industrial corporations in mass production of housing was essential and would prove sufficiently profitable to attract investment capital on the scale required to launch a new high-technology industry. Although the attention to size of company and the need for new construction methods had often been referred to in Europe, this reference to the potential role of organizations outside the conventional construction industry had not been seriously considered. This marked a major difference in the United States approach compared with that adopted in Europe, although the method of encouraging the policy—demonstration projects—was similar. To encourage big companies that were engaged in other fields to enter the housing market, HUD provided the support for design, testing, and prototype construction of these concepts and then gave companies an opportunity through those sites and their marketing capability to market these concepts for volume construction. More than 2,000 requests for proposals were sent out to companies. It was then planned to choose prototypes for construction from between 10 and 20 contractors. These prototypes were to be built on eight regional sites, following which various prospective sponsors (private and public) would be invited “to examine these various concepts and select those they want to have produced in volume in their areas to satisfy their needs.” It was intended that the operation should be “largely privately financed.” This was the second major departure from the way industrialized building was developed in Europe.

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