Volumetric Building Companies

Vaughan Buckley started Volumetric Building Companies in Philadelphia in 2009, and it’s now one of the larger volumetric modular manufacturers in the country. VBC designs, builds and installs modules for apartments, student housing, affordable housing and hotels, carrying design, factory production, logistics and site construction under one contract. It runs factories in Berwick, Pennsylvania; Tracy, California; and Chojnice, Poland, with the Berwick plant at 600,000 square feet. The company says it has manufactured about 6,500 units to date. One named job is 247 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn, a 249-unit modular hotel. Much of the work sits on dense urban infill sites, including a run of Philadelphia projects on Chestnut Street and North Broad Street. In September 2026 VBC said it would produce 3,000 units for a Department of Defense housing program at Joint Base San Antonio.

The three plants are not interchangeable, and the differences drive what VBC can bid. Tracy, California runs 600,000 square feet on an automated line and can turn out up to 25,000 square feet of housing a week on a single shift. Berwick, Pennsylvania covers 328,000 square feet at up to 10,000 square feet a week. Chojnice, Poland is 158,000 square feet and builds steel-frame modules up to 22 storeys, along with the bespoke furniture fit-out packages. The two US plants build Type III and Type V wood-frame buildings from one to five storeys, on slab or over podium.

Offices sit apart from the factories: Philadelphia on Ridge Avenue, Boston on South Street, Monaghan in Ireland, and Gdansk for VBC Europe. The declared market reach is the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Hospitality has been a proving ground. VBC built the BREEAM-certified citizenM flagship at 40 Trinity Square in London, 370 units, and delivered 296 furnished hotel units at 1222 First Street NE in Washington, DC. On the residential side, Philadelphia work includes a 324-unit student housing building at 1600 N. 11th Street and 140 market-rate units at 230 N. 23rd Street.

Engagement starts before a contract with VBC Studio, a test-fit and feasibility stage that returns three manufacturing-optimised design options with pricing and schedule attached – which is where most of the cost certainty in modular is won or lost.

The productivity claims are specific: one wall every seven minutes with five people, against thirty-two minutes on site. The company has also gone around parts of the supply chain, contracting directly with commodity manufacturers including a gypsum producer to cut distributors and manufacturers’ reps out of the line. A circular timber programme keeps a reported ton of lumber a day out of landfill.

Repeat business is the number the firm leads with: it says 90 percent of its clients come back. Alterra Property Group, quoted on the site, has run six developments with VBC and cites six to twelve months of construction time saved. Leadership is CEO Vaughan Buckley, COO Chris Macies, chief commercial officer Dave Fetzer, CTO and Europe business leader Helena Lidelow, and head of design Sara-Ann Logan.