Developing sustainability

EDIE DILLMAN Featured on Santa Fe New Mexican

Prefab company focused on environmental sustainability gets state funds for hiring

B.Public Prefab is looking to grow. So it only made sense that the Santa Fe and Las Vegas, N.M.-based company applied for — and, pending reaching certain benchmarks, is set to receive — approximately $158,450 from the state’s Job Training Incentive Program, or JTIP, to train a group of employees across its manufacturing and design operations.

The company, which has a focus on environmental responsibility and housing sustainability, has been around since 2019, building what co-founder and CEO Edie Dilman calls pre- fabricated systems to build new homes that in essence help homeowners save on energy costs.

“We decided in 2019 that a low-energy conservation approach is one thing we can do around climate, and then we can take action on building homes that require almost no energy and are way healthier and super quiet and are built to stand for generations,” Dilman said. “We rolled out the company with sort of a Lego-like kit of parts — we have 89 components — to kind of design and build anything. If you think what we do is Lego, it’s Legos that you’re going to stucco.”

While the company’s approach to building home systems is not new — there are others across the country and globe that are doing the same thing — the focus on sustainability in building low-energy framing is an area in which companies are still playing catch-up, Dilman said.

Because of that, and the processes the company takes in building the shell for a home from its manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, Dilman said training is an important task for the company to take on when it makes new hires or when it partners with homebuilders who will eventually install the pieces that make up a home.

The company plans to use $81,136 in state money for a group of hires at its Santa Fe o!ce — including, for instance, an architect, an engineer and an intern.

About $77,314 will go toward hiring five workers in Las Vegas, which Dilman says are jobs focused on production — ”The hands-on framing and insulating,” she said — as well as a foreman and o!ce administrator.

“There’s sort of a built-in curriculum to what we do,” Dilman said. “Our system is designed to achieve this passive house certification or performance level. And so there’s a lot in everything that we do that talks about what that approach is.”

The company has, to date, helped build around 12 energy-e!cient frames for homes, and the state money will help the company produce more. This year, Dilman said, the company plans to build around 10 frames for homes at the Las Vegas facility and is in production to help build the lecture hall at the Santa Fe Institute’s Miller Campus.

The company doesn’t get the state funding right away. Instead, the job training incentives from the program reimburses about 50% to 75% of employee wages through the program for up to six months of training. That means a company like B.Public Prefab has about six months to find new hires after getting approval from the state and another six months to train those workers before it receives the money.

Dilman said finding workers and getting them to stay can be a challenge. The company has applied for the job training funding once before, getting the go-ahead on $175,000 to hire and train workers, but received just a portion of that.

“We left a fair amount on the table, which is hard,” Dilman said. “The state is not taking the risk — the risk is on the business.”

B.Public Prefab’s award amounts, announced over April and May, come as other local businesses are also set to receive money.

Broken Arrow Glass Recycling will have the opportunity to get up to $66,653 to train six workers, according to an April news release from the New Mexico Economic Development Department, which manages the job training program. Parting Stone is set to receive about $10,750 to train two workers.

And Los Alamos-based UbiQD, which manufactures quantum dot products, can receive up to $307,548 to train 10 employees, according to a May news release.

The funding, announced monthly, for May was also the highest award amount ever, according to Economic Development Department Acting Cabinet Secretary Mark Roper, with 13 businesses combining for more than $6 million from the state.

For Dilman and B.Public Prefab, the state funding is more than just money.

“I think we’re really as a company committed to training people and sort of empowering people to be their best and have a pathway in the company,” she said. “And so JTIP gives us ... certainly confidence that we can, but it also gives us financial flexibility to do that and certainly take risks and take time to train people.”