Manning built a prefabricated house in pieces, then shipped it to the “Land Down Under” for easy assembly. The first documented prefabricated home was created by London carpenter John Manning for his son, who was moving from England to Australia. This useful timeline outlines significant benchmarks in the history of modular construction, from its revolutionary beginnings to its modern-day applications: 1830s How exactly did modular construction begin? Here’s a brief history of modular construction to help better understand its current rise in popularity, application, and methods. This process of constructing structures offsite, then transporting and assembling them in half the time as traditional techniques has undergone an extraordinary transformation since the 1830s and has blossomed into one of today’s leading construction approaches. Modular construction may seem like a new building method, yet it has been around for nearly two centuries.