Co-founder & CEO of Blu Homes
An inventor and entrepreneur, Bill Haney started his first company as a college freshman, inventing and building air pollution control systems for power plants. Since then he has started or helped start more than a dozen technology companies. Blu Homes, with its emphasis on using advanced technology to improve the health, economics, design experience and environmental effect of housing for American families, came out of an idea Bill developed in a multi-year research study with the Rhode Island School of Design.
Bill is the Founder of the non-profit World Connect, which works to improve the health and wellbeing of women and children in underserved and under-resourced communities in more than 15 countries worldwide. He was a founding member of the national environmental advisory board for the US Environmental Protection Agency, the President’s Circle for the National Academy of Sciences, has won a Humanitarian Award from Harvard Medical School, an Achievement Award from the ACLU, a Genesis Award and serves or has served on boards for Harvard, MIT, State and Federal Governments, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the NRDC. He is an award winning filmmaker, having won Gabriel Prize, a Silver Hugo, the Earthwatch Award, an Amnesty International Award, an NAACP Image Award, been short listed for an Oscar, and won the Pare Lorentz Prize.
Featured in
The Rise of Factory-built Housing: Episode 1
Between 1908 and 1942, Sears sold 100,000 homes that were delivered in kits consisting of 12,000 pieces. While Sears is no longer in the business of making prefabricated homes, a number of technology-driven startups have picked up the mantle and are now delivering new kinds of kits, which, once they’re put together, make modern homes. In the first episode of a 6-part series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews some of the most innovative companies that are reinventing the way we think about prefabricated housing.
Featured in
The Rise of Factory-built Housing: Episode 2
Modular builders have taken the art of prefabrication to an entirely new level, where entire rooms with insulation, plumbing, and electric wiring are made in a factory. These rooms (called “modules”) are transported to a building site and then stacked next to and on top of one another to form a home in days. In the Hamptons, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other major cities, it’s now possible to build a beautiful modern home modularly for as much as 50% the cost of building with local contractors.
Images & videos courtesy of Blu Homes