To satisfy his concern for efficient work and avoid wasting time, the president and founder of Maison Laprise, Daniel Laprise, makes sure to be aware of new trends and even develops a passion for artificial intelligence.
“At the time, I thought I knew everything. Today, I realize that I don’t know anything!” says the entrepreneur with a laugh in his cutting-edge Montmagny factory.
“Humans today are no longer those of 20 years ago,” he explains. “If we learned to manage differently 35 years ago, today we have to adapt quickly.”
The search for information is not what it was 35 years ago either, recalls Mr. Laprise who now considers ChatGPT to be “his favorite friend”.
“I ask him lots of questions about structures, he can make drawings,” illustrates the entrepreneur. It helps me a lot in my decision making. […] I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it has a logic that I like and that I can nourish.”
Maison Laprise has done so in the past by delivering more than 7,000 tiny houses to Haiti in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake.
The company has also marketed a “folded” house that can take shape in a few hours. “It took two or three years […] I had a flash one evening and I spent a night on it, I made it out of cardboard and I presented it in the morning to my team,” says Daniel Laprise.
The folded house concept developed by Maison Laprise
Photo provided by Maison Laprise
“I see a lot in 3D in my head, I see the building very well before it is done,” he adds.
Since its founding in 1989, the company now has more than 250 employees in 5 factories located in the Montmagny region. She has built more than 25 million square feet of homes around the world.
Prefab to resolve the housing crisis
Trained as a carpenter and also the son of a carpenter, Daniel Laprise claims to have inherited this quest for efficiency from his father. “He’s a guy who didn’t fool around, it had to move forward.”
Over the course of purchasing and renovating houses, Daniel Laprise comes to the conclusion that this efficiency will only be achieved with prefabricated materials. “When we build housing, it has to be profitable. Prefabrication naturally brought me there with something more structured.”
Daniel Laprise seeks simplicity and efficiency in his company’s operations.
Photo Jean-Philippe Guilbault
With things done simply and efficiently, the entrepreneur believes that we then have “more time to enjoy life”.
“Life goes by quickly! We have plenty of possibilities, things to do […] so the faster we do things, the more we can do,” he philosophizes.
He also believes that this manufacturing model can constitute a solution to the housing crisis in Quebec.
“Cities are seeking to densify […] it is certain that we must think more in height now rather than on sprawl [urbain]», he nuances. “We will have to rethink the prefabrication processes even more. It won’t be the robot that decides, it will be all the good technical processes behind it.”
A lot of
- What is entrepreneurship? Create something that doesn’t exist or something improved.
- Who inspires you? All the great entrepreneurs in Quebec, I can’t limit myself to just one person.
- If you could change anything in the world, what would it be? Simplify all things. It’s made complicated and complex.
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