Optimization of the Supplier Selection Process in Prefabrication Using BIM

Abstract

Prefabrication offers substantial benefits including reduction in construction waste, material waste, energy use, labor demands, and delivery time, and an improvement in project constructability and cost certainty. As the material cost accounts for nearly 70% of the total cost of the prefabrication project, to select a suitable material supplier plays an important role in such a project. The purpose of this study is to present a method for supporting supplier selection of a prefabrication project. The proposed method consists of three parts. First, a list of assessment criteria was established to evaluate the suitability of supplier alternatives. Second, Building Information Modelling (BIM) was adopted to provide sufficient information about the project requirements and suppliers’ profiles, which facilitates the storage and sharing of information. Finally, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to rank the importance of the assessment criteria and obtain the score of supplier alternatives. The suppliers were ranked based on the total scores. To illustrate how to use the proposed method, it was applied to a real prefabrication project. The proposed method facilitates the supplier selection process by providing sufficient information in an effective way and by improving the understanding of the project requirements.

Critical Review of the Evolution of Project Delivery Methods in the Construction Industry

“…Additionally, the simulation of the complex nature of construction project works has been made possible through BIM along with virtual reality and 3D printing [269]. Moreover, prefabrication is another process change that has had a huge impact on the transformation of the construction industry and led to an efficient implementation of waste reduction management strategies [28,270]. Not only this but, apart from digital transformation, sustainability also has been another major change that transformed the construction industry.…”

Combining multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods with building information modelling (BIM): A review

“…[99] integrating BIM and GIS to generate supplier selection framework for a resilient construction supply chain. Zhao, et al [107] presented a BIM-based method by using to rank the importance of the assessment criteria and obtain the score of supplier alternatives for supporting supplier selection of a prefabrication project. Alireza, et al [4] proposes a novel framework for sustainability assessment of construction material supply chain decisions by taking advantage of the information made available by customized BIM and a number of different databases required for assessment of life cycle impacts.…”

“…Firstly, a significant function of BIM mentioned in reviewed papers is to store information as a database [12,13,29,63,107]. A BIM-enabled MCDM process might include various data type, including stakeholders requirement data, standards and regulations data, expert knowledge data, users related data [37], and building related data, such as existing documentation, photogrammetry, and data from sensors.…”

“…Secondly, BIM's role as an information processing tool has also been proposed by many reviewed papers, including collect [29], categorize [107], modify [1,29], update [3,29], and analysis information [3]. And BIM environment provides a hotbed for plug-in development, which further facilitate the above sub-functions [12,53,65].…”

A semi-systematic literature review on supplier selection in construction projects

“…Zhao et al [26] proposed a method for supplier selection of a prefabrication project. The proposed method includes: listing the supplier selection criteria, providing adequate information about the project requirements and suppliers' profiles through Building Information Modelling (BIM), and ranking the importance levels of the supplier selection criteria and ranking the supplier alternatives using the AHP method.…”