Towards adoption of prefabrication in construction

Abstract

There is an urgent issue on huge quantities of construction wastage generation in construction.Lack of the environmental supports from construction stakeholders should not be provided.The current implementation of prefabrication seems cannot provide satisfactory results to the construction industry. This paper provides a feasibility analysis in adopting prefabrication in construction activities. Advantages, hindrances and future development on prefabrication's applications are provided based on a questionnaire survey. The suitability in adopting prefabrication of various project types is also examined. Furthermore, a financial analysis is also investigated by a local case study. It found that wastage generation can reduce up to 100% after adopting prefabrication, in which up to 84.7 per cent can be saved on wastage reduction.

Comparative study of greenhouse gas emissions between off-site prefabrication and conventional construction methods: Two case studies of residential projects

“…The construction method of prefabrication is categorized as three types, namely, semi-prefabrication, comprehensive prefabrication, and volumetric modular building [15]. Semi-prefabrication is a construction method where some elements of the building are cast in situ on-site while the remainder adopts factory-built components or units.…”

“…Meanwhile, although several other studies consider prefabrication an effective and efficient approach to control environmental impact [13][14][15], rigorous calculation on the GHG emissions of prefabrication is lacking.…”

Development and validation of a building design waste reduction model

“…A limited number of research studies quantified the levels of waste reduction achieved with the use of prefabrication in buildings. These studies obtained overall wastage reduction levels up to 52% (Jaillon et al, 2008); 84.7% (Tam et al, 2007a) and even 100% (Tam et al, 2007b). In addition, these investigations identified building systems that were most affected, estimating reduction of 74-87% in timber formwork and 51-60% in concrete works (Tam et al, 2005) and 70% in building finishing works on site concreting (Lawton et al, 2002).…”

“…That said, this approximation allowed the verification of the strategies developed in this research as well as reducing levels of waste were in line with those of other investigations. As such, the use of prefabrication techniques for the entire building achieved an overall wastage reduction range from 84.7% (Tam et al 2007a) to 100% (Tam et al, 2007b) for the entire building. Furthermore, the use of prefabricated elements would imply coordination between elements.…”

“…identifies broad design waste reduction strategies, as there is limited data on waste reduction levels that are specific to each building system, except for prefabrication which provides data for the entire building (Jaillon et al, 2008, Tam et al, 2007b. Another drawback is that waste reduction obtained from other investigations refers to the waste weight, while the Waste ReSt model provides reductions in volume.…”