Impacts of Prefabrication in the Building Construction Industry
Definition
:1. Introduction
Background
- 2.
- Effectiveness in quality control. The benefits in the environmental dimension cannot be realised without integrating the value chain of industry or improving the quality of final products (either by the introduction of new technologies or by specialisation, or by abandoning the approach based on individual projects and replacing this with an approach based on the manufacture of standard products, which in turn requires the development of new materials, products, processes, and possibly industrial units).
- 3.
- Reduction of costs (construction costs and the overall cost of a building over its useful life). It is, however, stressed that this should be seen from two perspectives: the lifecycle costs and the impact that prefabrication can have on them; and the cost of the prefabrication and installation investment itself and how this affects the overall cost savings. Nevertheless, it is still evident that there is no history of cost savings among the projects that follow this model. Indeed, one of the main drivers of cost savings comes from economies of scale, and this requires investment in facilities as well as production optimisation. One study identified that companies achieve a rapid and substantial increase in productivity when they start producing around 1000 units.
- 4.
- Reduction of work execution deadlines. The optimisation of the project is pivotal to ensure production efficiencies, with mass standardisation and customisation combined with ease of transportation and assembly. If there is a tendency for more time to be needed at an early stage of the construction process, since every design model is already outlined for the execution and manufacturing process, this allows for earlier decision making. It is therefore an advantage over conventional construction because late changes and adaptations are common in the latter, often at a stage when a project is already in the execution/construction phase which will make the process more expensive as a rule. In a second phase, the definition of all elements and components will allow for the development of modular block libraries, which will then make the process more systematised and lower costs. However, the ideal would be, even within the optimisation of the project, to have feasibility for a certain amount of customisation of the models, allowing the client to have some customised features.
- 5.
- Greater control of construction time and costs. It allows for a 20%–50% faster construction time than conventional buildings (on-site). The integrated processes involved in prefabrication (including modular construction) are able to eliminate subcontracting costs with on-site labour savings and their associated profit margins in the subcontracting process. With increased repetition of the elements/components or modules, it will be possible to further reduce the associated costs.
- 6.
- Automation. With the introduction of these technologies in the manufacturing process being possible, an improvement in productivity will be viable, knowing that this implies a significant initial investment, which then, with successful growth and economies of scale, will be covered by the production costs and respective profit margins.
2. Prefabrication: New Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities
2.1. New Advances and Challenges
2.1.1. Sustainability Assessments of Prefabrication Construction
2.1.2. Models That Incorporate Specific Software
2.1.3. Analysis of the Main Impacts
2.1.4. Opportunities
3. Discussion
3.1. Research Based on Quantitative and Qualitative Data
- Life cycle assessment (LCA) [29,43,44,45,46] refers generally to an environmental assessment, where the life cycle cost (LCC) and the social life cycle assessment (SLCA) are counterparts to the economic and social assessments, respectively (most commonly used terms: life cycle assessment (LCA); LCA approach; life cycle performance). As a methodology, its structure is standardised by ISO 14040, Life Cycle Assessment, Principles and Framework (2006) and ISO 14044, Life Cycle Assessment, Requirements and Guidelines (2006). This approach represents the great advantage of obtaining important results on the (environmental) impacts of a product, being a very useful tool for decision making in the evaluation of products and processes [24,47].
- Models that incorporate specific software [48,49,50,51,52] generally refer to database software in digital format, such as the Building Information Model (BIM), value engineering (VE), or dynamic system simulations (DS). Considering that the optimisation of the built environment can drastically reduce the energy consumption of buildings, this database software is used for optimisation considering both energy savings and life cycle costs. A recent study proposed a theoretical optimisation system to analyse the “green” or environmental credentials of a building based on BIM-VE [53]. Another developed an action-based approach that combines BIM-LCA integration and statistical distributions to better understand the impacts and costs of buildings [34]. System dynamics (SD) is a simulation method that focuses on system interactions over time, and which considers feedback effects. It is suitable for use with energy and material information flows, such as for cost optimisation, inventories, or benefit analyses. Some authors have resorted to the use of SD in the context of the prefabrication method as a way to help identify and quantify the relationships of the relevant parameters of the (sub)systems [1]. The use of these models and methods, or their combination, will allow for more complex designs, thereby improving communication and coordination between stakeholders and ensuring that construction is of higher quality [25]. The technological advances under way should allow for the development of 4D (time) and 5D (cost) modelling, which will result in greater cost reduction and increased efficiency. 3D printing could also be used for prefabrication, allowing for further reduction of any associated human failures.
3.2. Research Based on Economic, Environmental, and Social Impacts
- Prefabrication construction has a higher initial cost, but with shorter deadlines and smaller economic and temporal deviations [9];
4. Conclusions, Recommendations, and Future Perspectives
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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Rocha, P.F.; Ferreira, N.O.; Pimenta, F.; Pereira, N.B. Impacts of Prefabrication in the Building Construction Industry. Encyclopedia 2023, 3, 28-45. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3010003
Rocha PF, Ferreira NO, Pimenta F, Pereira NB. Impacts of Prefabrication in the Building Construction Industry. Encyclopedia. 2023; 3(1):28-45. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3010003
Chicago/Turabian StyleRocha, Patrícia Fernandes, Nuno Oliveira Ferreira, Fernando Pimenta, and Nelson Bento Pereira. 2023. "Impacts of Prefabrication in the Building Construction Industry" Encyclopedia 3, no. 1: 28-45. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3010003