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Prefab housing and the future of building : product to process
As we stand on the cusp of a fundamental restructuring of the housing and building industries, this book provides a timely overview of prefabricated and modular housing. The idea of prefabricated and modular housing is not a new one: since the 19th century, designers, inventors, engineers, builders, developers, and entrepreneurs have all been fascinated by the idea of the factory-built home. But the current international housing shortages and affordability crises have given a new urgency to the need to transform building construction in the 21st century. Richly illustrated and drawing on historical examples and contemporary design studies, the book takes the reader through the history, theory and design of the prefab, leading up to a discussion of contemporary problems and opportunities.
Book
A Scientometric Review of Management of Prefabricated Construction from 2011–2021
Prefabricated construction (PC) is an increasingly popular method of construction utilized globally due to its high productivity and efficient performance. PC as an advanced building technique is susceptible to problems such as the immaturity of the PC industry’s development, inability to realize production benefits, and application-related risks and uncertainties. The management of PC (MPC) can be applied to resolve these difficulties and generally enhance performance. Reviews pertinent to the MPC are scarce, making it challenging to concentrate and comprehensively summarize the research situation of the MPC. The MPC review was conducted by Li et al. in 2014. However, there has been a lot of change in the MPC research field. Therefore, this study is an extension of the work of Li et al. (2014). This article aims to analyze and summarize the current research situation and future trends of the MPC, employing a bibliometric search and scientometric analysis from MPC-related publications between 2011 and 2021. This paper outlines current research topics, gaps, and future development from four perspectives based on publications gathered: (1) PC development, (2) PC performance management, (3) PC life cycle management, and (4) technological applications in the MPC. Based on the discussion of these four performance indexes, the following future research directions are proposed: (1) PC industry development considering a combination of Industry–University–Research, (2) the performance impact of management methods and technologies, (3) the rationality of management methods and technologies. This study is vital for scholars to understand MPC research and to conduct further research.
Journal Article
From Profit to Preservation: A Review of Digital Technology Enabling Sustainable Prefabricated Building Supply Chain Management
In the face of evolving digital technologies, all industries have undergone radical changes. Similarly, the construction industry needs to apply digital technology to improve the existing Supply Chain (SC), which has problems such as the inefficient collaboration among various links, the poor ability to cope with risks, the higher costs, the waste of resources and pollution, etc., and to adapt to the development of the digital era. Prefabricated Construction (PC), with their advantages of having a high efficiency and being energy-saving, can help improve the above problems and promote the sustainable development of the construction industry. Therefore, this review uses a combination of scientific bibliometrics and a qualitative analysis to search a total of 129 works of literature on the application of digital technologies in Prefabricated Construction Supply Chain Management (PCSCM) for the period of 2015–2024 included in the Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases. After visualization and analysis in Citespace v6.3.1.0 and VOSviewer v1.6.20.0, it was found that most of the literature focuses on the economic benefits of cost reduction and efficiency, while there are fewer studies on the topic of sustainable development. Therefore, this study summarizes the current status of the application of digital technologies in PCSCM, addressing the lack of attention to environmental benefits in the existing studies and the limitations of the current research. Creatively, it proposes recommendations that will help PCSCM achieve sustainable development in the future, and points out that the construction industry must break through the limitation of focusing only on its own economic interests to realize the vision of a harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature.
Journal Article
Circular Economy and Virtual Reality in Advanced BIM-Based Prefabricated Construction
This paper presents a new virtual reality (VR)-based approach to advanced learnings and experiences of the circular economy (CE) in the construction industry. The approach involves incorporating game design and a building information modelling (BIM) digital twin of a purposed CE prototype building. Our novel approach introduces VR environments designed to provide a visual representation of materials and components that can be reintroduced into the supply chain at the end of life and their removal procedures and material provenance. A case study methodology was applied to a purposely designed CE building, namely the Legacy Living Lab (L3). To reflect the real-life building, L3’s BIM model was combined with Unify game software to advance the literature in three key areas. First, the research investigates VR tools that will allow building designers to view and implement their strategies to advance CE design. Second, this research proposes an advanced VR tool to visualise the bill of quantities (BoQ) and material stock embedded in the studied building, further understanding concepts such as buildings as material banks. Finally, the proposed VR environment defines CE techniques implemented within the case study to be disseminated across the vast construction industry. This VR research identifies three key pillars in reducing the waste generated by the construction industry: education, documentation and visualisation. Furthermore, this paper provides a visual link between the BIM, BoQ and resiliency of the selected materials.
Journal Article
A Systematic Review of Digital Technology Adoption in Off-Site Construction: Current Status and Future Direction towards Industry 4.0
Off-site construction (OSC) is known as an efficient construction method that could save time and cost, reduce waste of resources, and improve the overall productivity of projects. Coupled with digital technologies associated with the Industry 4.0 concept, OSC can offer a higher rate of productivity and safety. While there is a rich literature focusing on both OSC and Industry 4.0, the implementation of associated digital technologies in the OSC context has not been fully evaluated. This paper intends to evaluate the current literature of digital technology applications in OSC. Scientometric analyses and a systematic review were carried out evaluating fifteen typical digital technologies adopted by OSC projects, including building information modelling (BIM), radio frequency identification devices (RFID), global positioning systems (GPS), the Internet of Things (IoT), geographic information systems (GIS), sensors, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), photogrammetry, laser scanning, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, robotics, big data, and blockchain. This review formulates a clear picture of the current practice of these digital technologies and summarizes the main area of application and limitations of each technology when utilized in OSC. The review also points out their potential and how they can be better adopted to improve OSC practice in the future.
Journal Article
An overall review of research on prefabricated construction supply chain management
PurposeAs a strand in industrialization movement in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, prefabricated construction (PC) has gained widespread popularity due to high efficiency, energy saving, low environmental impacts, safety and other advantages of PC. Well-managed supply chain can further leverage the advantages of PC. However, there is a lack of more systematically overview of the prefabricated construction supply chain (PCSC). This paper aims to comb the current status and look into the future direction of PCSC by reviewing the existing research.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 131 articles related to prefabricated construction supply chain management (PCSCM) from 2000 to 2022 have been collated to (1) conduct a bibliometric analysis by using VOSviewer, including the literature sources, keywords co-occurrence, co-authorships, authorship citation and country active in the field of PCSCM; (2) classify and summarize the status of research in PCSCM through qualitative discussion and (3) point out the future research directions.FindingsIn total, 131 articles are carried out for bibliometric analysis and in-depth qualitative discussion, the visualization maps and the main research themes in the field of PCSCM are obtained. The results show that supply chain intelligentization and informatization are hot topics. Finally, future research directions that should be paid attention to in the field of PCSCM are pointed out.Practical implicationsThis study can help project managers understand the current status and problems of PCSC operations and provide a basis for future management decisions.Originality/valueCompared with previous studies, this study adds the dimension of “article authorship” to the quantitative analysis and discusses the research themes in the field of PCSCM in a comprehensive manner. In addition, this paper deeply discusses the main research topics from both the specific contents and research methods adopted.
Journal Article
Impact of consumer preference on the decision-making of prefabricated building developers
Customers’ preferences for prefabricated building or conventional cast-in-situ building directly affect the decision-making process for strategic selection of building developers. This study utilizes a Hotelling model integrating game theory, including the market share function, product price function, and profit function of duopoly building developers to contribute a new approach to assist decision makers in their selection of developers for their projects. By analyzing different strategy combinations and the income matrix, we obtained the strategy combinations of duopoly building developers and the income matrix strategies, market share, optimal price and maximum profit. Managerial implications were discussed for government and building developers. Finally, we presented the research contribution as well as future research direction.
Journal Article
Production scheduling of off-site prefabricated construction components considering sequence dependent due dates
The growing environmental concerns, excessive utilization of natural resources, and high energy consumption have put a severe pressure on the construction industry to adopt new methods in response to these challenges. As a remedy, prefabricated construction methods are broadly utilized to enhance the productivity of the construction activities. However, challenges associated with on-time production of precast components have not adequately been addressed. Thus, this study proposes a new insight to the theory of scheduling dealing with sequence-dependent due dates, in which total weighted earliness and tardiness are minimized. To tackle uncertainties and complexities associated with the stochastic nature of production problems, three integrated simulation-optimization algorithms, which employ simulation methods inside a metaheuristic framework, are proposed. Three metaheuristic algorithms, including genetic algorithm (GA), differential evolution (DE), and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), are employed to minimize objective function. A series of computational tests are conducted to investigate the performance of these approaches. Results indicate that integrated DE-simulation approach can provide better results in comparison with other approaches.
Journal Article
Developing a Conceptual Partner Selection Framework: Digital Green Innovation Management of Prefabricated Construction Enterprises for Sustainable Urban Development
Digital green innovation management activities are the core of low-carbon intelligent development of prefabricated construction enterprises (PCEs) for sustainable urban development. PCEs have to seek joint venture partners to avoid the financial risk of digital green innovation projects. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual partner selection framework for the digital green innovation management of prefabricated construction towards urban building 5.0. In this study, first, symbiosis theory and six analysis methods were integrated to innovatively build a 3W1H-P framework system for the joint venture capital partner selection of digital green innovation projects. Second, the dual combination weighting method was innovatively proposed to avoid subjective and objective deviation in attribute weight and time weight. Finally, empirical research was carried out to verify the scientific nature, reliability, and practicability of the framework system and selection model. The results of this study show that the framework system and selection model proposed can be used to assist PCEs to select joint investment partners of digital green and innovative projects for sustainable urban development.
Journal Article