Abstract
Construction industry is very labor-intensive and one of the major sources of employment in the world. The industry is experiencing low productivity with minimum technological innovations for decades. In recent times, various automation technologies including 3D printing have received increasing interests in construction. 3D printing in construction is found to be very promising to automate the construction processes and have the potential of saving laborious work, material waste, construction time, risky operation for humans, etc. There has been a comprehensive body of research conducted to understand the recent advances, future prospects and challenges of large-scale adoption of 3D printing in construction projects. Being one the labor-intensive industries, this study also investigates the possible impact on the labor market with increasing adoption of 3D printing in construction. It is found that 3D printing can reduce significant number of labors which can solve the labor shortage problem, especially for the countries where construction is heavily dependent on immigrant workers. In contrast, 3D printing might not be favorable for the countries where construction is one of the main workforces and labor is less expensive. Moreover, 3D construction printing will also require people with special skills related to this new technology.
Highlights
The construction industry is among the main industries that contributes to countries’ economic development, with a 9% GDP share and about 7~8.5% of the total employment around the world [1,2,3]
This study made a comprehensive review on the current progress and future prospects of 3D printing in construction
With the possibility of large-scale adoption of 3D concrete/construction printing (3DCP), this paper investigated how the construction labor market would be affected by this technology
Summary
The construction industry is among the main industries that contributes to countries’ economic development, with a 9% GDP (gross domestic product) share and about 7~8.5% of the total employment around the world [1,2,3]. Considering the unique nature of construction projects, these technologies are not readily applicable or repeatable to multiple construction projects unlike manufacturing productions [11] This warrants further research to adopt the automated technologies on a large scale. The industry is struggling to improve the productivity for decades since construction works are highly dependent on human workforces with little use of technology and industrialization [24,25]. This workforces account at least 25% of the total project cost [26]. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8492 as for the places where there is a shortage of skilled construction laborers and workers and are highly dependent on migrated workers
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