Abstract
The construction industry is facing numerous difficulties in managing construction waste, quality, environment, permanence, safety, and greater construction cost. Dynamic change is needed today to overcome new challenges in the construction industry. Adoption of prefabrication is one of the possible solutions to such problems. This paper explores the advantages in prefabrication adoption with its possible disadvantages (barriers) through the qualitative study. This paper is an addition to the existing literature of prefabrication specially for developing countries where the acceptance rate of new approaches is difficult. It covers private residential project and a public housing project. This study also aims to evaluate the current status of prefabrication adoption in small-scale construction projects. A set of the questionnaire is used to collect the data and Average Index (AI) method using SPSS has been used to analyze the results. Shorter construction time, Low site waste and better supervision are the main advantages. Higher initial construction cost and Strict & difficult design changes are the key disadvantages. It is analyzed that the conventional construction method is more frequently used when compared with prefabrication concept.
Highlights
Increasing awareness of environmental, social and economic issues in today's building methods has allowed practitioners around the world to adopt practices that are considered more sustainable in the long term
The respondents were provided with a 4-point likert scale and requested to weight the factors which are advantageous for prefabrication in construction industry of small-scale residential building projects
Prefabrication method for the construction industry provides a much more efficient atmosphere for productivity, eliminating the unnecessary distractions and interference typically encountered in conventional construction sites
Summary
Increasing awareness of environmental, social and economic issues in today's building methods has allowed practitioners around the world to adopt practices that are considered more sustainable in the long term. As an alternative to these problems, prefabrication can provide significant benefits, such as reduced time, low waste, improved quality, reduced environmental emissions, improved work environment, and reduced energy and water consumption [3, 4]. One of the main reasons for the discouragement of decision-makers to adopt prefabrication is that they have difficulty in finding the benefits that such an approach would add to a project [5]. Prefabrication is not always the only solution available, and it is not always better than the on-site construction method because of the different characteristics of the project and the resources available. Orders lag significantly behind the production, cost overruns and structural problems in the use of prefabrication. Pasquire and Connolly (2002) has shown that the decision to include prefabrication still relies heavily on subjective evidence, rather than hard data, as there are no formal measurement strategies [5]
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