Abstract
Adoption of prefabrication is essential for improving the urban built environment. However, the existing prefabrication market in China is far from mature. As the stakeholder who conducts construction activities, the contractor is facing a dilemma of lacking steady prefabricated components supply. In this circumstance, a potential solution is that contractors open their own prefabrication factories to guarantee stable component supply. The aim of this research is exploring the key factors for contractors to open prefabrication factories. Firstly, a total of 28 influencing factors were identified from literature. Then, the identified factors were divided into four categories: policy environment, market environment, technological environment, and enterprise internal environment. Through interviews with experienced professionals, a total of 19 factors were selected for future analysis. Based on the 19 factors, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to the experts to rate the degree of mutual influences. The collected data were analyzed using Ucinet6.0 software, and the adjacency matrix and the visual models were established. Finally, through the analysis of node centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality, the four key influencing factors were determined including mandatory implementation policy, precast concrete component's price, market demand, and contractor's strategic objectives. The results of this study could assist contractors in making decisions of opening their own prefabrication factories toward more sustainable environment.
Highlights
A prefabricated building refers to a building in which all or parts of the building are prefabricated in a factory
Based on the results of the consistency analysis, this study optimizes the scoring data of the experts and obtains a social network analysis matrix of the factors affecting the decision-making mechanism of contractors when it comes to opening a prefabrication factory
Based on the analysis results, four key influencing factors can be obtained through a comprehensive analysis of node centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality
Summary
A prefabricated building refers to a building in which all or parts of the building are prefabricated in a factory These are transported to construction sites for assembly, connection, and partial cast-in-situ construction [1–3]. Using prefabricated components is a way to industrialize construction, which greatly improves the duration, quality, and sustainability of the project. It reduces waste, noise, dust, operation cost, labor demand, and resource depletion of the construction site. Prefabricated components are constructed on-site by lifting and splicing and reduce the workload for in-situ construction, improve the quality control process, and ensure the health and safety of workers [9]. Due to the high degree of standardization of prefabricated components, it is possible to adopt digital technologies and information management in the design, production, transportation, and assembly process
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