Factors influencing construction time performance of prefabricated house building: A multi-case study

Abstract

Developing prefabricated house building is an important strategy to realize sustainable construction of urban human settlement environment. The frequent occurrence of poor construction time performance in practice has become a major obstacle to the development of prefabricated house building. However, we do not know much about the key factors and internal mechanisms that affect the construction time performance of prefabricated house building. To fill the gap, we examined six cases in China to identify the underlying influencing factors and their internal mechanisms by using a multi-case study method. The results show that project technology system and project delivery system are the two key factors affecting the construction time performance of prefabricated house building. In particular, we find that different types of project complexity (i.e., product, process and organizational complexity) may play a mediating role in the relationships. The results also show that construction time performance differences across modes of project technology system and project delivery system are associated with their management of prefabricated house building project complexity. The findings advance our understanding of time performance and project complexity management of prefabricated house building project in theory, and provide useful implications for policy-making and project practices to promote the development of prefabricated building in practice.