prefabrication construction thesis

To prefabricate or not? A method for evaluating the impact of prefabrication in building construction

Construction Innovation

ISSN : 1471-4175

Article publication date: 11 August 2022

Prefabricated products are continually entering the building construction market; yet, the decision to use prefabricated products in a construction project is based mostly on personal preferences and the evaluation of direct costs. Researchers and practitioners have debated appropriate measurement systems for evaluating the impacts of prefabricated products and for comparing them with conventional on-site construction practices. The more advanced, cost–benefit approach to evaluating prefabricated products often inspires controversy because it may generate inaccurate results when converting non-monetary effects into costs. As prefabrication may affect multiple organisations and product subsystems, the method used to decide on production methods should consider multiple direct and indirect impacts, including nonmonetary ones. Thus, this study aims to develop a multi-criteria method to evaluate both the monetary and non-monetary impacts of prefabrication solutions to facilitate decision-making on whether to use prefabricated products.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing upon a literature review, this research suggests a multi-criteria method that combines the choosing-by-advantage approach with a cost–benefit analysis. The method was presented for validation in focus group discussions and tested in a case involving a prefabricated bathroom.

The analysis indicates that the method helps a project’s stakeholders communicate about the relative merits of prefabrication and conventional construction while facilitating the final decision of whether to use prefabrication.

Originality/value

This research contributes a method of evaluating the monetary and non-monetary impacts of prefabricated products. The research underlines the need to evaluate the diverse benefits and sacrifices that stakeholder face when considering production methods in construction.

• Cost–benefit analysis
• Prefabrication
• On-site construction
• Multi-criteria decision-making method (MCDM)
• Choosing-by-advantage (CBA)

Chauhan, K. , Peltokorpi, A. , Lavikka, R. and Seppänen, O. (2024), "To prefabricate or not? A method for evaluating the impact of prefabrication in building construction", Construction Innovation , Vol. 24 No. 7, pp. 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/CI-11-2021-0205

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Krishna Chauhan, Antti Peltokorpi, Rita Lavikka and Olli Seppänen.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

modular building involves a high level of prefabrication;

volumetric construction consists of preassembled units (e.g. modular bathrooms);

non-volumetric construction includes products that do not create usable space (e.g. structural frames and wall panels); and

component manufacturing and subassembly have the lowest level of prefabrication, with construction using factory-made products, such as windows and bricks ( Gosling et al. , 2015 ).

Several studies have noted that adopting a greater degree of prefabrication benefits construction projects ( Gibb and Isack, 2003 ; Sandanayke et al. , 2019 ). The chief benefits include improving safety ( Fard et al. , 2017 ), lowering greenhouse gas emissions ( Sandanayke et al. , 2019 ) and reducing project time ( Bernstein et al. , 2011 ), waste ( Khanazode et al. , 2008 ), costs ( Hong et al. , 2018 ) and defects ( Johnsson and Meiling, 2009 ). Despite these benefits, some still hesitate to use prefabrication, mainly because of rigid labour union rules, the lack of short-term benefits, reluctance to change a process and controversial cost–benefit analyses ( Lavikka et al. , 2021 ; Jiang et al. , 2018 ; Said, 2015 ).

The impact on cost is the most controversial topic in the prefabrication literature. Prefabrication has been shown to be more cost efficient than on-site construction due to reduced labour, material costs and construction waste ( Tam et al. , 2015 ). For instance, Boyd et al. (2013) identified a 30% savings from off-site construction. However, prefabrication also increases capital costs ( Zhai et al. , 2014 ) through investments in new machinery and factories ( Hwang et al. , 2018 ; Pan et al. , 2008 ). Costs also rise due to additional transportation expenses ( Tam et al. , 2015 ), complex techniques and the need for highly skilled workers ( Molavi and Baral, 2016 ).

Due to the cost–benefit controversies, construction stakeholders are often confused about adopting prefabrication. Decisions on using prefabrication in a project are based mostly on personal preferences, anecdotal evidence or direct cost-based evaluation rather than on holistic, sustainable performance metrics ( Newman, 2002 ; Bansal et al. , 2017 ). In fact, no formal strategies exist to decide between prefabrication and on-site construction ( Pasquire and Gibb, 2002 ). Pasquire et al. (2005) further indicate that insufficient attention has been paid to the question of whether to prefabricate a whole building or only its parts.

Prefabricated products are entering the market at an increasing pace; however, including modular bathrooms, plant rooms and mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) service racks. Choosing a prefabricated product for a project is typically exclusionary, and prefabricated product categories differ significantly in their scope, scale and other main characteristics. This has increased the workload and research demands of stakeholders who need information about the monetary and non-monetary impacts of these products. Thus, practitioners need better frameworks to assess various prefabricated products as well as comparative information on their overall impacts.

Evaluating prefabrication’s impact on projects is difficult. Implementing prefabrication affects multiple factors, such as cost, quality, safety and sustainability. Some of these factors are easily convertible to costs, but this can be difficult for others. Thus, the evaluation method should be able to measure impacts from both the monetary and non-monetary perspectives. Blismas et al. (2006) recommend using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and an integrative approach (e.g. including designers, builders and manufacturers) to measure the impact of prefabrication. The MCDM should incorporate both the cost perspective and the non-monetary value perspective. Some MCDM methods have already been developed by researchers who use a cost–benefit analysis approach to compare the cost of prefabrication with on-site construction, such as Hong et al. (2018) , Choi et al. (2019) and Lopez and Froese (2016) . In their analyses, the indirect benefits of prefabrication were evaluated and then converted into costs, after which the total costs were compared with conventional on-site construction. However, this method cannot be used to analyse several non-monetary value components that do not easily convert into costs and that have been neglected in previous research, including aspects of quality, safety and sustainability. Indeed, these factors are subjective and depend on the weight they are given by various stakeholders. Suhr (1999) developed the choosing-by-advantage (CBA) approach to tackle the problem of non-monetary components by facilitating effective decision-making when both cost and non-monetary value components are important. However, CBA was not developed to address the shortcomings of other prefabrication studies but for use as a generic decision-making tool, and its cost component lacks guidelines for cost analysis. Thus, we propose the CBA method in conjunction with cost–benefit analysis as a potential method of evaluating the impacts of prefabricated products. Both the CBA and cost–benefit analysis methods have been extensively examined in previous research, so our combination of the two methods may potentially confuse end users. For this reason, we tested these methods in the case of a modular bathroom and organised focus group discussions (FGDs) to validate the results and elicit diverse stakeholders’ opinions of the proposed method.

How can the direct and indirect monetary and non-monetary impacts of prefabrication solutions be evaluated in construction projects?

By developing and demonstrating a multi-criteria evaluation method in prefabrication, this study contributes to existing knowledge on evaluating production methods in construction projects.

The development and testing of the evaluation method were conducted in two steps ( Figure 1 ). In the first step, we reviewed and analysed the major MCDM methods used in construction management and selected for detailed analysis eight methods that have recently been adopted in the field. After analysing the strengths and shortcomings of those methods, we devised a new method that integrates CBA and cost–benefit analysis. The proposed method was then validated in the first FGD, which included 17 professionals from the Finnish construction industry. To ensure an integrative approach to prefabrication analysis, they represented several companies operating in the construction, design, building product and information technology (IT) domains.

The empirical component of the research aimed to test and validate the developed method in a practical context. A case study was determined to be the most appropriate research approach for the current work, as it allows for the in-depth study of a phenomenon or event ( Yin, 2014 ). The proposed method was applied in the case of a modular bathroom installation in a residential building project. A modular bathroom is a suitable product for evaluation, as it involves the work of multiple designers and trade contractors and its impact on the schedule, for example, is not easily quantifiable.

The case’s qualitative and quantitative data were both collected and analysed. The collected qualitative data included direct observation of the product (both in the factory and on the construction site), public documents on the module producer’s website (such as marketing materials, the producer’s initial calculations of the effects on on-site construction and testimonials from module customers), the financial status of the product manufacturer (which was analysed through the use of the governmental registration system) and interviews with three site managers, two project managers and a director of the module manufacturer. The quantitative data comprised the case documents, such as a summary of the cost of the product. The second FGD, which included 15 participants from various construction firms, was conducted to analyse the importance they assigned to the advantages of each impact factor as part of the CBA method. The third FGD, including representative of 21 construction companies, was organised to validate the case study results.

3. Theoretical background and method development

3.1 multi-criteria decision-making methods in construction.

Construction involves diverse tasks, stages and requirements, of which various aspects must be considered with great care. For instance, choosing the production method, materials and suppliers is a complex process in which multiple factors must be taken into account. For this reason, several MCDM methods are already used in construction. Table 1 briefly describes the main MCDM methods used in the construction management field.

Even though many MCDM methods could be used in the construction management field, no single method perfectly meets the needs of all stakeholders, because all have some limitations. Among the existing MCDM approaches, however, CBA overcomes some limitations because its decision-making process considers both cost and non-cost (value) aspects, which ultimately yields a sounder decision-making process. Consequently, if a factor has both a monetary and a non-monetary impact, CBA allows analysing both aspects. For instance, when choosing between prefabricated products and on-site construction, quality as a comparison factor would have to be evaluated from both aspects to make a more accurate decision. Both monetary and non-monetary impacts on cost have been widely discussed in the literature ( Laukkanen, 2021 ; Love et al. , 2018 ).

Furthermore, several papers ( Arroyo et al. , 2015 ) argue that CBA is more transparent than other MCDM methods and is the most appropriate one, mostly because it enables the consideration of multiple stakeholders’ viewpoints when making decisions. Thus, we have adopted the CBA method in this study.

3.1.1 Choosing-by-advantage.

The CBA approach developed by Suhr (1999) can be variously implemented depending on the complexity of the decision-making process. For instance, either simplified tabular method or the two-list method could be implemented for simple decisions. For a moderately complex decision, the tabular method is recommended. For complex and very complex decisions, CBA has a special method that differs from those already mentioned ( Suhr, 1999 ).

CBA has already been adopted in several fields, e.g. for choosing the most appropriate wastewater treatment technology ( Arroyo and Mollinos-Senante, 2018 ), the best construction flow option ( Murguia and Brioso, 2017 ) and the best HVAC system ( Arroyo et al. , 2016a , 2016b ), but it has not yet been adopted in choosing the most suitable construction method. We argue that CBA’s flexibility when there are multiple non-comparable factors makes it a promising approach for comparing the impacts of prefabrication to those of on-site construction. We considered the choice of a suitable construction method as a moderately complex challenge, because both monetary and non-monetary factors should be considered. Thus, the current paper adopts the CBA tabular method.

Even though CBA facilitates decisions from a cost and value perspective, the approach is more concerned with value than cost. In fact, CBA offers no clear guidance on how indirect costs could be evaluated. The method has been applied without the cost component, e.g. Arroyo et al. (2018) used it to choose a design alternative without evaluating costs. Other studies using CBA have evaluated only the cost from direct sources, including, e.g. operation and maintenance costs, material costs and transportation costs ( Arroyo and Mollinos-Senante, 2018 ; Arroyo et al. , 2016a , 2016b ). We argue that using prefabrication could have a greater impact on indirect cost factors than on direct ones, so, when selecting a suitable construction method, it would be beneficial to consider the cost component of the CBA approach, as doing so allows for a more comprehensive cost–benefit evaluation.

3.1.2 Cost–benefit analysis.

Cost–benefit analysis is another popular, widely used MCDM tool in decision-making and cost estimations of direct and indirect factors, but the benefit valuations and effects assessments of the method involve a degree of uncertainty ( Asplund and Eliasson, 2016 ) that has led many researchers to question the applicability of cost–benefit analysis in certain cases ( Mouter et al. , 2013 ).

According to the European Commission (2014) , a cost–benefit analysis has seven steps: description of the context, definition of the objectives, project identification, determination of technical feasibility and environmental sustainability, financial analysis, economic analysis and risk assessment. Following this guideline, we emphasise the financial and economic analysis by converting into costs all the factors possibly impacting prefabrication.

When deciding between prefabricated products and on-site construction, many factors are subjective, and various stakeholders will value them differently, e.g. maintenance could be important to the customer but less so to the main contractor. Neither CBA nor a cost–benefit analysis alone allows for measuring multiple monetary and non-monetary factors, so we developed a method that takes into account multiple factors.

Prefabrication can provide monetary and non-monetary benefits to a construction project, so a method for evaluating whether to prefabricate or not should consider both monetary and non-monetary benefits. An evaluation of several MCDM methods indicates that CBA, which allows more obvious and transparent decision-making than other MCDM methods, offers the most appropriate method. Its cost component is analysed by cost–benefit analysis.

3.2 A new method to evaluate multiple monetary and non-monetary factors

This research proposes a new method that evaluates impacts from both monetary and nonmonetary perspectives. The former is analysed through cost–benefit analysis, and the latter through CBA, so the method can be understood as a CBA tool in which the cost component is considered through cost–benefit analysis. Figure 2 presents the suggested method for evaluating the impact of prefabrication.

Define the prefabrication solutions and their on-site alternatives.

Identify the most important factors that prefabrication will probably impact (or which factors may be considered to be inevitable consequences of the new production method).

Classify all the factors defined in the second step that will be measured as having a monetary impact, a non-monetary impact or both.

Evaluate and define the direct costs of the prefabricated modules, including the material, labour (factory and installation) and transportation costs.

Analyse the other benefits among the alternatives and convert them into costs. This analysis takes into account the indirect costs, including other monetary factors (such as time-related costs, additional design costs and costs of injuries).

Define the judging criteria for the non-monetary factors. For instance, a criterion could be that less material risk is better.

Describe the attributes of each factor. For example, an attribute could be “15 days shorter than the projected schedule”.

Define the advantages of each attribute, then mark the least-preferred attributes.

Nothing has zero advantages, so unimportant factors are not ranked as having zero advantages.

The scale of importance for all the alternatives should be the same.

Decision-making is not a branch of mathematics or a calculation; thus, decisions must be made using one’s own assumptions. However, those assumptions should be based on the purpose and circumstances of the decision, the needs and preferences of the customers and other stakeholders, the magnitude of the advantage and the magnitude of each associated attribute.

Lastly, among the alternatives, compare the total costs or benefit-to-cost ratio with the CBA IoA points. If alternative has a clear advantage, choose that alternative. If the costs and the IoA points conflict among the alternatives, a subjective evaluation should be made in weighing the findings for a final decision.

4. Testing the developed method

The proposed method was applied in the case of a modular bathroom in residential construction. Aside from the physical product and standard bathroom equipment, the product included intelligent features that provide real-time information about energy consumption (including electricity, heat and hot water) as well as a water metering, ventilation and heating system. The product also featured several sensors, such as leak detection sensors to forestall leakage problems and structural measurement sensors that provide information about the building’s life cycle operation.

The product had already been installed in several residential and commercial projects. The total budget of the analysed residential construction project of 100 flats was €10m, and the entire construction project would be completed in 330 days if the product was used, 30 days less than the time required to complete a similar project using traditional construction.

Our developed method to evaluate the multiple impacts of prefabrication was applied as follows:

Step 1: Identify alternatives Bathroom product vs on-site construction of a bathroom.

Step 2: Define factors Materials, labour, installation, quality, project schedule, waste, workflow, customer value, ergonomics and design flexibility.

Step 3: Define the monetary and non-monetary factors

Monetary factors : Materials, labour, installation, quality, project schedule and waste

Nonmonetary factors : Project schedule, workflow, quality, customer value and design flexibility.

The project schedule was found to have both a monetary impact (reducing the contractors’ general costs) and a non-monetary one (shortening the schedule). Thus, it was analysed from both monetary and non-monetary perspectives.

Step 4: Perform a cost–benefit analysis (i.e. monetary factor analysis) .

The direct costs, including raw materials, labour and module installation, were found to be 4.41% higher for the prefabricated product than for conventional construction of a bathroom. During the factory visit, the manufacturer claimed that a modular bathroom significantly lowered the cost of materials and labour, but the product was quite complex to design, and this – together with the transportation and installation equipment – eventually resulted in a higher direct cost.

At the same time, the project gained benefits from indirect factors. In the manufacturing plant, quality assurance checks were conducted at several stages, which was expected to result in about 50% fewer quality defects than with the traditional method. The cost savings associated with not having to mend those defects or coordinate the repair work amounted to 3.53% when compared with conventional construction.

Second, the project would be completed a month earlier than with the conventional method, resulting in savings in general costs per day, reduced interest charges on the loan and the assurance of an earlier return from rental revenues. Specifically, the project would save 0.02% per bathroom through site costs compared with total conventional bathroom construction. Based on the cost data, the capital cost was lowered by 2.29% through the use of modular bathrooms.

Third, 0.70% of the savings were procured through the waste-handling costs. During the on-site visit, it was mentioned that the design and manufacturing processes optimised the use of materials by eliminating unnecessary material waste.

After analysing the direct and indirect costs of the product, the cost–benefit ratio was calculated ( Table 2 ). Even though the direct cost of the prefabricated bathroom module was found to be slightly higher, the savings from the indirect costs resulted in the total cost being 4% less when compared with the conventional construction method. This impact alone amounted to a savings of €1,364 per bathroom, equivalent to a savings of 16.0% when compared with the direct costs of a conventional bathroom. (It should be noted that this calculation does not include the increased annual profit for the construction company due to the shortened schedule.)

Based on the benefit–cost ratio, it was economically beneficial to implement the modular bathroom in the project from the general contractor’s point of view. However, that ratio excludes several important non-monetary factors, one of them being design flexibility, which is greater in conventional construction and represents a major barrier to using a prefabricated product.

Step 5: Define criteria for non-monetary factors .

Non-monetary factors were compared by the judging criteria. In our case, based on site visits, interviews and public reports, the researcher developed a rule upon which a judgement could be based for each factor. For instance, “Shorter is better” was a judging criterion for the project schedule. Table 3 shows the criteria adopted for each factor.

Step 6: Describe the attributes of each factor .

To summarise the attributes of each alternative, site visits, interviews and cost data were analysed. Those attributes were inherent to the alternatives, so this step allowed for decisions to be based on accurate information. (The least-preferred attribute of each factor is underscored in Table 3 .)

Step 7: Define the advantage of each attribute .

The advantage of each attribute was defined by comparing each attribute to the least-preferred attribute. In our case, most attributes were subjective, so subjective judgement was adopted to define the advantage.

Step 8: Determine the importance of each advantage .

The IoA was determined in the third FGD. Based on site visits, interviews and public reports, the researcher presented the non-monetary factors, criteria and attributes. The stakeholders involved in the FGD discussed the non-monetary factors and ranked each factor on a scale of 0–100 based on their preference. After the discussion, common points for each factor were identified.

The manufacturer of the bathrooms assumed that the value of the flats would significantly increase due to the intelligent features of the bathroom, as the product’s technical system can help to evaluate the life cycle of the building. Thus, during the FGD, all the stakeholders agreed to give the intelligent features 80 points.

As mentioned, the use of modular bathrooms shortened the entire project schedule by a month. This reduced the possibility of accidents at the site, which could improve the reputation of the main contractor. This benefited all the stakeholders, such as clients, project owners and investors. Therefore, 75 points were allocated to this advantage.

Conventional bathroom construction involves several sequential activities that must be completed by different subcontractors, including electrical, plumbing and finishing work, and ranging in complexity from painting to mirror hanging. In addition, all the trades must work in a tight area. Because of the size of a bathroom, it is difficult to increase the number of crew members to complete the task earlier, which extends the project schedule. Using the modular bathroom would eliminate these problems, streamlining the workflow of the whole project. Therefore, 65 points were agreed on for this advantage.

The product manufacturer assumed that the risk related to materials would be significantly reduced. In conventional construction, small parts need to be brought to each flat, raising the risk of their being damaged during transportation. Also, traditional bathroom installation requires more tools and equipment, which must be moved frequently to each bathroom section, increasing the risk of injuries for workers on the site. In addition, the risks of equipment being stolen from the site are higher in conventional construction. Thus, 35 points were assigned to this factor.

Despite the benefits of modular bathrooms, they have several limitations. For example, sometimes a customer wants to change the bathroom design during the last phase of the project. This possibility is limited with a prefabricated product. Also, transportation from the manufacturing plant to the installation site may bring additional complications compared to conventional construction. For these reasons, 60 and 15 points were assigned to these factors, respectively.

The overall CBA steps for the analysed modular bathroom are presented in Table 3 .

Step 9: Perform the cost–advantage analysis .

Based on Figure 3 , it is clear that the modular bathroom was more attractive than conventional construction from the cost and value perspective. The total cost was assumed to be slightly lower for the modular bathroom than for conventional construction. This is mainly because of the earlier completion of the project, reduction of waste, better safety and higher quality. Also, all the project stakeholders involved in the FGD agreed that a modular bathroom would be more useful in terms of risk, customer value, work coordination and project schedule, providing additional benefits to the project stakeholder. Thus, the importance of these advantages was higher for prefabrication than for conventional construction.

In short, when making a decision on whether to adopt a modular bathroom in a construction project, Figure 3 clearly suggests that using the prefabricated bathroom brings much greater benefits than conventional construction from both the monetary and nonmonetary perspectives.

5. Discussion

Several MCDM methods have been adopted in the construction management field, including weighting, rating and calculating (WRC), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and CBA. However, none of them can be considered the “best” and/or most appropriate for all situations, especially when deciding whether to adopt prefabricated products, which affect multiple factors, including both monetary and non-monetary ones. Thus, with prefabricated products, it is more challenging to find a suitable method. Consequently, new methods and improvements to existing ones are being suggested.

Some previous studies have reviewed and compared the existing decision-making methods used in the construction field ( Espino et al. , 2014 ; Arroyo et al. , 2015 ). In their analyses, CBA is considered the most suitable MCDM method, as it helps the decision-maker reach a decision based on both the monetary and non-monetary perspectives ( Arroyo, 2015 ). However, the cost component of CBA does not provide clear guidance on indirect cost analysis. For instance, when implementing prefabricated solutions, several indirect costs need to be considered, such as those related to project schedules, workers’ ergonomic concerns and safety. For this reason, this study suggests a cost–benefit analysis method to improve the cost component of CBA.

The cost–benefit analysis alone has been applied, for instance, by Hong et al. (2018) to evaluate barriers to prefabrication. Still, that assessment lacked several value impacts of prefabrication, such as safety, quality and environmental factors. Asplund and Eliasson (2016) note that the uncertainty of several factors in the early phase of a project, such as demand forecast, cost estimation and benefit valuation, can make the use of a cost–benefit analysis pointless. Thus, our proposed approach converts only those factors that are directly convertible costs, while those factors that have high levels of uncertainty – such as design flexibility, ergonomics and environmental factors – can be analysed through CBA.

We used the proposed method to evaluate the impacts of a modular bathroom. Following the method’s guidelines, we first analysed the non-monetary factors, including project schedule, workflow, quality, customer value and design flexibility. Each factor’s advantage over its traditional bathroom counterpart was graded on a scale of 1–100. The marked point was discussed in an FGD in which diverse stakeholders’ viewpoints on each factor were considered. For instance, the owner involved in the FGD would have liked to assign a higher mark to the project schedule and quality factors, while the main contractor equally emphasised design flexibility, worker safety and ergonomics. The FGD participants reported that the method was valuable to them.

By developing a multi-criteria evaluation method and implementation process for choosing between prefabrication and conventional construction, this study contributes to existing knowledge on evaluating production methods in construction projects. The proposed method offers a formal process for combining multiple factors and viewpoints when evaluating the impacts of prefabricated products. For example, clients often prioritise impacts on use and maintenance, whereas general contractors focus on impacts related to execution in the project phase, such as scheduling and material logistics. Direct and indirect costs, however, are highly prioritised by both these key stakeholders.

We used cost–benefit analysis to evaluate the cost. Specifically, we evaluated the benefit-to-cost ratio (ΔB/ΔC). A ratio greater than 1 is economically beneficial ( Antillon et al. , 2014 ). In our case, the results yielded a ratio above 1, so using the modular bathroom was financially beneficial to the construction project. In analysing the total cost, accurately evaluating the indirect cost factors presented a challenge. To mitigate this, we first evaluated the indirect cost factors on the basis of the literature. At that time, the approximate cost was assumed, e.g. to reduce the cost due to reducing the number of meetings. Some studies have indicated that implementing prefabrication would be an additional financial burden on construction projects ( Hwang et al. , 2018 ; Zhai et al. , 2014 ; Molavi and Baral, 2016 ). For instance, Taylor et al. (2009) evaluated the overall cost of modular bathrooms as higher than their traditional counterparts. However, their cost analysis was conducted without following proper guidelines and failed to evaluate the indirect cost savings (e.g. costs due to a reduction in project schedule). For this reason, we suggest cost evaluation through the cost–benefit analysis approach in our proposed method.

After the impacts of modular bathrooms were evaluated, a second FGD was organised to discuss and validate all the non-monetary and monetary impacts evaluated by our proposed method and to consider its applicability. The participants’ major concern was how to evaluate the IoA points of non-monetary factors; the decision-making process includes human preferences, which are hard to evaluate with a numerical method. However, our proposed method makes it easier to value preferences and take more accurate decisions. Generally, the participants believed that our method contributed to their decision-making processes and, in the end, they all agreed that it may be the most suitable approach to evaluating the impacts of a prefabricated product, as it will ultimately improve or facilitate the decision-making process.

Although the method was considered the most useful for communicating and evaluating multiple factors, some challenges and weaknesses were also be identified. For example, gathering all the real data is difficult at the beginning of a project; in this case, the only option was to compare the proposed project to similar projects and rely on the experts’ experience. Thus, decisions based on the assumed data may have a slightly different impact in a practical scenario.

6. Conclusion

This research proposes an MCDM method to evaluate the impact of prefabrication products and thereby facilitate decision-making on adopting prefabrication in a construction project. The method is aimed primarily at selecting prefabricated products but could also be used in other domains.

The proposed method includes the CBA approach, which is already one of the more popular methods. In addition, it analyses both non-monetary and monetary components. Suhr (1999) has explained in detail the process of evaluating non-monetary aspects, which has been followed in later research ( Arroyo et al. , 2016a , 2016b ). However, the monetary component of CBA lacks a detailed explanation of how to evaluate indirect monetary factors. While selecting alternatives, especially in cases involving the potential selection of prefabricated products, more indirect factors must be considered, so this research suggests a cost–benefit analysis to evaluate costs in the conventional CBA approach. In the case analysis, we evaluated all monetary and nonmonetary benefits and compared them with those of traditional construction. The FGD participants evinced significant interest in adopting this method in their decision-making processes when we shared the results of the analysis. Therefore, we argue that combining the CBA method with the cost–benefit method will help practitioners take more accurate and informed decisions.

The major limitation of the current research is that our method was tested in a case in which information was analysed based on the best available sources and not with precise project information, which is required for a detailed and accurate analysis. This is often the case in real-life projects, especially in the early phases, when decisions about the production method should be made. Once the real project is started, the results may be slightly different. Further research should conduct more case studies in different contexts to validate the tool and deepen our understanding of the multiple impacts of prefabricated products. Also, in the early phase of a project, it is difficult to obtain the data required to apply our proposed method, so further research is needed to develop a method that would help in gathering the relevant information in the early phase of a project. The method proposed in this research could also be converted into a more user-friendly electronic version, e.g. a platform or application, to make it more easily accessible to the construction stakeholder.

Overall research process

Method to evaluate the impact of prefabrication

Cost–advantage analysis

The most frequently used MCDMs in construction management

Cost–benefit analysis of a modular bathroom (in €)

CBA analysis for a modular bathroom

Key: att. = attribute; adv. = advantage; imp. = importance; IoA = importance of the advantage.

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An Analysis on Promoting Prefabrication Implementation in Construction Industry towards Sustainability

1 Sino-Australia Joint Research Centre in BIM and Smart Construction, College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518052, China; moc.liamg@88uohzezuw (Z.W.); nc.ude.uzs.liame@8102gnoriloul (L.L.)

2 Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China; [email protected]

Guoqiang Bi

3 Jinan Haiying Real Estate Development Company, Jinan 250000, China; moc.361@3665gnaiqoug

Maxwell Fordjour Antwi-Afari

4 Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK; [email protected]

As a game-changing technology with significant environmental, economic, and social benefits, prefabricated technology has attracted attention and has been increasingly adopted in the construction industry. Although multitudinous studies have investigated various aspects of prefabrication in construction, a thorough review of its current development state that synthesized environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions remains overdue. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap by constructing a systematic framework, analyzing the research status quos, and providing recommendations for future research. This study first conducted a holistic review of 768 references with NVivo. A research foci framework that represented the body of knowledge in prefabrication in construction was developed with five levels, which were advantages, hindrances, stakeholders, promotion policies, and strategy spectrum. Following the framework, the in-depth analyses from the perspectives of environmental, economic, social sustainability, technologies development, and promotion strategies were performed. The current research domains were further linked with potential research directions for promoting prefabricated construction towards sustainability. The study is of value in both offering references for policy formulation and stakeholder practice and providing recommendations for future research.

1. Introduction

The construction industry contributes significantly to global economic growth. However, its rapid development also produces adverse effects on the environment. According to the International Energy Agency, the most energy consumption and CO 2 emissions come from the building industry [ 1 ]. Besides severe environmental damage, conventional construction methods could also cause economic and social issues, such as long construction periods, low labor productivity, and a high frequency of safety accidents [ 2 ]. With requirements of the low-carbon development model of modern society put forward, conventional onsite construction is no longer suitable for sustainable construction [ 3 ]. Thus, prefabrication has been introduced in the construction industry.

Prefabrication refers to a process of transporting off-site manufactured components to the construction site and then installing them to the buildings [ 4 ]. With the application of prefabrication, the construction waste can be reduced by 50% [ 5 ], resource reduction by 35.82%, health damage reduction by 6.61%, and ecosystem damage reduction by 3.47% [ 6 ]. Therefore, prefabrication application has been widely identified as a prospective way that contributes to the sustainable development of the construction industry [ 7 ].

Under the background of the sustainable development of the global construction industry, numerous researchers have explored the implementation of prefabrication in construction. The hot research topics include the identification of the factors that are driving or influencing prefabrication development [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]; the performance of prefabrication application, such as environmental sustainability [ 14 , 15 ], high capital cost [ 16 , 17 ], schedule risk [ 18 , 19 ], safety concerns [ 20 , 21 ]; and policy for promoting prefabrication development [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Buildings and their relevant construction processes can be evaluated by three critical dimensions of sustainability, i.e., environmental, economic, and social [ 25 ]. However, most researches on the current state of prefabrication implementation have mainly concentrated on one dimension of sustainable development [ 26 , 27 , 28 ] and lacked a comprehensive analysis that includes different sustainability dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap by constructing a systematic framework and providing recommendations for future research.

The following section introduces a selection of research methods. A framework is developed to understand the implementation of prefabrication in Section 3 . Then, an in-depth discussion of existing studies from the perspectives of environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability, promoting strategies, and future research directions is performed in Section 4 . Lastly, the conclusion is presented in Section 5 .

2. Materials and Methods

Currently, popular databases for retrieving papers are Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and Google Scholar. Falagas et al. [ 29 ] stated that WoS has the highest coverage in the engineering field. Liu et al. [ 30 ] and conducted bibliographic analyses and proved that WoS was the priority choice for review studies in the prefabricated construction field. Hence, WoS was adopted in this study to collect papers. The retrieve timespan of this research was selected from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2020 for two reasons. First, prefabricated building has become a hot topic since the 1990s. Second, the study aims to explore the current research status and discuss future directions; thus, studies before the 1990s were too old for achieving the objective. The topic search was used during the paper retrieving process, with the retrieval model: (TS = (“off-site construction” OR “off-site manufacturing” OR “prefabricated construction” OR “prefabricated building” OR “modular building” OR “precast building” OR “industrialized building”)) AND LANGUAGE: (English); Indexes = SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED, IC Timespan = 1990–2020. Initially, a total of 16,883 publications were captured.

After the collection of potentially related publications, two rounds of screening were then implemented. The first step is to filter out irrelevant data types and reserve only the article. The second step is to identify how the collected papers match the research scope by scanning titles, keywords, and abstracts. As the scope of this study is reviewing prefabrication in the construction industry, papers on prefabrication in other fields have been excluded. Finally, a total of 768 articles were collected for further analysis.

The framework of prefabricated implementation in the construction industry was developed based on the content analysis of the captured articles with the assistance of NVivo.

3.1. Analyzing Contents Using NVivo

Given a large number of articles, it is appropriate to select computerized tools to analyze instead of manual analysis. According to existing studies, NVivo 11, which can conduct an exemplary content analysis of PDF format files, is a powerful software for qualitative research [ 31 ]. Notably, its functions of “Code” and “Model” enable users to deal with thousands of pieces of information, as well as clarify their relationships. Therefore, NVivo software was adopted in this study.

“Sources” are identified as all articles imported into NVivo, which were analyzed with the help of the “Node” function. References related to the same theme were categorized into the corresponding node called “coding” [ 32 , 33 ]. Using the sentence “the higher initial investment impeded the adoption of prefabrication” as an example, a two-level node structure was generated after screening this sentence. The second-level node is “Higher initial investment”, which was incorporated into the first-level node “Hindrance”. Then related references were coded under the corresponding node. When editing the nodes, the research boundary was severed as a useful reference, and human brains were used to determine the affiliations of all nodes in terms of specific themes [ 32 ]. To ensure the reliability and validity of the data, several rounds of coding were conducted manually [ 33 ].

Next, “Model” could be used to develop a tentative framework based on the relationship between the nodes. In the tentative framework (see Figure 1 ), the rectangle represents the boundary of this research, which is “The implementation of prefabrication”, while the ellipse means the node generated in the coding process. The various arrows between two shapes indicate different relations, such as “Associate with”, “Impact”, “Result in”, and “Contribute to”. In addition, the number in each shape represents the total number of papers related to the specific theme and suggests the specific relationship between the two themes. It is worth noting that a paper might have more than one theme and relationship.

A tentative framework.

3.2. Developing a Framework of Prefabrication Implementation Research

To better analyze the existing studies, a systematic framework of prefabrication implementation research with a five-level structure was developed, as shown in Figure 2 .

Prefabrication implementation research framework.

This framework concludes five major components: (a) the “Advantages” presenting the benefits for adopting prefabrication; (b) the “Hindrances” indicating the obstacles of the adoption of prefabrication; (c) the “Stakeholders” revealing stakeholders’ attitudes and behaviors toward prefabrication; (d) the “Promotion policies” stating the policies being formulated by the government for promoting prefabrication; (e) the “Strategy spectrum” referring to the approaches including the “Hard technologies” and “Soft measures”. In those components, components (a), (b), and (c) were identified according to the second-level nodes in Figure 2 . Component (d) was obtained from reviewing all nodes proposing policies; component (e) was summarized by the above components. Furthermore, the existing research can be examined from more than one perspective. This systematic framework helps researchers to grasp a general picture of existing studies of prefabrication implementation.

Similar to components (a), (b), and (c), many articles cover more than one theme, leading to the summation value of all factors in component (d) overrunning 100%. However, it is demonstrated that the summation value of all factors in component (e) is less than 100%. The research on prefabrication implementation can be understood by putting them into a “Strategy Spectrum” ranging from “hard” technology to “soft” measures. On one side of this spectrum are the “hard” technologies, referring to construction technology or structural performance. On the other side of this spectrum are the “soft” economic and managerial measures. Other researches, such as design systems and algorithm optimization, were excluded from both technical and managerial aspects of prefabrication implementation. In addition, the percentage of “Incentive policies” is higher than “Mandatory policies” in component (d), and the percentage of “Hard technologies” is higher than “Soft measures” in component (e). These results suggest that the investigation on “Mandatory policies” and “Soft measures” should be paid more attention in future research.

4. Discussion

The research foci shown in Figure 2 were further incorporated into three dimensions, which were environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability, with in-depth discussions. The construction technologies development and strategies for promotion were also discussed.

4.1. Environmental Sustainability

Previous research has demonstrated the environmental sustainability performance of prefabrication applications, including construction waste reduction, energy and resources saving, and air pollution mitigation. According to Jaillon et al. [ 34 ], prefabrication application increased the average construction and demolition waste reduction level to 52%. On the one hand, the application of prefabricated construction combined with some emerging technologies, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM, a developing technology to form, organize, and manage throughout the construction project [ 35 ], radio frequency identification (RFID, a technology that used radio waves to identify objects [ 36 ], and Internet of Things (IoT, a new technology paradigm that was conceived to realize the interaction of machines and devices around the world [ 37 ]), reduced the production of construction waste at sources [ 5 , 38 ]. On the other hand, during the manufacturing stage, a large amount of wet work was transferred to the factory, prefabricated components were produced in a mechanized, standardized, and intelligent production line, resulting in a significant reduction in waste generation [ 39 ]. The air pollution produced by conventional construction methods involves carbon emission and on-site dust. Numerous scholars have compared the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of the prefabricated building with that of conventional building and revealed that prefabricated construction methods reduced GHG emissions [ 5 , 40 , 41 ]. Some studies even integrated digital technologies to achieve real-time monitoring of carbon and GHG emissions. For example, Liu et al. [ 42 ] developed a real-time carbon emission monitoring system for the entire industrial chain of prefabricated buildings that used five types of hardware to automatically collect data and could be simultaneously adapted to computer desktop platforms, browsers, and mobile phone applications. Besides, the generation of dust could be significantly mitigated by adopting prefabricated construction [ 43 ], avoiding affect the surrounding environment and public health [ 44 , 45 ]. Furthermore, Tsoka et al. [ 46 ] compared the energy performance of the conventional and prefabricated building and proved that the later one showed significant advantages. Currently, some researchers started paying attention to the green design that integrated the digital technology of modular buildings to achieve sustainability at the early design stage and contribute to the whole building cycle [ 47 , 48 ]. The early green design also benefited future modules’ reuse [ 49 ], which was one of the most important strengths of prefabricated construction. Few researchers have already begun exploring specific strategies for recycling and readoption in prefabricated projects [ 50 , 51 ].

However, despite the environmental benefits of prefabrication application, some researches also evidenced that transporting steel structures would produce more GHG emissions than prefabricated concrete and timber structures [ 52 ]. Also, the grating use of electricity in prefabricated construction would cause adverse impacts on eutrophication and water intake [ 53 , 54 ], which should be further considered in future prefabrication studies.

4.2. Economic Sustainability

The economic sustainability of prefabrication in construction was discussed in three perspectives: building quality, construction productivity, and lifecycle cost.

4.2.1. Building Quality

Quality control.

Quality control was an essential factor that affected the safety of construction onsite. The factors (see Table 1 ), such as complex working conditions [ 55 ], weak safety awareness [ 56 ], and lack of quality control, may lead to accidents [ 57 ]. Compared to traditional construction methods, prefabrication could achieve better quality control [ 58 ]. The quality control of prefabricated components mentioned most in existing studies is reflected in the production stage because the automatic production lines replace manual operations and thus reduce manual errors. The introduction of the Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA, a mature principle in the manufacturing industry that integrated the design for manufacture and design for assembly) in the design stage can also improve the quality of prefabrication [ 59 , 60 ]. From the transportation to the installation stage, various measures were conducted with the aim of protecting components, encompassing monitoring tools (e.g., Internet of Things) to check the status of components [ 19 ], and additional protection of the loading and fixation of each element in transporting [ 61 ]. Moreover, the collaboration of suppliers and contractors have also contributed significantly to achieve better quality control [ 19 ].

Existing study on the key factors influencing the quality of prefabrication.

Quality Defects

There was a minority of scholars who still insisted on some barriers that occurred in different stages that might influence quality performance in some aspects (see Table 1 ). In the design stage, the factors influencing the quality of prefabrication were mainly reflected in two aspects, one being the lack of standards and specifications and the other being stakeholders’ participation in design works. Due to the decisive influence of design, the mistakes that occurred in the design stage would result in serious quality problems in subsequent processes, such as joint failure. These mistakes might result in design change, increased rework in prefabrication housing production (PHP), and higher costs [ 74 ]. During the manufacturing and transportation stage, the quality defects were mainly caused by technics (e.g., the unreasonable connection of joints) and uncertain surrounding environment (e.g., the dynamic loading of components during road transportation), further decreasing safety performance and increasing the cost of building components [ 70 ]. Taking the transportation stage as an example, Godbole et al. [ 73 ] explored the impact of dynamic loading during road transportation on prefabricated components. The results revealed that dynamic loading on the truck-trailer might trigger a weak connection of joints and even cause damage. In the installation stage, the quality influencing factors could be divided into three aspects: accelerating schedule, improving assembly rate, and inadequate stakeholders’ skills. Quality defects in this stage even increased the incidence of safety accidents [ 20 ].

To reduce quality problems, future studies should pay more attention to perfect design works, not only in requiring consistent standards and specifications, but also in improving the professional skills of designers and strengthening the collaboration between participants. Also, the integration of information technology (e.g., RFID) should be explored more to achieve real-time performance monitoring [ 75 ]. In addition, due to the differentiating influences produced by different stakeholders, it is also suggested to establish a responsibility recovery system to clarify the quality responsibility of each party and improve the quality management system to ensure the quality and safety of prefabricated buildings [ 76 ].

4.2.2. Construction Productivity

Productivity improvement.

On the economic sustainability performance level, the framework indicated that productivity performance in prefabricated construction exists differences. A large proportion of researchers have claimed that prefabrication could effectively improve productivity, as shown in Table 2 ; the main reason was the support of information technology [ 62 , 77 , 78 ]. BIM technology has been frequently integrated adopted with other information technology, such as RFID [ 79 ], sensor technology [ 80 ], and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) [ 81 ], for it could simplify the procurement process of prefabricated components, improve information flow and the productivity of workflow between the designers and contractors [ 82 , 83 , 84 ]. Since prefabricated components were manufactured in the off-site environment, the work teams could solve the resource planning problems by cross-training to form multi-skilled resources, including workforce variation and shortage of skilled resources, which improved productivity and decreased fragmentation in prefabricated construction [ 85 ]. Besides, technological problems could be solved through production engineering innovation. For example, Sabet and Chong [ 84 ] proposed an integrated framework that conceptualized and clarified the possibility and functions of BIM and prefabricated construction interaction that could improve productivity based on scoping review. The higher quality prefabricated components could be obtained in a controlled factory environment, which were the prerequisites for productivity and efficiency improvement [ 64 , 86 , 87 , 88 ].

Existing study on the key factors influencing the productivity of prefabrication.

Schedule Delay

A few scholars have held opposite views that prefabricated construction could lead to schedule delays [ 94 ]. The key issues that contributed to schedule delay could be reflected in inflexible data/information exchange. The fragmentation, discontinuity, and poor interoperability of prefabricated construction was the major bottleneck that impeded the adoption of prefabrication in construction [ 67 , 93 , 95 ]. To address these problems, some researchers proposed that design information exchange should be considered not only during the design and manufacturing stages but throughout the whole construction process [ 96 ]. In addition, an integrated supply chain management with tremendous benefits to the environment, economy, and society [ 62 , 97 ] has been introduced. As an integrated cross-enterprise support approach, it supported the information sharing and collaboration between different parties and further propelled the establishment of risk-sharing and profit allocation mechanisms to achieve a better-integrated supply chain management [ 95 , 98 ]. At present, BIM has been popularly applied as a real-time information platform that provided real-time supervision to remove these obstacles [ 96 , 98 , 99 , 100 ]. However, in many developing countries (e.g., China), the reality was that the existing technologies had not synchronized the BIM platform into a project [ 96 ].

4.2.3. Lifecycle Cost

High capital cost.

Existing studies found that the capital cost is higher than conventional construction methods, which has become the most significant factor in affecting the willingness of stakeholders to adopt construction methods [ 69 , 87 , 101 ]. Table 3 depicts a summation of the key factors that cause high capital cost.

Existing study on the key factors influencing the cost of prefabrication.

Deepening design cost. Prefabrication necessitated a more detailed design in some respects than conventional construction [ 59 , 112 ]. Even though the prefabrication design was standardized, the cost of the deepening design was high, increasing the capital cost [ 113 ]. Though some scholars proposed to decrease the deepening design cost [ 61 , 69 ], research on how to reduce the high costs was still rare.

Risk cost of components’ transportation and installation. Different from the transportation stage of conventional construction, the heavy and bulky prefabricated components resulted in more difficulties and higher expenses in prefabrication construction [ 66 , 69 ]. Besides transporting, components assembly was also an essential task in prefabricated construction [ 104 , 114 ], resulting in higher assembly onsite costs. Accordingly, significant efforts have been paid on how to optimize the transport route and layout on-site. For example, Ning and Lam [ 115 ] used a modified Pareto-based ant colony optimization algorithm and multi-objective optimization to optimize the construction site layout, which not only optimized the cost but also ensured safety on site.

Lack of market scale. The cost of precast components was also high due to the lack of scale economy [ 69 , 116 ]. Scale economy was challenging to achieve because of the lack of codes and standards for assembly-type production and prefabricated components suppliers in some jurisdictions (e.g., Hong Kong, mainland China). Scholars proposed the establishment of codes and standards according to the local conditions [ 110 ] and the enhancement of incentives [ 111 ].

High cost in other aspects. Apart from the cost increment mentioned above, the expenses in the other aspects were also responsible for the high capital cost, involving the costs of machines [ 104 ], materials [ 61 ], and laborers [ 66 ]. In addition, the special costs involved in prefabricated buildings should also be taken into consideration, such as design consulting fees and detailed design fees for joint performance [ 61 , 66 , 108 ].

Low Lifecycle Cost

Although a large number of scholars evidenced that the construction cost of prefabricated buildings was higher than that of conventional buildings [ 96 ], the result was the opposite when considering the cost from the perspective of the whole lifecycle of buildings. Despite the incremental cost in the construction stage, the advantages of standardized design, lower thermal energy consumption, convenient removal of components, fewer remnant materials [ 34 ], and other factors (see Table 3 ) occurring in other stages effectively reduced the lifecycle cost.

Profitability was one of the main concerns of the contractors. The high capital cost and unclear benefit justification had posed obstacles to the adoption and advancement of prefabricated construction [ 24 , 61 ], which should be further investigated in future research.

4.3. Social Sustainability

4.3.1. occupational safety and health.

Occupational safety and health were considered significant aspects of risk and challenge in the construction workplace [ 117 , 118 ]. Various factors caused safety risks in the conventional construction site, such as massive labor inputs [ 119 ], complicated construction environment [ 120 ], and works’ potential safety hazards [ 55 ], which were believed to have been eliminated and improved in the prefabricated construction [ 121 ]. Shi et al. [ 24 ] compared the safety and health performance of prefabricated and conventional construction through field observation and interviews. They stated the hazards of manual handling in column and formwork installation and the exposure to chemicals in the curing process. Jeong et al. [ 122 ] evaluated accident cases that occurred in prefabricated construction projects in the United States and indicated that the familiar working environment, less high-altitude operations, and less exposure to bad weather were significantly beneficial to ensure occupational safety and health in modular projects. Their opinion echoed the arguments proposed by [ 123 ]. Murali and Sambath [ 123 ] also believed that the reduction of construction dust, noise, and other pollutants in prefabricated construction sites only protected the workers but also the surrounding communities. Moreover, it is noted that the labor-intensive construction activities mainly threatened workers’ safety [ 58 , 124 ]. Therefore, other than the fact that complex assembly works, typically done at the ground level/off-site, could decrease aerial works and further avoid accidents, fewer labor inputs in prefabricated construction could also reduce safety accidents onsite and contribute to sustainability development [ 125 ]. Emerging technologies, such as IoT and 3D visualization, have also been involved in the prefabricated construction process to achieve better safety control [ 126 , 127 ].

However, some long-existing hazard causes, like falling, were still the biggest threat to employee safety in prefabricated projects [ 20 ]. Achieving the development of falling protection system for working from height, stability of temporary loading platform, and safe usage of special equipment should be paid attention in future research.

4.3.2. Social Climates and Attitudes

Social climate and attitudes played an important role in the development of prefabrication [ 128 , 129 , 130 ], especially the attitudes of governments and developers [ 72 , 128 ]. In the initial stage of prefabricated development, the government played a leading and facilitating role in introducing prefabrication into the construction market. One of the key reasons that the acceptance of prefabrication was still low [ 88 ] was that developers tended to pay more attention to clear economic benefits. The government, therefore, has formulated not only mandatory policies but also incentives [ 22 , 131 ] to encourage enterprises to adopt prefabrication. Moreover, the role of public opinions (e.g., customers’ opinions) in the adoption of prefabrication also could not be ignored [ 132 ]. However, few studies have been conducted on this aspect. It is suggested that future research should pay more attention to this area.

4.4. Technologies Development

Previous studies had indicated several advantages of the prefabricated construction technology, compared with the conventional technology, such as reducing reliance on the site labor force and improving the working condition and safety level [ 133 ], increasing the controllability of the entire project and achieving higher building quality [ 134 ], reducing construction waste and realizing life-cycle environmental sustainability [ 6 ], shortening the construction time and enhancing the working efficiency through operating simultaneously onsite and in the factory [ 135 ]. More technical studies were designed to examine and improve the structural performance of the prefabricated components and buildings for practice. For example, Hou et al. [ 136 ] conducted eight tests to explore the axial stability performance of the modular multi-column wall and made design recommendations based on the results. Taking high-rise hotel buildings as objects, Liu et al. [ 112 ] analyzed the mechanical properties, failure mechanism, and elastoplastic development principles of the structure through elastoplastic design examine and proposed an improved high-rise steel frame prefabricated structure with diagonal braces. Some researchers focused on fire safety and concrete materials adoption [ 16 ]. The modular connection performance, as a unique problem of prefabricated buildings compared to traditional buildings, had also received attention from researchers [ 137 ]. In addition, due to the characteristic of the high standard, many studies proved that the prefabricated construction technology was more suitable and valuable to combine smart and digital technologies, such as 3D scanning, BIM, and artificial intelligence [ 138 , 139 , 140 , 141 ]. Also, the more streamlined process of MiC made automated construction more likely to be realized [ 142 ]. The sustainable demand for modern buildings [ 143 ] and the wide promotion of innovative construction [ 144 ] had further brought promising environmental opportunities for the sustainable development of prefabricated construction.

However, since prefabricated construction technology is a developing technology, it has some existing technical issues. The transportation and logistic problem was one of the most concerning challenges. Extra high-quality protection was needed during transporting units to the construction site, and additional consideration for transportation regulations was required [ 145 ]. The logistics could be complex, and damages might occur during the delivery [ 146 ]. In addition, the inspection of modular production for the construction site could be complex because the modules were built in factories [ 147 ], which may influence the accuracy and completion of the modules [ 148 ]. Due to the low feasibility of the MiC project, intense coordination was significant to ensure that fabrication, transportation, and erection occur in sequence with minimal delays. Hence, high information exchange is needed [ 149 ]. However, efficient, complete, and timely means were still lacking in practice [ 147 ]. Moreover, the hoisting issues [ 150 ] and high-building worrisome performance [ 146 ] still required more examinations and suitable solutions. Though some researchers have paid attention to these issues, more studies are required.

4.5. Strategies for Promoting Prefabrication

4.5.1. mandatory policy.

Mandatory policy in this paper refers to the policy with legal character implemented under the compulsion of the government, which can be reflected in three aspects: materials and structures used, land transfer, and evaluation criterion [ 151 ]. Concerning materials and structures used, each country or region has put forward its corresponding mandatory requirements. For instance, prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction (PPVC) has been mandatorily adopted in non-landed residential government land sale sites in Japan and Singapore. In Hong Kong, a precast façade had been mandatorily used in all standard domestic blocks of public housings [ 152 ]. China used the “assembly rate” as the main evaluation basis for achieving the planning goals. Although the implementation effects of mandatory policies vary among countries, the most frequently used mandatory policy was related to “materials & structures used” and “evaluation criterion”. The mandatory policies played a significant role not only in prefabrication promotion, early-stage development, and direction guidance [ 153 ] but also in investment risk [ 71 ].

4.5.2. Incentives

Incentives in this paper refer to the measures with an incentive character that governments formulated in order to encourage stakeholders to adopt prefabrication and can be categorized into economic incentives and non-economic incentives. Economic incentives, such as financial subsidy, tax allowance, land ratification policy, credit incentives, loan incentives, and gross floor area concessions, significantly improved the participants’ willingness to use prefabrication [ 14 ]. The aspects of non-economic incentives mainly involved benefits in transportation, reputation, and the approval process [ 131 , 154 ]. Although government incentives could promote the development of prefabricated construction to a certain extent in the initial stage, in the long run, it was the construction cost rather than government incentives that could determine whether companies employ prefabrication in the projects [ 155 ].

4.6. Future Research Directions

Based on the in-depth analysis, a framework linking the current research status and future research directions was developed, as shown in Figure 3 .

Current research domains and future directions of prefabrication towards sustainability.

4.6.1. Environmental Sustainability Research Directions

The environmental advantage is a fundamental reason for the promotion of prefabricated in the construction industry. As discussed, the existing research covers various aspects of environmental sustainability of the prefabricated construction, such as energy-saving, waste reduction, life cycle performance, and so on. However, research on water footprints is still scarce. Besides, although a few researchers have begun discussing and proposing strategies for prefabricated green design [ 48 ], recycling [ 156 ], and reuse [ 49 ], the reusable issue that seriously affects environmental and economic benefits still needs further exploration. Moreover, prefabricated buildings of different structural types may have different performances. For example, Zhou and Yang [ 52 ] argued that the transportation process could cause higher GHG emissions than conventional construction when adopting modular steel construction. Thus, comparative studies of the performance of prefabricated construction of different structural types also need attention in future research. In addition, digital technology has gradually been applied to the field of construction, including prefabricated construction. The application of BIM, sensors, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and other emerging technologies make it possible to achieve real-time monitoring and managing the entire life cycle of prefabricated construction. Future research may explore specific strategies to combine technological innovation and development with prefabrication to further improve environmental sustainability.

4.6.2. Economic Sustainability Research Directions

Existing studies have revealed many factors that contributed to high capital costs, but suggestions on how to save existing costs have yet to be explored. Thus, future studies could investigate and propose strategies to save costs from different perspectives. For example, the materials and technologies used in construction are the most expensive, considering a cost-saving perspective. In addition to the high cost of materials and technology, the unformed market scale also results in high capital costs. There have been numerous researches on the relationship of government with developers and contractors in the prefabrication market. However, as the demand side’s main body, customers are seldom considered in the prefabricated market research. Thus, it is suggested to study the prefabrication market, which should involve all stakeholders, not only the main body of the supply side. The safety performance also requires more attention in the material and technology exploration studies. Moreover, hoist issues of the large components and the stability of the high-level buildings still require more examination and practical studies for improvement. Besides, it has been proved that the logistic issues in prefabricated projects, especially multiregional projects, are complex and significantly influence the project schedule and cost [ 157 ]. Also, the barriers to information communication between the construction site and the factory affect the quality assurance and project progress. Future studies should consider integrating the novel technologies in construction management and propose optimization solutions. Besides, though digital technologies offer new opportunities in various respects to the construction project, in some developing countries, the benefits of digital technologies in construction are still rhetoric, with numerous barriers in its practical application [ 158 , 159 ]. One of the most critical barriers is the negative attitudes of stakeholders towards data sharing, which further affects technology advancement [ 159 , 160 ]. Therefore, it is of great importance to explore the strategies of inspiring stakeholders to involve and share the data in future studies. Furthermore, the uncertain profitability and payback period have posed obstacles to expanding the prefabricated construction market. Prospective studies could consider assessing the profitability and payback period and justifying the value of adopting prefabricated construction.

4.6.3. Social Sustainability Research Directions

Although the governments in developing countries have promulgated a series of mandatory and incentive policies, the development of the prefabrication is far behind that of developed countries. To formulate reasonable policies, the effectiveness of the prefabrication policy should be quantified. Existing researches on methods to study prefabrication policy mainly encompass content analysis [ 161 ], evolutionary game [ 110 , 128 ], and social network analysis [ 76 , 162 ], which all fail to quantify the effectiveness of prefabrication policy appropriately. The bottom-up analysis based on stakeholders with the assistance of computer tools should be considered within the scope of future research, such as agent-based modeling (ABM) [ 163 ]. In addition, the stakeholders evolved in existing research mainly include the government, developer, supplier, and contractor, considering the customer as the main body of the demand side, whose attitude is also critical to the implementation of prefabrication. Thus, the public attitudes and involvement and client satisfaction should be concerning in future studies. Moreover, concerning factors and risks influencing prefabrication implementation, the current research status is mainly stuck in the stage of factors identification. The interrelationships between various factors still require attention. Besides, the protection system for working at height, the stability of temporary loading platforms, and safe usage of special equipment are urgently awaiting exploration and development. Novel technologies could be considered to apply in building the real-time risks and hazards detection and reminder system. The technologies could also be employed to support smart decision-making in future efforts.

Furthermore, in terms of performance evaluation of prefabrication, the current research areas include environmental performance, economic performance, and social performance, all of which were separately evaluated and neglected their interactions. Thus, a holistic performance evaluation system could also be constructed in future research.

5. Conclusions

The construction industry has been long recognized as posing heavy pressures on the environment. Due to the increasing demand for environmental protection, sustainable development, and modern buildings, prefabricated technology has gradually been noticed and promoted in the construction industry.

Although multitudinous studies have explored different aspects of the prefabricated construction, a systematic review that synthesized environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions of the prefabricated construction remains overdue. This study aims to thoroughly explore the status quo of prefabrication implementation in construction industries, analyze the different sustainable development dimensions, and provide potential directions for future research to fill this research gap.

Through the comprehensive review of 768 papers with the assistance of Nvivo, a research foci framework that represented the body of knowledge in prefabrication in construction was constructed. Five levels identified in the framework were advantages, hindrances, stakeholders, promotion policies, and strategy spectrum. The identified parameters were further incorporated into environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions, as well as the technologies development and promotion strategies with in-depth analyses. Based on the discussions, the framework linking current status and future research directions towards sustainability were delivered in this study. The main findings and future research recommendations are presented as follows.

In the environmental sustainability dimension, the application of prefabrication, along with information technology and environmental-friendly materials, has produced a significant positive impact, which can be reflected in energy saving, waste reduction, CO 2 and GHG emission reduction, dust and noise mitigation, and green design. In the economic sustainability dimension, the introduction of DfMA can effectively improve the quality of construction, the application of integrated information technologies (e.g., BIM and RFID) contributes to the real-time status information sharing of components among stakeholders and improve the productivity and the lifecycle cost saving in other phases offset the incremental construction cost. Whereas, some barriers that caused quality defects, schedule delays, high capital costs, and uncertain investment risks should not be neglected. In the social sustainability dimension, prefabrication implementation decreases the complex and aerial works, improves the safety performance onsite, and low labor input solves the problem of labor shortage, producing significant positive impacts on social sustainability.

The potential future research directions of the prefabrication studies are the recyclable and reusable strategies, water footprint, performance evaluation system, digital technology integrated real-time monitoring, and different prefabricated structure performance comparison in the environmental sustainability dimension. The areas that require further exploration in the economic sustainability dimension are profitability and payback period, cost-saving and safety materials and technologies, logistic and transportation issues, hoist issues and high-building performance, value justification, real-time information exchange between site and factory, and novel technology integration. In terms of social sustainability, the policy effectiveness quantification, client satisfaction, public attitude and involvement, smart decision-making system, and real-time risks and hazards detection and reminder system are the areas to be investigated.

The findings of this study help readers holistically understand the current status of prefabrication implementation, including its technology development, impacts on the sustainable development of the construction industry, promotion strategies, and future research directions. The study makes contributions to both the body of knowledge and various stakeholders.

The limitation of this study is that, since the study only analyzed the articles published in English collected from WoS, some relevant content may possibly not be involved in this study. Hence, the discussions of this paper should be interpreted regarding this limitation.

Acknowledgments

Not applicable.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Z.W.; Methodology, Z.W.; Software, L.L.; Data curation, L.L. and Y.W.; Writing-original draft preparation, L.L. and Z.W.; Writing—review and editing, Y.W., H.L., G.B., and M.F.A.-A.; Supervision, H.L. and Y.W.; Funding acquisition, H.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This study was funded by the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme (Project Number: 2019.A6.143.19D) from the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office of The Government of HKSAR.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Victor Mukhin

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Title : Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental problems

However, up to now, the main carriers of catalytic additives have been mineral sorbents: silica gels, alumogels. This is obviously due to the fact that they consist of pure homogeneous components SiO2 and Al2O3, respectively. It is generally known that impurities, especially the ash elements, are catalytic poisons that reduce the effectiveness of the catalyst. Therefore, carbon sorbents with 5-15% by weight of ash elements in their composition are not used in the above mentioned technologies. However, in such an important field as a gas-mask technique, carbon sorbents (active carbons) are carriers of catalytic additives, providing effective protection of a person against any types of potent poisonous substances (PPS). In ESPE “JSC "Neorganika" there has been developed the technology of unique ashless spherical carbon carrier-catalysts by the method of liquid forming of furfural copolymers with subsequent gas-vapor activation, brand PAC. Active carbons PAC have 100% qualitative characteristics of the three main properties of carbon sorbents: strength - 100%, the proportion of sorbing pores in the pore space – 100%, purity - 100% (ash content is close to zero). A particularly outstanding feature of active PAC carbons is their uniquely high mechanical compressive strength of 740 ± 40 MPa, which is 3-7 times larger than that of  such materials as granite, quartzite, electric coal, and is comparable to the value for cast iron - 400-1000 MPa. This allows the PAC to operate under severe conditions in moving and fluidized beds.  Obviously, it is time to actively develop catalysts based on PAC sorbents for oil refining, petrochemicals, gas processing and various technologies of organic synthesis.

Victor M. Mukhin was born in 1946 in the town of Orsk, Russia. In 1970 he graduated the Technological Institute in Leningrad. Victor M. Mukhin was directed to work to the scientific-industrial organization "Neorganika" (Elektrostal, Moscow region) where he is working during 47 years, at present as the head of the laboratory of carbon sorbents.     Victor M. Mukhin defended a Ph. D. thesis and a doctoral thesis at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (in 1979 and 1997 accordingly). Professor of Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Scientific interests: production, investigation and application of active carbons, technological and ecological carbon-adsorptive processes, environmental protection, production of ecologically clean food.   

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