Supply chains in building construction involve multiple project stakeholders, trades, and contractors charged with completing a building. Offsite construction implies harmonizing two diverse supply chains that overlap through final assembly. An electrical contractor hired for wiring and finishing a building chunk in the factory is often organized differently from the contractor that is then mandated to complete connections and coordinate the work on site.
Trade duplication and imbrication can increase costs associated with sitework even if factory production is optimized. This is just one example of the complexities associated with harmonizing onsite construction culture with factory manufacturing. Professionals, suppliers, general contractors, inspection firms, specialized trades are contracted on a project-by-project basis, at worst chosen according to a lowest bid system or at best employed from project to project to harness some iterative traction. Moving from this type of fragmented ethos to an integrated manufacturing process argues for replication and product standardization: Deploying similar products, people, coordination and spreading costs over multiple projects.
Successfully reaching time and cost savings is contingent to bulk purchase orders for everything from surface materials like ceramics or drywall to plumbing pipes, sinks and fixtures. A scalable supply chain tuned to an ascertained output is the basis of industrialized production and should inform onsite construction management. Normalized grids, patterns, designs and details can facilitate and maintain a symbiotic relationship codifying assemblies and tasks.
Occasionally compared to automobile manufacturing, furniture production or even shipbuilding, building is distinct from these products in its durable (50-100 years) anchoring to a particular site. This implies at the very least differentiated connections to infrastructure, foundations and structural specificity determined by locus criteria; constraints that impede complete reproduction as is the case of other commodities. Fine-tuning these two fields of production with their underlying supply chains remains one of the greatest challenges to prefabrication’s uptake; Contemporary design tools and digital twins are facilitating information exchange an important element for increased collaboration and potentially streamlining supply chain decisions.
 |
Clyde, Shu and alt. (2024) Offsite Construction Supply Chain Challenges: An Integrated Overview.
In Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 150, Issue 7 |
No comments:
Post a Comment