Repeatable, iterative processes, gaining value from each outcome, and replicable designs are the basis of off-site construction's potential successes. The factory production of complete houses, of large modular volumetric chunks or panelized building segments require a harmonized supply chain contingent to purchasing and investing. Capitalizing includes everything from infrastructure and machinery to software and skilled labour, all optimally managed to gain sufficient efficiencies to outperform on-site construction.
While these expenditures have been the basis of making products since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, building construction is complicated by the number of parts and systems that need to be synchronized. Certain tasks simply can’t be accomplished in a factory setting: civil services, foundations, and site work. A building will therefore always require two types of construction stakeholders: the offsite manufacturer and the onsite contractor. Maximizing upfront planning and carefully pinpointing exclusive and shared responsibilities for both is not an easy task, especially in a conflicting building culture.
The offsite manufacturer is often responsible for supplying an assembly of materials that is systemically incomplete. Its on-site completion involves other contractors, sometimes multiple subtrades and this is where prefab can lose some of its advantages due to wasteful overlapping that is not meticulously rooted out. Further, investing in a factory, production machinery, marketing departments, lifting and moving equipment also imposes greater costs to the prefabricator when objectively compared to a contractor with a small team that receives their materials as needed and paid for them earlier, as materials are considered installed once they are delivered to the construction site.
These challenges for manufacturers drive the requirement for a portfolio/pipeline of similar types with replicable characteristics to spread planning and operational costs over multiple projects. Design modularity, task repeatability, and component interoperability are ways to achieve success in prefabrication. Unfortunately, an irrational quest for singularity is entrenched in architecture, even for repeating types like housing. Buildings already repeat a certain number of elements and details that can be outlined, described, and regulated; however, the fragmented nature of construction has been shaped to repeat the same wastefulness repeatedly.
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| Idealized process - published by Canadian Homebuilders Association https://www.chba.ca/factory-process/ |
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