As buildings became more complex throughout the twentieth century, integrating an assortment of services, systemic entanglement came to characterize the construction industry's fragmentation. Piping, wiring, air distribution and conditioning designated a patchwork of trades competing for space, paths, and channels for distribution. Trade coordination, or lack of thereof, is at the heart of scheduling and cost overruns in building construction. Prefabrication and industrialized construction promised to reform construction by defining and manufacturing building systems streamlined for onsite assembly. Most systems have limited their scope to structure, as is the case with partial panelized and modular volumetric construction, mechanical coordination remains a challenge in harmonizing multiple stakeholders to produce a coherent network of services.
Combining the advantages of prefabrication, primarily a controlled work environment, concurrent onsite and offsite progress, with the one-off architectural designs, Multi-Trade prefabrication mandates trades to collaborate, in a factory, to assemble chunks or parts of a building that will subsequently be delivered and completed on site. The multi-trade component is an co-creative/constructive process outlined by contractual documents that identify methods, materials, place of production, tools and responsibilities for each trade brought together to construct optimized sub-assemblies. This process rationalization increases efficiencies, reduces waste, and most notably has the potential to eliminate costly coordination errors. The idea has been deployed on complex projects by industry leaders like Skanska and has even inspired a segment of production: Multi-Trade Rack Prefabrication is specifically linked to mechanical distribution chunks that are fabricated offsite in modular formats to facilitate both design and construction.
BIM (building information modeling) is the main driver and facilitator for this type of prefabrication. Digital twins provide fundamental documentation and information sharing tools to organize spatial and functional criteria, specify, design, and identify coherent routes for trade interaction. Virtually designing and assembling mechanical systems before they are built makes it possible to apply both rigorous organizing principles and a high level of standardization by modularizing mechanical racks. The success of MTP hinges on an integrated process and contractual clarity imposing a comprehensive overhaul of traditional procurement methods.
Base4 Modular prefabricated MEP racks
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