Off-site construction has become an emerging research domain in the recent decade. Through a holistic review approach incorporating scientometric analysis and follow-up in-depth qualitative analysis, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in off-site construction by summarizing the latest research keywords and main research topics. This study also identifies the current gaps in research and practice, as well as proposing future research directions in this research area. Off-site construction is a domain that can be extended to cross-disciplinary research from the perspectives of engineering, management, and technology. Existing research have been focusing on many research disciplines, such as structural behaviors and joint connections of prefabricated components, scheduling and planning of off-site activities, as well as performance evaluation of off-site construction. However, further research is needed in integrating the emerging digital construction technology, integrated project delivery method, lean construction, and the issues of sustainability of off-site construction. There are already limited studies linking off-site construction to the concept of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly. Future research should also adopt a larger database and allow for comprehensive evaluation of off-site construction performance.

Purpose – This study aims to build on previous research into lean practices and the associated barriers reported in various contexts to empirically address the question of what possible barriers exist to hinder the implementation of lean practices in the construction industry in China. Despite the potential that lean practices have to improve quality and productivity while reducing costs, successful stories of lean deployment are not frequently heard of. Design/methodology/approach – A large-scale survey of Chinese building professionals is used to identify these barriers. Findings – The results suggest that the most crucial barriers to implementation of lean practices, as perceived by Chinese building professionals, include “their lack of a long-term philosophy”, “the absence of a lean culture in their organizations”, “the use of multi-layer subcontracting” and others. This study also reports the findings using a factor analysis that shows the six underlying factors hindering the implementation of lean practices in the Chinese construction industry, namely, people and partner issues, managerial and organizational issues, lack of support issues, culture and philosophy issues, government issues and procurement issues. Originality/value – This study offers a thorough overview of the barriers to implementing lean practices in various contexts, with a focus on construction. This study also contributes to the knowledge by recommending the measures that can be taken to appropriately overcome the barriers identified.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify the soft skills of construction project management; and second, to investigate the influence of these soft skills on project success factors in the Vietnamese construction industry. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted with 108 project management professionals from the Vietnamese construction industry. Partial least square structural equation modelling was employed in data analysis. Findings Four-dimensional structure of project success factors was confirmed in this study. Results also showed that soft skills of project managers significantly contributed to project success factors and hence the project success. Research limitations/implications There may be geographical limitation on the conclusions drawn from the findings. Similarly, the sample size was still small, despite a relatively high response rate. In addition, the majority of the respondents were contractors and clients as other project players were reluctant to respond to the survey. Practical implications This study provides an understanding of the relationship between soft skills and project success factors. Originality/value Although there have been studies focused on soft skills of project management and project success factors, few have attempted to analyse the effects of these soft skills on critical success factors. Thus, this study adds significantly to the existing research on both project management skills and project success factors.

Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) is known as both a philosophy and a methodology whereby products are designed in a way that is as amenable as possible for downstream manufacturing and assembly. As construction is moving towards a combination of offsite prefabrication and onsite assembly, DfMA is gaining momentum in this heterogeneous industry. Nevertheless, a comprehensive review of DfMA in construction, its prospects and challenges in particular, seems absent from the literature. This study reviews the processes and principles of DfMA and explores the possible perspectives of DfMA with a view to providing implications to the construction industry. It was found that DfMA in construction has been interpreted from three perspectives: (1) a holistic design process that encompasses how structure or object will be manufactured, assembled and guided with DfMA principles; (2) an evaluation system that can work with virtual design and construction (VDC) to evaluate the efficiency of manufacturing and assembly; and (3) a game-changing philosophy that embraces the ever-changing prefabrication and modular construction technologies. This study suggests that development of design guidelines, forming multidisciplinary team, use of VDC systems and understanding the lean principles are factors that could further enhance the successful application of DfMA in construction.

Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) has become a buzzword amid the global resurgence of prefabrication and construction industrialization. Some argued that DfMA is hardly new, as there are concepts such as buildability, lean construction, value management, and integrated project delivery in place already. Others believe that DfMA is a new direction to future construction. This paper aims to review the development of DfMA in manufacturing and its status quo in construction, and clarify its similarities and differences to other concepts.A multi-step research method is adopted in this study: First, an analytical framework is generated; Secondly, a literature review is conducted on DfMA in general, and DfMA-like concepts in the AEC industry; The third step is to compare DfMA with related concepts. This study reveals that DfMA as a philosophy is hardly new in construction, and the empirical implementation of many DfMA guidelines has begun in the AEC industry. The findings suggested that DfMA is a new and mixed 'cocktail' of opportunities and challenges to improve construction productivity with the advancement of construction materials, production and assembly technologies, and ever-strengthened logistics and supply chain management.This study sheds light on three research directions: DfMA implementation and guidance strategies, DfMA frameworks and blueprints, and applications in cast in-situ or intermediate prefabrication construction. Our research findings provide a synopsis of DfMA research and development in construction. This paper can also serve as a point of departure for future theoretical and empirical explorations.

The pursuit of modern product sophistication and production efficiency has bolstered Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) around the world. Being both a design philosophy and a methodology, DfMA has existed in manufacturing for decades. It is coming into vogue in construction as a potential solution to the industry's lackluster productivity amid enduring exhortation of cross-sectoral learning. However, many studies of DfMA in construction are still simply following the DfMA guidelines developed from manufacturing without adequately considering important differences between the two sectors of construction and manufacturing. This study aims to develop a series of construction-oriented DfMA guidelines by adopting a mixed-method approach. It critiques existing DfMA guidelines in relation to the characteristics of construction, and further argues that construction-oriented DfMA should consider five fundamental aspects: contextual basis, technology rationalization, logistics optimization, component integration, and material-lightening, either individually or collectively. A case study is then conducted to substantiate and verify the feasibility of these guidelines. This research sheds new light on the cross-sectoral learning of DfMA from manufacturing to construction.The guidelines can be used as the benchmark for the evaluation of manufacturability and

As the success of lean production is widespread, both inside and outside the manufacturing industry, there have emerged a number of models of lean construction, which look into the possible implementation of the lean principles in the construction industry. While it is commonly accepted that lean production has its basis in the Toyota production system (TPS), the 'Toyota Way' has developed as something more than simply the TPS. This study examines the current implementation frameworks of lean construction and proposes an alternative framework for the construction industry based on the Toyota Way model. It is hoped that this 'back to the basics' approach can be used to bring greater clarity to lean construction by means of the Toyota Way model. The comprehensiveness of the Toyota Way model means that it can bring about multiple angles from which to look at the lean construction model for the construction industry.

Hospital buildings usually contain sophisticated facility systems and special medical equipment, strict security requirements, and business systems. Traditional methods such as BIM are becoming less capable of real-time updates of building status and big data volume. By proposing innovations both in technique and management—a “continuous lifecycle integration” method based on the concept of Digital Twin (DT) and “early movement” of the general contractor, this paper reported a successful project case in a large hospital in China. The case realized continuous, scheduled integration of static data and dynamic data of more than 20 management systems from the design, construction, pre-O&M phase up to the O&M phase. Then, a DT software system with real-time visual management and artificial intelligent diagnosis modules was developed and deployed in a newly built DT control center. Managers have the ability to grasp the detailed status of the whole hospital by visual management and receive timely facility diagnosis and operation suggestions that are automatically sent back from the digital building to reality. The case has been steadily running for more than a year in the hospital and achieved desired performance by reducing energy consumption, avoiding facility faults, reducing the number of requested repairs, and enhancing the quality of daily maintenance work.