Construction stakeholders’ perceived benefits and barriers for environment-friendly modular construction in a hospitality centric environment

Abstract

Modular construction techniques can not only significantly contribute to improved project cost, schedule, and quality performance, but also sustainability by reducing site disruption and waste generated, creating better relocatability and reusability. However, there are still difficulties in developing and implementing modularization in a hospitality centric environment. Thus, the primary goal of this research is to identify the opportunities and challenges of implementing sustainable modular construction techniques in a hospitality-centric environment. In this study, the approach includes the formulation of a survey, which was distributed to 600 industry professionals in Las Vegas and completed by 63 industry professionals, followed by three personal interviews. The results showed that: 1) 85% percent of survey participants expected an improvement in schedule, and 65% of that elected to use a form of modularization actually experienced an improved schedule; 2) 62% of the participants claimed that they would keep using modular methods in the next 12 months, whereas 44% of the participants claimed they would increase their use of modularization in the next five years; 3) two of the top five expected benefits achieved included less site disruption (noise/traffic and dust) and reduced waste, which contribute towards sustainable construction; 4) transportation/logistics was selected by industry professionals as a key barrier in the implementation of modular construction; 5) to implement more sustainable construction, practitioners require additional research to improve and overcome the key barrier of transportation/logistics; 6) if construction professionals gain more modular project experience, their perceived benefits and barriers could increase and decrease, respectively. The results from this research provide valuable insights for implementing sustainable modular methods in hospitality-centric environments.

Flexible Infrastructure Design: A Real Options Reasoning Approach to Navigating Uncertainty in Large-Scale Projects

“…However, championing modularization and flexibility in large-scale projects poses challenges. Firstly, limited practitioner familiarity, resistance to depart from traditional methods, and perceived costs, hinder modularization adoption (Choi et al 2019;Ghannad and Lee 2022;Paliwal et al 2021). Secondly, conventional appraisal approaches prioritize risk mitigation and capital cost control, neglecting uncertainty management, thereby constraining design flexibility (Gil and Tether 2011;Swanson and Sakhrani 2020).…”