Modular Industry Characteristics and Barriers to its Increased Market Share

Abstract

Modular and offsite construction reduces project duration and cost by synchronizing offsite and onsite work. Project activities are constructed in a controlled offsite facility to minimize effects of inclement weather and site disruptions, while meeting safety and quality requirements. In recent years, many organizations have conducted questionnaires to study characteristics of modular and offsite construction, such as the Modular Building Institute (MBI), Buildoffsite campaigning organisation in the UK, Canadian Manufactured Housing Institute (CMHI), National Institute of Building Sciences, McGraw-Hill Construction, and Fails Management Institute (FMI). This paper introduces a summary of results for a new questionnaire carried out in collaboration between the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering (BCEE) at Concordia University, MBI, Niagara Relocatable Buildings, Inc. (NRB) in Canada, and the Nasseri School of Building Science and Engineering at the University of Alberta. This questionnaire focuses on two issues: (1) the characteristics of the modular and offsite construction industry, and (2) detected barriers to the increased market share of this industry. For the latter, effort was made to address five factors emanated from a workshop on äóěChallenges and opportunities for modular construction in Canadaäóť held in Montreal in October 2015 to analyze barriers to growth of modular construction in Canada. Key findings of this questionnaire include requests for use of a separate code of modular construction design, innovative financing and insurance solutions, standards that consider procurement regulations, and lending institutions that partner with financial houses to create special lending programs for modular construction.

Overview of the Characteristics of the Modular Industry and Barriers to its Increased Market Share

“…All told, these studies did not investigate some of current practices in modular construction such as project financing, standards and regulations, type of project delivery system, type of contracts, type of procurement method, synchronization of onsite and offsite schedules, BIM applications and software, scheduling software, and barriers to increased market share. Thus, this paper studies these practices and presents comprehensive analysis for the conducted questionnaire that was briefly introduced earlier since no thorough analysis was presented earlier for all the studied practices [30][31][32]. This paper also presents current efforts around the world dedicated to overcome the barriers and challenges facing modular and offsite construction and it investigates current practices and industry characteristics of modular construction in the context of the aforementioned gaps in the body of knowledge.…”

“…First hypothesis: Negative stigma is a barrier to increased market share As shown in Figure 5, more than half of respondents agreed that there is negative stigma associated with modular construction, which can be attributed to the misconception that modular is intended primarily for temporary, single-storey applications. The percentage of respondents who agreed that the significant advantages of modular construction are not effectively communicated with owners is 70%, while 80% of respondents agreed that there is a lack of well-designed marketing campaigns conducted by modular institutions and manufacturers, and 90% of respondents agreed that owners are not familiar with the various products offered by the modular industry [30]. While 81.5% of respondents agreed that the modular industry lacks large-scale partnerships and corresponding market share due to the focus of modular manufacturers on local markets, there is also consensus that a lack of academic research highlighting the advantages of modular construction is a factor (83.6% of respondents, as shown in Figure 6).…”

“…Most respondents agreed, as shown in Figure 7, that there is lack of promotional material that depicts the successes and advantages of modular construction. The respondents also agreed that there is a lack of documentation of lessons learned around the world and a gap in knowledge among owners regarding the compatibility of modular construction with different structure types and materials [30]. Moreover, there was agreement that governmentsponsored case studies and academic research that highlight obstacles and opportunities for modular construction are also lacking, and that there is a shortage of data that is readily available to manufacturers and owners to support decision making with a high level of confidence (as shown in Figure 8).…”

“…The respondents also recommended that the industry partner, PreFab Australia, and PreFab New Zealand increase awareness of modular construction among architects, use social media for marketing, and prepare online courses for modular construction. They also recommended institutes and universities publish more papers, highlight modular advantages in academic courses, promote modular advantages to authorities and policymakers, and collaborate with industry and organizations [30].…”

Virtual Manipulation in an Immersive Virtual Environment: Simulation of Virtual Assembly

“…Despite all the benefits of 3D scanning and BIM in detecting the discrepancies, still there are other technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Manipulation (VM) that can help to improve discrepancy detection process. In a survey, the industry professionals indicated that using VR along with BIM is one of the main solutions for the future of their company and the industry (Salama et al 2018). VR can provide a one to one scale level of BIM (Heydarian et al 2015), therefore it is possible to improve discrepancy detection in such environments.…”