Risks of modular integrated construction: A review and future research directions

Abstract

Despite the extensively documented benefits of modular integrated construction (MiC), stakeholders continue to remain sceptical in its adoption due to the associated risks and uncertainties. The unique business model of MiC nurtures several risks and uncertainties different from those of the conventional construction approach. Although MiC is gaining attention with its market expansion, there is no systematic evaluation of the research progress. This research conducted a systematic review and synthesis of published studies on the risks of MiC from 1992 to 2019 inclusive. The analysis reveals that the research publications on risks of MiC witnessed a steady growth, with significant progress occurring in the last decade. This implies that the risk of MiC has gained more attention in the construction engineering and management domain in recent times. Existing empirical studies have focused more on perceived implementation risks; supply chain risks; schedule risks; investment risks; structural risks; ergonomic risks; and MiC risk management strategies, which indicates that MiC is associated with a host of risk events. The paper further identified the critical risk events (CREs) in the application of MiC based on frequency of occurrence. The identified CREs contribute to the checklists of risk events in the implementation of offsite construction, which may be useful in risk planning especially where the MiC market is still fledgling, and fewer or no bespoke risk assessment exist. The paper highlighted research gaps in existing studies and proposed areas for further studies. Thus, the paper makes a useful contribution to the scholarly literature on the risk of OSC and maybe useful to offsite construction researchers, industry practitioners, and project managers.

Critical success factors for management of the early stages of prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction project life cycle

“…Prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction PPVC is an innovative and disruptive construction method which transforms the linear sitebased construction of buildings into an integrated production and assembly of value-added factory-made prefabricated prefinished volumetric modules (Wuni et al, 2019a, b). The Building and Construction Authority (2019) defined PPVC as "a construction method whereby free-standing volumetric modules (complete with finishes for walls, floors, and ceilings) are constructed and assembled in an accredited fabrication facility, following any accredited fabrication method, and then installed in a building under building works."…”

“…The adoption of DfMA in PPVC projects facilitates selection of cost-effective manufacturing-compliant raw materials, minimizes the complexity of the manufacturing operations during the design phase and eventually reduces manufacturing time, cost and assembly time. The supply chain of PPVC involves design, manufacturing, transportation, CSFs for early stages of the PPVC project life cycle storage and components installations (Wuni et al, 2019a, b). Figure 1 shows the basic life cycle of a PPVC project.…”

“…Prefabricated prefinished volumetric construction (PPVC) is the most complete form of OSP where value-added fullyfinished volumetric building components are manufactured on production lines using advanced precision technology in an off-site factory, trucked to the construction site in sections and systematically craned to form a complete building project (Wuni et al, 2019a, b;Shen, 2019c, 2019d). There are some useful differences between OSP and PPVC.…”

Critical success factors associated with time performance in prefabricated construction

“…Detailed drawing [11] [15] Well-organized schedule [10] [11] Lead-in times during early stages [14] Supply Chain Transportation availability [10]…”

“…In this research, three critical success factors are classified into this category. The first one is the availability of workers with professional training [10,11,12,13]. Even though the large components of the building are manufactured in the factory, skillful workers are still required on construction site since they need to assemble those large components according to the drawings.…”