Journal of Architectural Engineering

Recent advances in the use of virtual building prototypes as a tool to support various site-based production processes coupled with improvements in context-aware mobile computing offer significant potential of improving decision making during construction phase of a building by providing relevant and timely access to design and process information. This paper investigates the scope and potential for integrating intelligent context-aware interfaces with sophisticated virtual building prototypes, to provide highly relevant and context-specific building information to concerned stakeholders throughout the building life cycle. Key enabling technologies and related literature are reviewed. Architecture to integrate context awareness with virtual building prototype is presented to allow for integration of context at various levels, and timely retrieval of building model data is presented. Conclusions are drawn about the possible future effect on the construction industry.

The potential benefits of off-site construction have been widely reported. However, its take-up in U.K. construction has been less than hoped. Previous studies have contributed solutions to accelerating take-up of off-site technology, albeit few examined the issue in business contexts. This paper presentes a novel approach to addressing off-site construction take-up in relation to business models. It reviews the challenges facing U.K. house-building business, maps conventional and emergent business models, and identifies factors capturing and creating value, centering on process and activities, risks, and finance. In the United Kingdom, house building is often decoupled from contracting, instead focusing on land acquisition, in response to the dominance of land-use planning. The competitive edge potentially available from technological innovation is often rendered less important or prevalent. However, exemplars do exist regarding incorporating off-site construction into house-building business strategy and adapting or creating business models to optimize such an approach. This paper presents a conceptual model to help illustrate the multifaceted relationship between business models and off-site construction, which is examined drawing on a number of case studies of large U.K. house builders, the findings of which should help position future enquiries.

Although prefabrication is becoming popular as an approach to conquer the chronic problems in construction, it has inherent issues related to inefficiencies in its production process. To address these production process related inefficiencies, lean production principles (LPP) can be applied. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the application of LPP to the precast concrete bridge beam production process (PCBBPP). The research collected data within three selected case studies by observing PCBBPP and interviewing executive-level professionals, to map the process, to identify conversion activities and their efficiency enhancing methods, and to record flow activities and their associate waste, waste causes, and elimination/minimization methods. The research analysed data by using code-based content analysis, and the findings are presented by using tables, matrices, and maps. The results revealed 103 activities associated with PCBBPP, of which 59 are conversion activities. Among 44 flow activities, 17 can be eliminated. The results also indicated several methods and techniques to eliminate/minimize flow activities and enhance the efficiency of PCBBPP conversion activities to enable implementation of LPP in prefabrication yards. By applying LPP to PCBBPP, several long-term benefits were revealed that contribute to sustainable construction. These results are useful for prefabrication companies and those who deal with sustainability issues.

Building information modeling (BIM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as the preferred method of communicating the design professional’s intent to the owner and various stakeholders. These data-rich models can be used effectively by other members of the design team to coordinate the fabrication of a building’s different systems. This has innumerable advantages in off-site construction domain including speed, economy, sustainability, and safety. However, the ultimate success of BIM will in part depend on the ability to capture all relevant data in the BIM model and to successfully exchange data between different project participants. This demand plus a desire to avoid claims have indicated the need for a common standard to enable BIM to be the legal construction model. This standard forms the foundation for accurate and efficient communication and commerce that are required by the off-site construction industry. This study reviews the current state of BIM standards and its impact on off-site construction. The investigation also addresses the challenges related to advancing the national BIM standard such as the following: What information would be contained in this standard regarding the unique aspects of modeling off-site fabrication? And how can the industry succeed in formulating the functional provisions required for establishing and implementing BIM standard in off-site construction domain. In particular, it addresses the BIM standards, specification process, such as developing the Information Delivery Manual (IDM), the Model View Definition, and the Industry Foundation Classes implementation. The paper proposes an IDM that provides concrete description of building construction processes, the requirements for information to be provided to enable processes to be carried out successfully, and the expected end results of the processes. The research also addresses both challenges as well as opportunities for advancing BIM standards in off-site construction.

Off-site construction has become an inseparable part of many construction projects and can increase the productivity and quality of construction projects. Off-site construction involves the application of a significant portion of the required operations to construction elements by off-site fabrication shops in a more controlled and equipped work environment before delivery of the elements to the construction site for erection or assembly. Unfortunately, capturing the constraints imposed by the erection (i.e., assembly) sites in addition to the internal constraints applied to the fabrication shops can make the planning process of fabrication shops challenging for construction managers. To address this issue, the use of discrete event simulation (DES) is proposed as an effective tool for modeling the operational details involved in construction, including constraints arising from both the erection process and from off-site fabrication shops. The applicability and usefulness of this method has been investigated in an experimental case of steel construction; DES models of an off-site structural steel fabrication of a girder bridge project were developed to assess different fabrication plans and to reduce the final project’s duration, and an approximate 10% potential reduction of the final project duration through adjusting the fabrication plan alone was demonstrated.

This paper deals with the design and off-site construction of particular buildings for critical and emergency situations (e.g., natural disasters such as hurricanes, landslides, floods, and earthquakes; war sites; and desert areas), in which challenging requirements have to be fulfilled. The panel-based system of the ES-KO corporation, which is a major player in this particular market, is described from both the architectural and the engineering points of view. Beyond the classical advantages of off-site systems (e.g., lightness and ease of assembly, speed of construction, transportation, and modularity), specific capacity-design rules can provide high standards of safety durability and structural robustness. Many of these rules can be found in nature, such as exoskeletons, parallelization, redundancy, and compartmentalization. These design issues are suited to particular situations, such as settlements, strong wind, earthquakes, and explosions, because they exploit particular strategies not commonly envisaged in structural design. Moreover, durability ensures the possibility of reusing the modules in different places, reducing the environmental footprint and costs. After describing the architectural modular design of panel-based buildings, which is itself oriented to raise structural performance, an overview of the modern robustness-oriented structural design philosophy is put forward, and its application to ES-KO panels is briefly outlined.

Industrial building systems (IBS) are considered a modern method of construction (MMC). Although numerous studies have explored the implications of IBS implementation, they have focused primarily on the hardware elements. This study investigated the adaptability of IBS components and suggested improvements for the construction industry. The main objective was to capture the Malaysian construction industry’s perception of IBS by using a quantitative approach. A survey was conducted to collect the viewpoints of professional architects, civil engineers, and quantity surveyors who worked as IBS consultants, contractors, manufacturers, and expert academics. The results of the survey indicate that the respondents agreed that the most critical issues in IBS construction were design conflicts and skill shortages. These responses were consistent across the professions. Furthermore, the respondents believed in the importance of preparing detailed information about the components and connections, applying standard connections, and encouraging innovative designs to resolve the existing issues. The results of this study have implications for designers, engineers, and consultants because they lay the groundwork for a theoretical framework for producing and using adaptable IBS components in the construction industry.

Modular construction is widely used in Europe for multi-story residential buildings. A review of modular technologies is presented, which shows how the basic cellular approach in modular construction may be applied to a wide range of building forms and heights. Case studies on 12-, 17-, and 25-story modular buildings give design and constructional information for these relatively tall buildings. The case studies also show how the structural action of modular systems affects the architectural design concept of the building. The combination of modules with steel or concrete frames increases the range of design opportunities, particularly for mixed-use commercial and residential buildings. An overview of the sustainability benefits and economics of modular construction is presented based on these case studies.

Construction activities and the built environment have an enormous effect on the environment, human health, and the overall economy. Sustainable homebuilding in all three dimensions of economic, environmental, and social effects is attainable through practical innovations and technologies. However, the greatest barrier to the widespread application of sustainable homebuilding is the higher initial costs largely attributable to the learning curve of workers building with these practical innovations and technologies, and the added cost resulting from ill-defined construction processes. To address these challenges and reach the ideal of sustainable construction, this paper proposes the use of lean construction as a viable and effective strategy, in particular the lean tool kaizen. This paper uses several case studies to showcase the effect of lean on the triple bottom line of sustainability in modular homebuilding. Each case study highlights one dimension of sustainability. Lean construction resulted in a significant environmental effect by reducing material waste by 64%, a significant social effect by reducing or eliminating key safety hazards of excessive force, poor posture, and struck-by, and a significant economic effect by reducing production hours by 31%. Findings from this research will contribute to a better understanding of the effect of lean on homebuilding sustainability and will promote lean and safe building techniques in modular homebuilding.

Currently, atomization and fragmented processes are strong constraints to industrializing the construction industry in Switzerland. Therefore, building construction in Switzerland is still characterized by manual production techniques and small-scaled companies. New strategies and concepts are necessary to empower the players to benefit from industrialization concepts in the client’s value creating process. This paper presents a cooperative business model for grasping the opportunity offered by industrialization in construction. This paper also gives readers an interesting insight into the system theory-based structure of the model and shows how to meet challenges such as the complexity of solution-oriented building processes, the uncontrollability of complex systems and the opportunistic behavior of players. This paper helps researchers and practitioners understand how a complex system of cooperating players may behave and what corridors for (inter)action should be established. Even if a complex system cannot be fully controlled, the model gives enough structure to prevent it from going out of control. The cooperative approach leads to a business model that is mostly free of opportunistic behavior. The cooperative business model enables the Swiss construction industry to increase the prefabrication level of the construction process, to implement mass customization in the prefabrication industry, and to introduce system services in the clients’ solution finding process.

Many studies have investigated the benefits that can be achieved through the use of the lean production philosophy to meet the challenges of sustainable development. These benefits include reduced waste, lead time, inventory, and improved efficiency. Because of the rising recognition of global climate change, this paper aims to identify the contribution of the lean production philosophy to environmental sustainability in precast-concrete factories, using ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ emissions as the indicator. This study adopts a weighted-factor model comprising 17 precasters in the Singapore precast-concrete industry. Two stages in the production cycle are investigated using the weighted-factor model: site layout management and delivery management. The results indicate that there are many non-value-adding activities in the precast-concrete production process that contribute to an increase in the level of carbon emissions. Large storage area, large quantity supply base, lack of just-in-time (JIT) sourcing with the suppliers, and a lean workforce appear to be the most important non-value-adding activities in site layout management and delivery management. The analysis provides good-practice guidance and can be used as a checklist for precasters to identify the non-value-adding activities in the precast-concrete production process to achieve low-carbon production. The results will also be useful for regulatory agencies to provide recommendations for the precast-concrete industry to reduce carbon emissions.

The purpose of this comparative analysis is two-fold: (1) to promote thinking and generate dialogue regarding lean construction within the design and construction community; and (2) to provide this community, including students of lean construction, with a practical, contract language-based framework with which to compare the elements of widely understood design-build with lesser-known lean construction. This comparative analysis explains lean construction thinking through discrete, clause-by-clause comparison of a template integrated project delivery (IPD) agreement (which is a lean construction influenced agreement) with an industry-standard design-build agreement. Comparison identifies numerous contractual topics included in both agreements, labeled universalizing contract topics. Deeper analysis of these identified common topics reveals differing intent and contractual obligations for the parties thereby substantiating insight into the overarching goals for lean construction (LC) and design-build (DB). Next, this paper presents contractual provisions uniquely included in either the LC or DB agreement, labeled differentiating contract topics. Such contract language identifies unique attributes of lean construction and design-build. Additionally, the paper proposes that incorporation of lean construction-related differentiating contract topics in the LC agreement is purposeful to promote the lexicon, processes, and thinking necessary to progress lean construction within the design and construction community.

There are many elements to the manufacture and preassembly of building components off-site. Maintenance has long been regarded as a Cinderella activity. By comparison, with the attention given to so-called new-build construction and its design, little heed is given to the anticipation and organization of a planned building’s maintenance. This paper develops a professional overview of likely maintenance over the life of a building and seeks to assist in the production and sustaining of better buildings by the integration of these considerations by forethought at the design stage. Mind mapping is explored as a framework on which to build considerations of maintenance of manufactured construction. It brings together and builds on concepts of intelligent and open building maintenance to create a decision support framework or MInD (maintenance integrated design) map or model for the construction of buildings that are economical and efficient to build and to run and meet long-term needs.