Abstract:
Industrialisation of the building process has remained the great unfulfilled promise of
our time. The Waves of efficiency increases that have transformed the production of
nearly every other product of the last century has had no parallel in the design and
construction industry. In fact, in the last few decades, non-construction productivity has
more than doubled whereas the construction sector has lagged behind due to its
skewed organisational structure. Mass production has induced progress in all fields
from automobiles to consumer products which we use daily.
As a culture we have largely failed to deliver high performance and durable buildings
at an affordable cost. This has vast societal consequences from homelessness to
compromised living standards and the inefficient use of resources.
To walk into a construction site today is to be surrounded by disorders. To manage a
contemporary construction project is to be overwhelmed by weather and
uncooperative or overly scheduled subcontractors, lack of accountability and poor
craftsmanship. To a very real extent we build the same way today that we did
thousands of years ago, by assembling materials and men at the site and figuring
things out as we proceed.
Compared to a well-run in-situ work, an industrialized/prefabricated building process
offers two primary advantages: predictability and time savings. These can be so
dramatic that they immediately translate into significant cost savings. Taking this as
the premise from the age of prefabrication, this thesis is an attempt at exploring the
opportunities associated with the application of prefabricated modular construction
ideas to the housing sector.
