Adoption of Pre-Fabrication in Construction to Achieve Sustainability Goals: An Empirical Study

摘要

Sustainability as defined by U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) can be achieved by addressing the three dimensions of environment, economic, and social. This research utilizes case study approach to explore how pre-fabrication strategies impact sustainability goals of construction projects by addressing these three aforementioned dimensions. As a common tool in lean practice, prefabrication has often been used as means to improve productivity and reduce material and labor wastage. Prefabrication of building components at an offsite controlled environment has a positive effect on occupational safety through reduced onsite hours and heavy lifting. Therefore it can be concluded that prefabrication also addresses the social dimension of sustainability. This paper presents a case study of a recently completed project, where prefabrication was used in construction of the building's north facade and the traditional method was used in the construction of south facade, thus providing the ability to compare and analyze the comparative impact of prefabrication versus traditional construction on the goal of sustainability. The paper discusses in details the process involved in prefabrication, starting from decision making, all the way to execution, the procurement process, the use of building information modeling (BIM), and the perceived project performance and the sustainability results.