Project Summary

Project title

Improving Performance and Collaboration for Offsite Construction through Learning from Projects and Knowledge Reuse

This project is funded by BRANZ (Building Research Association of New Zealand) and led by the University of Auckland, with the collaboration of Auckland University of Technology, Victoria University of Wellington, and University of Canterbury. The project is expected to run from 2024 to 2026. See here

Industrial problem

Housing affordability and supply has become a recognised challenge in New Zealand (NZ) and internationally. To overcome this challenge, offsite construction (OSC) also known as prefabricated construction, modular construction, or offsite manufacturing, has been increasingly adopted. It refers to the construction of buildings and components offsite in a factory, which are then transported to the sites where they are needed, which is approached by advantages including increased productivity, shortening of construction time, and reduced labour and material wastage.

However, most OSC is still ‘new’ and untested in NZ and cannot effectively reduce costs, time and risks, which hinders the broader use of OSC across the country. It has been revealed both in the literature and by interviewing industry experts that OSC requires a higher level of DfMA (design for manufacture and assembly) and construction planning and control, where knowledge and lessons from previous projects is valuable to new projects, but the current practices of designers, engineers, and contractors hinder the effective capture and reuse of the OSC knowledge from existing projects.

Solution

To achieve the full benefits of OSC and make it easier in NZ, there is a strong need to improve the collaboration to learn and share OSC knowledge and make the best reuse of this knowledge in new projects. This project is proposed to affect industry-wide behaviour change for capturing and reusing OSC knowledge, through establishing a OSC knowledge consortium and developing an open OSC knowledge base with a best practice guideline and multiple case studies. Finally, a longitudinal survey will be conducted to evaluate how effective the proposed knowledge base and guideline can affect OSC professionals’ behaviour change on knowledge reuse.

Stakeholders along the OSC supply chain will be involved in the consortium to (1) help the research team access non-sensitive OSC knowledge as data source (e.g., completed and ongoing project cases); (2) attend a series of workshops for testing knowledge base prototype; and (3) give feedback that will drive our research. The knowledge base and guideline produced by this project can be used by the stakeholders and whole construction sector in NZ (sensitive data will be protected by signed non-disclosure agreements).

How will this project benefit New Zealand?

The project will support the circular construction and circular economies, by capturing, storing, and managing the valuable knowledge generated from existing and new OSC building projects. Develop of a long-term roadmap to grow the consortium, make the research outputs available to and benefit the whole NZ construction sector. The optimised open knowledge base and best practice guideline can improve the performance and efficiency of OSC projects (i.e., decreased cost, time and risk). The proposed solution can be expanded to other types of construction (e.g., bridges).