The market for made-to-measure prefabrication systems is growing, bringing several benefits in terms of quality, precision, and speed of execution on-site, but this type of construction necessitates meticulous upstream planning.
The construction sector faces many challenges, with increased regulatory performance, a very competitive market with tight deadlines and budgets, increasingly complicated land in urban areas, and difficult access.
In this context, the dry sector and off-site sites are developing. Large and complex building elements are increasingly machined and assembled in a workshop or factory, up to complete pre-equipped 3D modules.
The benefits are numerous. Work in the warehouse building is easier to control in terms of quality and precision, generates less scrap and waste, can be recycled, and improves working conditions. The sites are cleaner, less noisy, more meticulous, and the time savings can be counted in months.
A varied architecture
Prefabrication can be used to generate complex shapes such as concrete shells or walls with curved or organic shapes and work certain materials under good reproducibility conditions such as stamped or architectural concretes, printed, or composite materials.
Modularity makes it possible to industrialize, therefore, to reduce costs for floors (honeycomb slabs, for example) or facade panels that incorporate numerous layers of insulation and waterproofing and joinery.
The 3D modules of rooms, kitchens, or bathrooms already equipped find a market for the elevations and collective residences, workers or migrants, and retirement homes. Prefabrication is also developing for electric and hydraulic octopuses.
Well-prepared projects
Prefabrication requires meticulous site preparation and cooperation from companies upstream to anticipate the passage of networks and cables, reservations, and openings. Using a collaborative BIM methodology around a digital model is particularly justified off-site.
The workshop or factory manufacturing by prefabricated warehouse manufacture, carried out in a controlled atmosphere, makes it possible to industrialize the process and automate with numerical control machines, robots, or 3D printers...
The quality is reproducible more easily for operations as diverse as welding, the casting of white concrete, the quality of the waterproofing of facade panels, etc. Regarding concrete, a current issue in prefabrication is also low carbon.
Prefabricated construction: the advantages in brief
Compared to the various conventional construction solutions, prefabricated construction is advantageous on four essential points:
- Prefabricatedbuilding solutions offer real advantages in terms of savings, as the budget can be reduced by up to 30%.
- In terms of speed, it is also clear that opting for prefabricated buildings can optimize more than 50% time savings compared to traditional construction.
- In terms of modularity, tailor-made prefabricated constructions make it possible to foresee possibilities of extension for future development.
- In terms of aesthetics, the architectural design is infinitely customizable, whether for the exterior, the colors, or the comfort...