Can Prefabrication be an Effective Response Against the Traditional Flaws in Construction and Help Deliver Better Solutions?

Notorious for a wide variety of reasons ranging form cost overruns, time delays and safety concerns, the construction sector has been heavily criticized as an industry with inconsiderate measures for enhancement of quality, efficiency and sustainability.      

Traditional construction is a broken process with an imperative requisite of an all-scale enhancement and technology integration which allows better control and efficiency at each and every stage of the development process.       

There is an omnipresent lower productivity and higher environmental risks from all types construction initiatives following conventional methodologies. While one might argue that the infrastructure development sector is growing at a higher rate consistently every year, but quantity doesn’t necessarily imply a better quality and this is true with conventional infrastructure development strategies.      

Despite the rise of economies in construction, there is also a rise in costs, wastage generation, demand of manual labor as well as frequencies of time delays. To counter such anomalies, a future-ready solution which makes construction processes more efficient and cost-effective is an essential requisite for the value chain.         

Some numbers and figures pointing to the broken process of traditional construction      

It is notable that a majority of construction process we witness today have remained unchanged at the core from many decades. While use of heavy machinery has enabled an enhancement in pace of the projects and computer aided design delivers better precision, but the methodologies central to the process remain the same and so are the traditional vulnerabilities and flaws associated with them.        

On-site traditional or conventional methodologies of brick and mortar as well as concrete construction involve linear processes with each step of the project progress following the prior. This increases the risks of delays as any flaws in the prior processes can disrupt the entire progress of the processes to follow.   

The weather conditions, labor availability, supply shortages as well as regulatory compliance all pose a threat of delays in the process and thus hinder progress as well as productivity of the sector.     

Globally, an estimated 65% of all conventional construction projects face delays with around 15% of the projects facing budget overruns. It is also estimated that more than 80% of the structures have minor defects and around 50% show major flaws.     

The value addition for the construction sector has also remained very low at about 1% when compared to almost 5% for the manufacturing industry.         

Delivering better outcomes and optimum solutions to conventional flaws with off-site prefabrication construction            

Prefab or off-site construction moves the development process to an indoor facility where a factory manufacture type model is utilized to produce individual structural components which can be modular in nature and easily installed at the site or be pre-engineered components relocated to the actual site for assembling.           

A prefab multi-story building as developed by EPACK involves off-site construction which delivers the biggest two advantages in the form of higher quality control and better project pace.    

By being developed in a controlled environment, there is zero risk of weather or labor shortage related delays as the majority of processes are automated. Furthermore, development of prefabricated multi-storey office buildings, homes, commercial facilities as well as industrial enclosures eliminates any errors in design, allows better material efficiency, reduces wastage considerably and offers minimum disruption to the environment.         

Prefabrication also guarantees safer and healthier working environments and EPACK assures the best cost saving benefits from its solutions.