Link Manufacturing to Construction

Phase 2 - 2018

In this study the GLCM team built further on the first phase of the project targeting learning from the manufacturing industries. In Spring 2018 the team examined 31 best practices collected as a result from the first phase and identified 9 takeaways to be further explored in detail and linked to the construction industry to stimulate and enhance productivity and profitability. These 9 takeaways were: Modularization & Prefabrication, Investing in R&D, Digitization, Material Shift, Digital Business Models, Lean Manufacturing & Implementation, Automation, Leveraging Data, and Knowledge Sharing.

The Construction industry continues to underperform in 4 strategic areas: productivity, certainty in delivery, skills shortage and data transparency. Offsite construction – the prefabrication, modularization and standardization of construction processes and assets within controlled factory environments – continues to be quoted across government and industry as a potential catalyst in meeting these challenges.

Tracking the movement of people on site, their progress, and the duration of their tasks will allow contractors to build a database of actual site conditions which can be leveraged to improve productivity by optimizing project controls to streamline work and effectively apply LEAN methods. This data can also be used to create algorithms to develop a robot workforce once the technology becomes affordably available.

Below are two highlighted example from the studied 31 lessons learned and takeaways which focus on Modularization & Prefabrication and Leveraging Data.