Track: Construction/BIM/Sustainability

Construction of buildings with prefabricated elements has been considered a very efficient approach for improving construction processes and productivity. It facilitates quality and reduces time and cost overruns. However, it is an effective method that the construction industry has found difficult to implement. This paper provides an overview of the use of prefabricated components for building construction in Lagos state, Nigeria. The paper also reports the global trends of prefabrication in building construction. These are derived from a systematic literature review in a quest to answer the research question of the study. Four databases were used, and a total of 884 records were located. This number was later reduced to 30 most relevant peer-reviewed journal articles that formed the background information for the research. This study reveals that despite the advantages of prefabricated methods of housing construction and practical examples of its successful application, many challenges still occur in practice. Key among these challenges are initial high costs of establishing prefabrication firms, lack of awareness of the potential of the prefabrication technology among the built environment professionals, non-availability of adequate local prefabrication firms, technical know-how and other technical challenges in installations among others. The study concludes that although there are a number of factors discouraging the use of prefabrication in building construction, the benefits over-shadow the challenges. Therefore, effort should be re-doubled to encourage the use of prefabrication technology in building construction to address the housing demand-supply gap in Lagos, Nigeria. Recommendations are provided for further study on the use of prefabricated methods of construction in Nigeria.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management

Construction industry is in continuous need for improvement. Likewise, methods and techniques used for decision-making need improvement. Traditional approaches are not meeting the needs of fast-changing industry. In many cases issues start right from the contractual agreements and agreed terms that parties accept without truly understanding the feasibility aspects. These lead to multiple complications during the projects as well as towards the end of the project. To overcome such difficulties new approaches are developing as Agile with an expectation that targeting the project in smaller increments may help in reducing the possible negative outcomes. It works if the project can be delivered in smaller increments while for construction industry or others it may not always be feasible. Project Design-Build delivery method can be paralleled to some extent with Agile approach where the team works on the requirements and navigates over the phases of project development together. In practice even such approaches leave the stakeholders unhappy, because the terms and conditions of a project often change and lead to disagreements. In this paper an innovative modeling technique, which goes beyond agile approach, is proposed to help to deliver the project with its most efficient way from the given point on and especially for the conditions that may change in future. With proposed model the decisions to be made, terms and conditions to be agreed, risks to be avoided or transferred or accepted, terms to be negotiated can be analyzed and practiced for lowest cost project delivery.

PMI Talent Triangle: Strategic and Business Management