Off-site construction continues to show steady growth across the globe. Already well-established in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, the sector’s most prominent emerging markets are China and India.

What is Off-Site Construction?

Let’s begin with the basics: off-site construction (often called prefabrication or off-site manufacture) typically refers to planning, designing, fabricating, transporting, and assembling building elements for a construction process. The fundamental concept is that the early phases of the process are carried out at a different location from where items will be finally installed.

You know how Walgreen’s and CVS’s seem to pop-up out of nowhere? Off-site construction. Basically, they haul pre-fabricated pieces of a building and assemble them on site, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Benefits of Off-Site Construction

Offsite construction is now most commonly chosen over traditional construction. Here are the reasons why:

• Speed: As the planning, designing, and fabricating phases are completed in the shops, the on-site time required for working on-site is significantly less. This is a proven benefit if we talk about schools or hospitals, where the disruption needs to be minimized. Also, work in the shops can be set up to start in parallel as the site is being prepared, so the two processes can take place at the same time, resulting in an accelerated build programme.
• Efficiency and predictability: It goes hand in hand with the previous item. Compared to traditional construction, in off-site construction, the process is the same every time. Work can be delivered on time and to the highest quality, as conditions such as bad weather do not hold the project.
• Sustainability: The off-site construction process is ahead of the game in this area. It requires less heavy machinery and less energy. The knock on effect is a cut in waste, as material requirements can be more precisely estimated, allowing the construction managers to make savings by buying in bulk. The impact of construction activities on-site, such as noise, vehicle movements, and ground disturbance are dramatically mitigated.
• Safety and working conditions: The factory, where the variables of weather and visibility are eliminated, is a more predictable setting than the physical construction site, so transferring work off-site into a controlled environment improves safety.

When Is It Advisable to Consider an Off-Site Construction?

Based on our experience, off-site construction should be considered in cases when:

• Construction time has to be shortened by at least 30 percent.
• Time-to-market needs to be improved.
• Safer working environment and rigorous controls have to be put in place.
• Handling costs need to be reduced.
• The impact on the local area has to be significantly lessened regarding traffic, noise, and period of work on-site.
• There is a need for certainty on delivery and timelines.

Disadvantages of Green Building

Last week, we published a blog post on the advantages of green building. And although green building is a practice that is gaining a lot of popularity for good reasons, we must also mention some of the potential disadvantages that green building can pose for any construction project.

As a reminder, green building “is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle from sitting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and deconstruction. This practice expands and complements the classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building is also known as a sustainable or high-performance building,” as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency

Longer Construction Time

Even though green building is definitely something that everyone should take part in, it takes up more time because the materials used are still not readily available. Green practices also require special building procedures and a construction staff adequately trained in green building, which can take a contractor more time to round up.

If you want to embark on a green building project, you should consider adding extra time to your master schedule. You can also start small. By incorporating a few green changes such as swapping appliances for energy-efficient ones or installing solar panels, you can still make a significant impact on the environment and save money on your utility bills.

Complex Temperature Regulation

Green buildings use natural cooling components like wind ventilation and plants. In warmer weathers, using A/C will require extra solar panels just to run the A/C during the most vital hours – when it’s hot as hell outside.

Solar-powered A/Cs are slowly being introduced to market, but commercial-grade options are still few and far between. I would wait a few years before going all in on solar-powered A/C in commercial buildings, especially in Florida.

Considering Location

Green buildings run on renewable energy sources, usually dependent on the sun. Logic states that they’ll need sun exposure, so location in green construction is even more important than in traditional construction.

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, “Location is a critical element of green building: it can define appropriate strategies, yet it can also limit how green a project can actually be. Depending on the environmental issues that are most critical in a particular area, location can influence a project team’s priorities.”

Additionally, the role of location in green building goes further than adequate sun exposure. Green building also takes into account how location minimizes the environmental impact by lowering dependence on cars and protecting the areas’ natural habitats.

Limited Material & Labor

Materials needed to build green buildings can be difficult to obtain, particularly in areas where conserving the environment is not high on the list of priorities. Shipping these materials as well as finding skilled labor for green building projects can be costly in comparison to traditional building practices.

In a properly managed construction project, a master schedule is where all of smaller projects come together. Reality is, even when they seem unrelated, every single project in a construction job needs to work in unison to deliver a quality project on time and on budget. Especially if you’ve been in the industry for a while or you think it’s a small, simple project, developing a master schedule might seem like an unnecessary bore, but trust me that at the end, you’ll be glad you did.

The Benefits

We’ll cut right to the chase: if you don’t have a decent master schedule, you run a huge risk of ruining your project. You should know from the very beginning that things are going to get delayed, broken, expensive… The master schedule helps you break down the bigger picture into smaller phases and identify things that you might not have noticed until you ran into them mid-project.

Another benefit is that it helps you manage everyone’s expectations. When every single detail of the project is delineated, everyone on the team will know what to expect and can be held accountable if they’re not pulling their own weight. Every task will be done with a purpose and with a deadline in mind.

What to Include?

Here’s a list of all the things you should include:

• A pre-construction meeting – Get all the stakeholders together and share the project overview. This includes scope, goals, timeline, suppliers, materials, equipment and contracts. Cover all your bases to avoid surprises later.
• Coordinating staffing – Who’s going to manage the relationship with the contractor and suppliers? Who reports to whom?
• Site safety – Discuss all the safety measures that you will set in place. Do not forget about signs, roping, and fences.
• Pre-construction investigations – Investigate all you need to know about building permits and construction laws in your jurisdiction and how to select the professionals and workers who will be involved in the project.
• A list of all the tools, materials, equipment, and labor – that will be necessary to complete the project.
• Landscaping – Review the design, phases, and people taking care of it.
• Cost estimates – of every phase.
• Priorities – Which projects are more important? When are they going to be completed?
• Emergency procedures – How are you going to keep your workers safe? What happens if there’s a fire, a gas leak, an explosion, a site accident, a scuffle? Who’s the designated person to deal with these issues?
• Closeout process – Who’s inspecting the premises? Who’s checking the punch list? Finishing a project takes a lot more than just saying: “We’re done here!”

Are You Missing Anything?

While having a well-drafted master schedule should help the project run as smoothly as possible, you have to be realistic and be prepared: In construction, always expect the unexpected. So roll up your sleeves andlet’s get down to business.

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