The UK construction sector is facing multiple challenges associated with low productivity, unreliable project delivery, poor performance, skilled labour shortages, and resource inefficiency. Modular construction has been increasingly promoted by the UK government and industry to address those challenges, and improve efficiency and productivity in the construction sector. While modular construction can help deliver sustainability credentials in the sector by improving resource efficiency at all stages of the construction process upstream, i.e. at the design, manufacture and construction, it appears to be divorced from the construction stages occurring downstream (i.e. disassembly and end-of-life management). This could shift resource inefficiency elsewhere in the system, creating future problems for the sector to deal with. In this article we provide an overview of the current state of modular construction and digitalisation in the UK as promoted by the government and industry, and outline key obstacles in modular construction’s mainstream use. We argue that there is a real opportunity in using modular construction to promoting resource efficiency and productivity in the construction sector as a whole, via integrating innovation upstream and downstream of the construction system. This could be achieved via a digitally enabled modular construction, whereby smart technologies are combined with modular construction, to promote the maintenance, recovery and reuse of modular components and reduce waste generation in the sector. For this to take precedence we need to think of the ‘end’ right at the beginning of the design stage. Integrating smart technologies in modular components can operationalise the collection and storage of components’ lifecycle information and build the capability needed to support such activities via an improved collaboration between all stakeholders involved in the construction value chain.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)