Engström, S; Stehn, L and Sardén, Y (2009) Competitive impact of industrialised building: In search for explanations to the current state. In: Dainty, A R J (ed.) Proceedings of 25th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2009, Nottingham, UK.
Abstract
Industrialised building has been proposed as a means of satisfying changes needed in the Swedish building sector. Over the last decade industrialised building has also developed as a niche within this sector. Given its potential, however, some stakeholders think that industrialised building has not yet had the impact they expected, and that the building sector is still in need of change to meet demands for cost reduction, quality improvement and longer managerial time-spans. Consequently, questions arise regarding the competitive position of industrialised building today, and the underlying causes for its present state. This study is based on a literature review, assessing industrialised building over recent decades, and on complementary interviews with researchers and practitioners. The findings are summarised in a conceptual model that outlines the sought effects of industrialised building, as well as the forces that drive and restrain change towards industrialised building. The demands on the building sector are the main drivers of change for the industry. However, the market itself is not actively driving change towards industrialised building, and the information and understanding required to support clients' decision on whether to enforce market power in one or the other direction is not readily available. How building clients value different building possibilities is also unclear. Suggested future challenges are to reduce client uncertainty, to improve client power and to facilitate the comparison of performance between traditional and industrialised building alternatives.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | competitive position; conceptual model; drivers of change; industrialised building |
| Index terms: | interview, literature review, cost reduction, quality improvement, practitioner, industrialized building |
| Subjects: | project delivery, building construction, economics, data collection methods, practitioner, data analysis and analytics |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Construction Technology, Quality Management, Cost Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here