The performance and potential of industrialized construction for resource-efficient housing construction: A multi-scalar approach across product, system, and context

Two of the most challenging phenomena facing the built environment are the growing demand for housing and the demand for resource efficiency in construction. The two demands need to be addressed without compromising one another. Regarding housing demand, current ways of supplying houses have been unable to catch up with demand. On the other side, resource efficiency in construction is not sufficiently adopted. Existing literature surrounding resource efficiency requirements can be summarized into three scales, i.e., product, system, and context. However, traditional construction has not been able to meet these requirements sufficiently. The industry typically follows a project-based approach that leads to fragmentation in the value chain and difficulties in adopting solutions such as digitalization and information sharing.Conversely, recent attempts to address housing and resource efficiency demands point to industrialized construction. Industrialization is an indicator of a country’s development and generally carries a positive connotation. It is an emerging way of delivering housing through a product-based approach. With industrialized construction, houses can be built faster, reducing unplanned developments in cities and with controlled construction operations, scaling down construction waste and scaling up quality. However, the question remains as to whether delivering housing through industrialized construction can meet the needed resource efficiency requirements, i.e., product, system, and context scales. This thesis investigates the performances and future opportunities of industrialized construction across the multi-scalar resource efficiency requirements. The first contribution of this thesis synthesizes existing literature surrounding resource efficiency in industrialized construction. It presents the product, system, and context scale factors that promote and inhibit a resource-efficient adoption of industrialized construction. The second contribution uncovers synergies between industrialized construction’s product platform and business model strategies with circular information flow requirements. It identifies essential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to achieve circular products and information flows. The third contribution builds on these synergy points and proposes a preliminary knowledge representation framework to generate and share information in industrialized construction. The fourth contribution identifies decisive factors crucial to adopting industrialized construction, especially in countries with enormous housing demand and developing economies. The last contribution investigates resource efficiency in specific housing products across different levels of industrialized construction implementation in developing economies. It presents key levers and actions to harness industrialized construction for resource efficiency. Overall, the thesis showcases that processes used in industrialized construction have intrinsic synergies with the multi-scalar resource efficiency requirements. Specifically, product and system-scale requirements are within reach of IC companies and their product offerings. For example, dematerialization, rematerialization, and circular information flow strategies are embedded in IC to achieve efficient workflows in manufacturing, logistics, and assembly processes. However, there is a need for firm-level learning and initiatives to harness the intrinsic strengths of industrialized construction to achieve resource efficiency requirements significantly. In other cases, industrialized construction firms rely on government support and guidance to meet context-scale resource efficiency requirements. This is especially prevalent in developing economies where governments need to create concrete guidelines to support innovators and early adopters of resource-efficient industrialized construction. Governments also need to restrict or redirect solutions that do not consider local resource efficiency requirements.