Constructability comparison between IBS and conventional construction

Abstract

The construction industry is globally undergoing a transitional change, starting from a project based industry, and continuing to a more systematic and mechanized product based technology. The Malaysian government has adopted the industrialized building system since the sixties, and experienced great struggles in this field. The system’s most significant advantages that have been concluded in many studies are: reducing construction time, reducing total costs, reducing material waste, increasing construction performance and quality of buildings, promoting safe and systematic factory working environment, and providing cleaner and tidier sites. This study has becomes essential since there is not yet an organized body who can provide the necessary information on a comparison between the building constructability of the conventional system and the industrialized building system in the Malaysian construction industry. Many countries currently have serious problems concerning budget, activity duration and reducing construction material waste. Construction materials and waste should be diminish appropriately especially for the high rise buildings. This study will present a comparative case study of two school buildings, which have been built using different construction types in order to investigate the IBS performance and efficiency, and the conventional system in terms of time saving, cost reduction and construction performance issues. Meanwhile, a distributed questionnaire shows that the most important factors for constructability performance are the durational and the financial issues of a construction project. The study concluded that the industrialised building system (IBS) method has a better performance in constructability by being faster, more affordable for large scale projects with less variation, and it provides a better sustainability and waste reduction.