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As the population grows, one of the major global crises is the management of human settlement. A proper solution to deal with this issue is mass housing. Given the variable needs in these projects, two constraints of height and volume of construction play an essential role in fulfilling success criteria. Hence, this paper aims to choose the most appropriate building method to satisfy time, cost, quality and safety factors considering the volume and height of construction.

In this research, the proper construction methods in mass housing projects in two volumes of up to 1000 (small) and 1000-3000 (medium) residential units in three ranges of the height of 5, 5-10, and higher than ten floors were determined with a focus on the success criteria based on real experiences through questionnaires and interviews.

The results show that steel bolt and nut and tunnel framework systems in higher than five-floor building projects act better than other methods, while in up to five-floor building projects, LSF saves time and cost and steel bolt and nut provides higher quality and safety.

Given the extent of work, the results of this research can be considered as a benchmark in the mass housing industry.

Offsite construction (OSC) is a modern method of construction (MMC) that involves manufacturing and assembly of buildings. Industry 4.0-driven technological advancements have accelerated OSC uptake causing many skilled construction workers requiring re-skilling or up-skilling. Quantity surveyors currently play an important role throughout a construction project life cycle, and hence, their knowledge on OSC projects is vital for the continuity of quantity surveying (QS) profession. The purpose of this paper is to critically review QS education in an OSC perspective and to propose strategies for up-skilling.

This research includes a detailed literature review of QS and OSC to evaluate how OSC affects the QS profession. Publicly available information on the university websites on accredited QS and construction management degrees was reviewed to identify OSC and MMC references, specifically the content listing and learning outcomes.

Out of the 315 degrees offered by 157 universities, only 69 degrees in 32 universities refer to OSC or MMC. OSC concept is explicitly referred in subjects related to construction technology, production management, lean construction, digital construction and MMC. As such, the research suggests including lean production principles, OSC techniques and design philosophies such as design for manufacture and assembly be added to the QS curricula.

This research is a comprehensive desktop study that does not involve empirical data-based evaluation. Research findings inform strategies to improve QS education and professional competencies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind that evaluates accredited QS degrees and learning requirements in an OSC perspective.

This paper presents a bespoke model for understanding off-site construction (OSC) readiness among Indian construction organisations. This model presents 17 variables for discussion, the results from which help support OSC strategic decision-making.

Factor analysis was used to investigate the relationship between variables to group them into factors. After identifying 26 different variables, these were reduced to 17 using factor analysis and categorised into four groups. Descriptive statistical analysis and factor analysis using SPSS was used to develop a hierarchy of factors that affect OSC readiness in India. These findings were reinforced by five domain experts to support the results.

Minimising on-site duration, ensuring cost and time certainty and transportation issues were identified as the three most important factors, whereas lack of guidance and scepticism were among the lowest factors affecting the Indian OSC sector.

This research is specifically focused on OSC within the Indian construction sector. As such, data collection, propagation and analysis should be constrained to the population context regarding inference, generalisability and repeatability.

The proffered OSC readiness model offers OSC practitioners an ability to assess the OSC readiness of construction organisations in India. This includes the evaluation and benchmarking of processes in both strategic and operational phases, including highlighting areas of concern and scope for further development (to achieve optimal advantage of OSC methods).

Originality rests with the use of factor analysis and descriptive statistical analysis to study the influence of different construction-related factors and variables on the OSC sector in India. This impact readiness model is context-specific to the Indian OSC sector – providing a unique insight into the causal factors and dependencies that can affect the adoption and uptake of modern methods of construction in India.

Off-site manufacturing (OSM) is a modern method of construction that brings various environmental sustainability benefits for stakeholders. The increasing take-up of OSM in practice has attracted much research interest in its environmental sustainability. However, a holistic understanding of these previous research studies is still lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically review the existing body of knowledge regarding the environmental sustainability of OSM.

A qualitative content analysis was adopted to systematically and objectively review 55 related historical studies.

Three research themes were identified, including environmental sustainability assessment and performance, environmental sustainability strategies and critical environmental sustainability factors. A detailed discussion of the three themes was conducted to depict a whole picture of the current explorations in the research field. Additionally, a research framework was developed to articulate the interrelationship between the research themes and their specific research topics. Scientific research gaps were identified together with the future research directions in terms of sustainability strategies, performance impacting factors, sustainability indicators and drawbacks resulted from OSM application.

The literature review promotes construction stakeholders’ in-depth understanding about the environmental sustainability of OSM, which offers valuable implications for green industry practice. Additionally, it highlights the future research trends, which facilitates further explorations in the research area.

This study aims to develop a more inclusive working definition and a formalised classification system for offsite construction to enable common basis of evaluation and communication. Offsite manufacturing (OSM) is continuously getting recognised as a way to increase efficiency and boost productivity of the construction industry in many countries. However, the knowledge of OSM varies across different countries, construction practices and individual experts thus resulting into major misconceptions. The lack of consensus of what OSM is and what constitutes its methods creates a lot of misunderstanding across Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry professionals, therefore, inhibiting a global view and understanding for multicultural collaboration. Therefore, there is a need to revisit these issues with the aim to develop a deep understanding of the concepts and ascertain what is deemed inclusive or exclusive.

A state-of-the-art review and analysis of literature on OSM was conducted to observe trends in OSM definitions and classifications. The paper identifies gaps in existing methods and proposes a future direction.

Findings suggest that classifications are mostly aimed towards a particular purpose and existing classification system are not robust enough to cover all aspects. Therefore, there is need to extend these classification systems to be fit for various purposes.

This paper contributes to the body of literature on offsite concepts, definition and classification, and provides knowledge on the broader context on the fundamentals of OSM.

Housing completions in the UK have fallen to 125,000 annually, while government targets have risen to 300,000. This dramatic shortfall raises concerns as to whether current traditional construction approaches remain appropriate. This study aims to compare the traditional approach with modular construction, with a view to assessing whether a shift in construction systems offers the potential to alleviate the UK's domestic housing crisis.

A comprehensive interpretivist review of the available relevant literature is undertaken on construction methods within the UK; advantages and disadvantages. A bibliometric analysis is conducted to extract trends and findings relevant to the comparison at hand. The database is Web of Science; the analysis software is the VOS viewer.

The research illustrates that the UK housing market is in a state of crisis. A toxic combination of a rising UK population combined falling rates of housing delivery has resulted in an ever-widening housing supply gap. The construction industry’s capacity to meet this observed dearth in supply is further exacerbated by a number of chronic factors such as: falling participation in the construction sector workforce; lowering skill levels; reducing profitability; time to delivery pressures; and cost blow-outs.

While much information on the various construction methods are available, including comparative material, this study is the first to assemble the various comparative parameters regarding traditional and modular UK residential construction in one place. Thus, this study provides a definitive assessment of the relative advantages and disadvantages of these forms of construction.

As a strand in industrialization movement in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, prefabricated construction (PC) has gained widespread popularity due to high efficiency, energy saving, low environmental impacts, safety and other advantages of PC. Well-managed supply chain can further leverage the advantages of PC. However, there is a lack of more systematically overview of the prefabricated construction supply chain (PCSC). This paper aims to comb the current status and look into the future direction of PCSC by reviewing the existing research.

In total, 131 articles related to prefabricated construction supply chain management (PCSCM) from 2000 to 2022 have been collated to (1) conduct a bibliometric analysis by using VOSviewer, including the literature sources, keywords co-occurrence, co-authorships, authorship citation and country active in the field of PCSCM; (2) classify and summarize the status of research in PCSCM through qualitative discussion and (3) point out the future research directions.

In total, 131 articles are carried out for bibliometric analysis and in-depth qualitative discussion, the visualization maps and the main research themes in the field of PCSCM are obtained. The results show that supply chain intelligentization and informatization are hot topics. Finally, future research directions that should be paid attention to in the field of PCSCM are pointed out.

This study can help project managers understand the current status and problems of PCSC operations and provide a basis for future management decisions.

Compared with previous studies, this study adds the dimension of “article authorship” to the quantitative analysis and discusses the research themes in the field of PCSCM in a comprehensive manner. In addition, this paper deeply discusses the main research topics from both the specific contents and research methods adopted.

Housing provides constructed space for human activities. Literature indicates that housing impacts wealth, education attainment and health outcomes, among others. Because of its contributions to society, it is essential to develop and implement strategies that address the housing shortage experienced in most cities across the globe. This study aims to unpack the factors affecting housing production in the UK and chart the way forward.

In addressing this study's aim, an interprivitst approach was adopted and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 experienced professionals. Data were collected across the four nations of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).

The results indicated that the opportunistic behaviour of stakeholders is one of the main factors affecting housing production in the study area. Also, modern construction methods, collaborative practices, government intervention and affordable housing schemes were identified as key strategies for addressing housing production factors.

This study identified strategies for mitigating housing production issues that provide a focal point to all stakeholders keen on filling the housing shortage gap and improving productivity to channel their resources and effort accordingly.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to empirically analyse the influencing factors on the housing gap in the UK from the perspective of the supply side to provide information that could lead towards closing the said gap.

The purpose of this paper is to present the current drive for 3 million new homes by 2020. The delivery of this number of homes is a challenge for the house building industry and its associated stakeholders such as local authorities, registered social landlords (RSLs) and others. One mechanism proposed to ensure delivery is the use of modern methods of construction (MMC). There are, however, several problems with this premise including the legacy of non‐traditional housing formats employed in the past, demand side suspicion of MMC, and a lack of capacity on the supply side. The paper concentrates on the implications of MMC in the RSL sector – particularly the potential impacts of MMC on asset management (long‐term maintenance) of RSL housing stock.

A literature review and interviews with key RSL personnel are used to inform the discussion contained in this paper.

Seven overall themes emerged from the research, pointing to the main issues that need to be addressed if MMC housing is to be successfully employed in the RSL sector, while also ensuring that asset management is able to carry out its long term maintenance programmes in an effective and efficient manner.

Little previous research has been located on the subject of MMC and its specific impacts on RSL asset management operations. The research should therefore be of interest to a broad range of people, including asset managers and surveyors, developers, planners, and local, regional and national policy makers.

Offsite construction approaches and methodologies have been proffered a potential solution for controlling “traditional” projects, especially where high levels of complexity and uncertainty exist. Given this, locations such as Western Australia (WA), where there are unique housing provision challenges, offsite construction method was considered a potential solution for not only addressing the complexity/uncertainty challenges but also alleviating the housing shortage. However, whilst acknowledging the benefits of offsite construction, recognition was also noted on perceived barriers to its implementation, primarily relating to cost uncertainty. This recognition is exacerbated by very limited offsite construction cost data and information available in the public domain. In response to this, this paper sims to provide detailed cost analysis of three offsite construction projects in WA.

To hold parameters constant and facilitate cross-case comparative analysis, data were collected from three embedded case studies from three residential housing projects in WA. These projects represent the most contemporary implementation of offsite in WA; where two were completed in 2016/2017 and the third project was still ongoing during the data collection of this research. The research methodological approach and accompanying data analysis component engaged a variety of techniques, which was supported by archival study of project data and evidence gathered from the offsite construction provider.

Core findings revealed three emerging themes from residential offsite construction projects pertinent to cost. Specifically, the overall cost of delivering residential housing project with offsite construction techniques, the cost variability of offsite construction residential housing projects as impacted by uncertainties and the cash flow of residential offsite construction projects based on the payment term. These three major cost drivers are elucidated in this paper.

This research presents new cost insights to complement the wider adoption of offsite construction techniques. It presents additional information to address the limited cost data and information of offsite construction projects available in the public domain particularly for residential housing projects (within the bounded context of WA). It also highlights the further stages needed to enhance data validity, cognisant of universal generalisability and repeatability, market maturity and stakeholder supply chains.