Off-site construction in highways projects: management, technical, and technology perspectives from the United Kingdom

IF 3 Q2 BUSINESS

Construction Management and Economics Pub Date : 2023-01-23 DOI:10.1080/01446193.2023.2167218

A. Tezel, L. Koskela

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract With a rich off-site construction (OSC) experience accumulated over the last two centuries, the United Kingdom (UK) is looking up to OSC to deliver its critical infrastructure projects in the next decade. Highway projects are good fits for OSC with their project characteristics. However, the extant OSC literature for highways is mostly about OSC elements’ design performance. Also, the OSC literature is predominantly building sector focused. Addressing this gap, the paper presents the findings of a research project, sponsored by the UK’s National Highways, which aims at understanding what needs to be done to improve the current OSC condition for highways projects in the UK from a management, technical and technological perspective. After a detailed literature review, 20 in-depth interviews with subject experts were conducted. The initial findings were validated through five highways projects as cases and then ranked by two focus groups using the Delphi method. Alongside revealing the current OSC condition, 95 suggestions (43 management-related, 23 technical opportunities, and 29 technology-related) were elicited and ranked by their impact potential. Some of the high-potential suggestions are developing a collaborative OSC decision making framework, a product design mindset, improving OSC digital product libraries, creating mobile OSC factories, and a design options repository. The findings revealed that many OSC challenges identified in the general or building sector focused OSC discussions exist also in the highways sector. It is recommended that the identified high and medium impact potential suggestions are prioritized by practitioners and policy makers to improve the current OSC condition.

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公路项目的场外施工：来自英国的管理、技术和技术视角

摘要凭借过去两个世纪积累的丰富场外施工经验，英国期待着OSC在未来十年内交付其关键基础设施项目。公路项目具有项目特点，非常适合OSC。然而，现存的公路OSC文献大多是关于OSC元件的设计性能。此外，OSC的文献主要集中在建筑行业。针对这一差距，本文介绍了由英国国家公路局赞助的一个研究项目的研究结果，该项目旨在从管理、技术和技术角度了解需要做些什么来改善英国公路项目目前的OSC条件。在详细的文献综述之后，对主题专家进行了20次深入访谈。通过五个高速公路项目作为案例验证了初步发现，然后使用德尔菲方法由两个焦点小组进行排名。除了揭示目前的OSC状况外，还提出了95条建议（43条与管理有关，23条与技术有关，29条与技术相关），并根据其影响潜力进行了排名。一些潜在的建议包括开发一个合作的OSC决策框架、产品设计思维、改进OSC数字产品库、创建移动OSC工厂和设计选项库。调查结果显示，在一般或以建筑行业为重点的OSC讨论中发现的许多OSC挑战也存在于公路行业。建议从业者和政策制定者优先考虑已确定的高影响和中等影响的潜在建议，以改善当前的OSC状况。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Construction Management and Economics BUSINESS-

CiteScore

7.50

自引率

14.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Construction Management and Economics publishes high-quality original research concerning the management and economics of activity in the construction industry. Our concern is the production of the built environment. We seek to extend the concept of construction beyond on-site production to include a wide range of value-adding activities and involving coalitions of multiple actors, including clients and users, that evolve over time. We embrace the entire range of construction services provided by the architecture/engineering/construction sector, including design, procurement and through-life management. We welcome papers that demonstrate how the range of diverse academic and professional disciplines enable robust and novel theoretical, methodological and/or empirical insights into the world of construction. Ultimately, our aim is to inform and advance academic debates in the various disciplines that converge on the construction sector as a topic of research. While we expect papers to have strong theoretical positioning, we also seek contributions that offer critical, reflexive accounts on practice. Construction Management & Economics now publishes the following article types: -Research Papers -Notes - offering a comment on a previously published paper or report a new idea, empirical finding or approach. -Book Reviews -Letters - terse, scholarly comments on any aspect of interest to our readership. Commentaries -Obituaries - welcome in relation to significant figures in our field.