Exploring Offsite Construction for the Construction Sector: A Literature Review

The construction sector is one of the largest producers of Gross Domestic Product globally and yet has shown little innovation in the last 20 years. Offsite has been touted as cheaper, faster, higher in quality and more environmentally friendly than onsite construction. The purpose of this paper is to review the current research into offsite construction and determine the barriers to adoption and benefits facing offsite construction. A systematic literature review was undertaken to gather relevant knowledge surrounding the subject matter using a database search of Scopus. It was found that knowledge was the largest barrier to adoption and that transcended multiple stakeholders, from the selection of the appropriate delivery methodology, how to design for optimized fabrication and finally how to interface with the onsite requirements. The benefits are a higher build quality, shorter project duration as both site work and fabrication occur at the same time, improved safety, and less material wastage. The Barriers come from design freezes earlier in the process and inflexible design for customization later in the build.