BUILDING PRODUCTS + MAINTENANCE
LEGAL PERSPECTIVES Navigating property laws & regulations
Prefabrication – The New Norm
P
refabrication is nothing new to the construction industry. And, over the past several years, we have seen a rather significant increase in the utilization of prefabrication. With this increase, however, it has revealed some vulnerabilities that, if not properly managed, lead to undesirable results. Let us take a closer look.
RENA T. PANZICA
CHAD J. VAN ARNAM
56
Prefabrication is the assembly of buildings or their components at a location other than the building site. It has gained favorable recognition due to factors such as COVID, market variability and labor shortages. The key benefits of assembling various building components in a factory-like setting include improved quality and consistency; improved labor efficiency and production; improved schedule flexibility and enhancements; reduced material waste and lost time incidents; reduced on-site installation labor; and favorable cost benefits and effectiveness. For these numerous reasons, the construction industry is finding more and more ways to embrace prefabrication as a normal practice and apply it more broadly across the various building systems. So, the focus we look to elaborate on is managing the process and having
the necessary and applicable controls in place to execute the work. The process, also commonly referred to as the method, of prefabrication drives early coordination into projects. This naturally creates a conduit for increased communication in preplanning efforts and promotes early engagement amongst the team. As we are all aware, project success starts day one; so, having a process, or method, in place that recognizes the value of early communication is a significant benefit to steering a project towards success. But let us dive a bit into implementation. In many cases, a crucial step in the preplanning process is often overlooked during the early stages of a project. Utilizing prefabrication in a broad sense may be lacking consideration of governance and control of the prefabricated system itself. Many projects rely on
Properties | December 2024