Modular and Offsite Construction (MOC) Summit Proceedings
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Outcomes of the State-of-the-art Symposium: Status, Challenges and Future Directions of Offsite Construction
Get PDFOffsite construction is facing slow adoption despite the fact it can be a suitable solution for addressing historical problems faced by the construction industry, such as labor shortages, construction safety, time and costs overrun, and waste. The controlled factory environment creates room for innovation similar to the techniques used in the manufacturing industry. Yet, as always, the progress and adaptation of innovative ideas are challenging in the construction sector. A growing role for off-site construction requires further research and development. More collaborative efforts, industry meetings, and academic symposia are needed to bring together different disciplines and bridge the current information gap. This paper aims to present the outcomes of the Symposium on the State-of-the-Art of Modular Construction held in Gainesville, Florida from May 4th to 5th, 2017 that aimed to bring together major stakeholders in modular construction. It includes an analysis of the lectures and the survey that was distributed to industry and academic experts during the symposium. Also, it investigates the state-of-the-art of modular construction and focuses on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that come with this building technique
The Merits of Varying Forms of Mass Timber Products for Offsite and Modular Construction
Get PDFMass timber is a family of Solid Laminate Timber Systems (SLTS) formed from smaller sections of timber connected by glue, mechanical fixings, moisture movement or a combination of methods. These products, which include Structural Composite Lumber, GluLam, Cross Lam, Nail Lam and Dowel Lam (or Brettstapel), have over the past two decades seen an extraordinary upsurge in use internationally. This global phenomenon has been driven by a greater emphasis on the sustainable use of renewable resources and by significant technological developments in the manufacture of SLTS. This research paper considers the merits of each of these products, their manufacturing processes and the corresponding quality assurance requirements necessary for successful project delivery. The paper describes the advantages and barriers to the use of the mass timber and provides an overview of the various aspects to be considered during design for offsite and modular construction. The work presented also provides case studies of how these products have been researched and utilised into live projects in the UK utilising local resource resulting in the formation of new supply chain arrangements. The work further explains the advantages of the respective systems for the given application including information on species selection, connection systems employed and the necessary onsite and offsite management approaches deployed
Mass Customisable Roofing Solutions for the New Build and Retrofit Markets in the UK
Get PDFMajor house builders and contractors in the UK are seeking alternative solutions to form the structural frame of pitched roofs for various reasons; speed, health and safety, quality ease of use. They are exploring the use of offsite systems, which arguably provide all of the above benefits. However, these systems are typically considerably more expensive, often difficult to scale-up and limited in their design scope compared to traditional roof truss solutions. The strategic aim of the research reported on in this paper was therefore to develop a mass customisable roofing solution to allow the UKäó»s largest roof truss manufacturer to enter into the off-site construction sector without reinventing their business architecture. The research considered both the new build and retrofit market. The first roof solution for the new build market is a äóÖsliding roofäó», a roof truss installation method which includes a pre-prepared system created under factory conditions. The system is delivered to the construction site where it is lifted onto one end of the structure. After the system is in placed it is opened the length of the roof. The second system investigated, to be used for the retrofit market, is a self-supporting and thermally insulated roof panel, designed and developed for a multitude of pitched roofs. Working with the industry partner the suitability of the roof systems as effective off-site solutions has been trialled. The full process was monitored from a design, manufacture and construction perspective with a critical appraisal undertaken for evaluation purposes. These finding are reported
Front Matter, 2018 MOC Summit proceedings
No full textProceedings of the 2018 Modular and Offsite Construction (MOC) Summit held in Hollywood, Florida, USA, March 22 - 25, 2018
A novel approach of vertical city in southern china utilizing construction robotics, open building principles, modular construction and prefabrication
Get PDFA number of new developments are claimed in the name of “vertical city”, yet few represents an important characteristic of a city, which is the ability to constantly transform. Based on the analysis of several successful and unsuccessful precedents of building complexes, this paper aims to propose a novel approach of vertical city featuring constant vertical urban transformation by applying the state-of-the-art construction technologies. Meanwhile, this vertical city approach has the ability to integrate five basic elements of a city: vertical and horizontal circulation systems as its paths, a flexible building envelope as its edges, variable mix-used functional blocks as its districts, sky bridges and roof gardens as its nodes, and the complex itself as a landmark. More importantly, it can change its size, form and function with the help of construction automation technologies and open building principles, and responsively evolve in accordance with social, economic, and environmental shifts in a self-sufficient manner, meanwhile avoiding the risk of being homogeneous with surrounding buildings. Eventually, the complex will perform as a series of interconnected components which act together to form a living organism that performs various functions and purposes such as office, residential, commercial, school, hospital, police station, and infrastructur
Construction industrialization and IT integration: How tall wood buildings can show the right path towards Construction 4.0
Get PDFThe construction industry has been considered as refractory to information technologies. However, new technological approaches, such as the Building Information Modeling (BIM), are becoming increasingly adopted and are promising better collaboration, better flow optimization and greater integration of the supply chain. These changes are preparing the industry for the advent of "Construction 4.0", a more federating concept than BIM. This article explores the concept and shows how tall wood buildings could show the right path and lead the way for the rest of the industry. The research shows that while tall wood construction actually presents the potential to fit the construction 4.0 requirements, current practices are far from being uniform from one project to another. It also illustrates the need for a close collaboration between practitioners and researchers in order to overcome the current challenges
Prefabrication in the Australian context
Get PDFAustralia actually has a long history with prefabricated building since its early settlement days. However, methods of prefabrication have, until the past decade, been relatively few and almost nonexistent with the exception of relocatable school building or portables. The revival of interest in prefabricated building has been quite recent, involving a few selective construction companies, and the interpretation of prefabrication has mainly resulted in a ‘volumetric’ product as the solution. In response to this, first the paper describes the profile of prefabrication in Australia, and then addresses a pathway for the processes and methods to pre-fabrication based on the identified challenges in Australia. This paper presents these ideas and discusses the up and coming directions of prefabrication in Australia
Using noisy RFID for accurately monitoring the assembly line of panel fabrication
Get PDFOver the past few years, the interest towards off-site construction as part of project delivery for residential and commercial buildings has increased dramatically. In this regard, buildings are decomposed into panels that are manufactured using assembly lines smilar to what was developped to the automotive industry. However, because these serial production systems do not have buffers that could store intermediate products when a bottleneck occurs downstream, it often happens that these products are required to wait at the current workstation before production can resume. In this contribution, we develop algorithms allowing the waiting times to be extracted from timestamps that are collected from an RFID system reading the tags on panels as they enter each workstation
Energy optimization in modular buildings made from 3d printing
Get PDFOff-site construction involves the process of designing, fabricating, transporting and installing building elements for rapid site assembly to a greater degree of finish than in other types of on-site construction methods. However, some pieces of the building depending on the geometry, materials and weight can be produced using 3D printing on-site. Energy consumption can be modified based on the available resources on construction site such as labours, factories, and materials. This study focuses on energy optimisation based on simulating site available resources when 3D printing technology is available. The paper compares three proposed different cases including balconies are entirely concrete, balcony Containers are replaced with soil and a shade factor was applied as well as case 2 with the added effect of evapotranspiration
Design and static behavior of beam-to-beam-tied connection for modular steel buildings
Get PDFModular steel building(MSB) is the high-end prefabricated building product with outstanding advantages of high assembly rate and environmental friendliness. Specially, the connections between modules are critical parts that can strongly influence the overall structural stability and robustness. This study presented an innovate MSB connection design that has the intermediate plug-in device and beamto-beam bolting system as horizontal and vertical connecting respectively. Detailed connecttion and features for MSBs were introduced. Then static behaviors of the different position connection were investigated through static monotonic loading tests, including one direction corner connection and two direction inner connection. Effect of diagonal stiffener was discussed trough experimental tests. Results showed that gaps formed between upper and bottom columns can influence the deforming patterns and bending demand distributions at each unit joint