Prefabrication: what construction still needs to gain scale, speed, and quality?

Abstract

For a long time, prefabrication was seen as a peripheral, almost experimental solution, associated with niche markets or emergency responses. Today, that view no longer reflects reality. In a context of housing shortages, cost pressures, lack of skilled labour, and increasingly stringent environmental requirements, industrialised construction is no longer a technical curiosity. It has become a strategic necessity.

The question, therefore, is no longer whether prefabrication has a place in the future of construction. The question is why it still occupies such a limited space in a sector that urgently needs to gain productivity, predictability, and responsiveness.

Traditional construction continues to rely, to a large extent, on lengthy, fragmented processes that are highly exposed to the variability of the building site. Between delays, waste, incompatibilities between disciplines, execution failures, and costs that are difficult to control, the conventional model reveals limitations that the market can no longer accommodate with the same tolerance as in the past. And this is precisely where prefabrication becomes relevant.

By transferring a significant part of production to an industrial environment, it becomes possible to build with greater precision, greater repeatability, and better quality control. Instead of depending exclusively on on-site improvisation, construction can benefit from factory-produced components, with tighter tolerances, less exposure to weather conditions, and better coordination between design, production, and assembly. The gain is not only in speed. It is also reliable.

Technologies such as Light Steel Framing (LSF), engineered timber systems such as CLT, reinforced concrete panels and modules, and even 3D printing show that the industrialisation of construction is no longer limited to a single technical solution (Figure 1). On the contrary, the sector now has a plurality of systems capable of responding to different scales, programmes, and construction contexts. When combined with digital tools such as BIM, these systems become even more effective because they make it possible to anticipate problems, improve coordination between disciplines, and reduce errors before construction begins.

But prefabrication should not be defended only for reasons of speed. That would be too narrow an argument for a much broader issue. Its true potential lies in the possibility of transforming the productive logic of construction. And that means thinking of the building not merely as something constructed on site, but as something designed, coordinated, manufactured, transported, and assembled in an integrated way.