A decision support system tool for selecting and identifying off-site construction systems and components.

Abstract

Many studies have shown the positive impact of applying lean principles in off-site construction. Although efforts were channeled towards comparing off-site versus on-site construction systems, none has performed a comparison among off-site non-volumetric systems (e.g. panelized and natural materials), volumetric systems, and hybrid systems. Additionally, none have performed a granular comparison among the off-site system components. They have only focused on different types of off-site construction without sufficiently considering and comparing their respective attributes. In fact, off-site systems and components present different advantages and disadvantages implying a need to evaluate their value maximization in terms of cost, time, quality, etc. Therefore, this research study presents a decision making evaluation tool targeted at: (1) extracting and elaborately analyzing the attributes associated with the different off-site systems and components, (2) identifying the optimal off-site systems for a given project by resorting to the Analytical Hierarchy Process technique (AHP), and (3) identifying the optimal components through a Choosing by Advantage technique (CBA). The outcomes of this study will yield standardized policies for properly choosing optimal off-site systems and components based on lean principles.