2013/05/01 by Xiaolin Zhai, Richard Reed, Anthony Mills
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · Engineering · #BIM and Construction Integration #Business #China #Constructability #Construction Project Management and Performance #Construction engineering #Construction industry #Economics #Engineering #Environmental planning #Housing industry #Marketing #Principal (computer security) #Production (economics) #Promotion (chess) #Supply chain #Value Engineering and Management
paper · doi:10.1080/01446193.2013.787491
crossref issued 2013/05/01 · crossref published 2013/05/01 · crossref published-online 2013/05/01 · openalex publication_date 2013/05/01 · crossref created 2013/05/01 · crossref published-print 2014/02/01 · crossref deposited 2016/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The promotion of offsite production is a possible future strategic direction for the construction industry as it provides economic, environmental and social benefits. However, in China, the uptake of offsite production, particularly in the housing sector, is relatively low and few studies have identified and examined the reasons behind this trend. This research gap is addressed and factors that inhibit the wider use of offsite production in China’s housing construction industry are investigated. A questionnaire survey was carried out, examining the views of 110 construction professionals in China including developers, designers, contractors, manufacturers and suppliers. Factor analysis of 21 separate variables was undertaken which extracted six principal factors, namely: ‘constructability implementation’, ‘social climate and attitudes’, ‘architectural performance’, ‘costing’, ‘supply chain’ and ‘preparatory stage’. The findings identify both barriers and challenges to increasing the uptake of offsite production in China. This provides a rare insight about the housing construction industry in China with possible implications for other developing countries that are seeking to identify and overcome barriers to the wider uptake of offsite production.