Prefabrication Best Practices and Improvement Opportunities for Electrical Construction

Abstract

Prefabrication is a construction operations approach that moves project work to a controlled offsite facility to be accomplished in a standardized and efficient manner. Prefabrication is increasingly becoming attractive to electrical contractors to improve their competitiveness due to reported safety, time, and cost benefits. This paper presents the findings of an industry-sponsored research study to identify current best practices of electrical construction prefabrication and future improvement opportunities that consider prefabrication dependency on supply chain collaboration and labor union relations. The study tasks are performed in three main phases. First, current state of electrical construction prefabrication is identified through a comprehensive data collection plan that included semistructured interview, site visits, case studies, and questionnaires. The second phase included suggesting a set of best practices of electrical contracting industrialization, related to prefabrication operational/design requirements, role of vendor/distributors, and role of part manufacturers. The third phase involved the identification of future improvement opportunities for electrical contractors’ industrialization, which include promoting mutually-rewarding relations among workers’ union locals, and increasing implementation of lean principles. The study should prove useful to electrical contractors who seek to start or improve their prefabrication operations, and to industry advocates who seek to improve its performance through better supply chain collaborations and improved union relations. The major contributions of this paper include developing a set of data-driven prefabrication best practices and improvement opportunities for electrical contractors.