The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010
Perspective of Malaysian Industrialized Building System on the Modern Method of Construction M.N.A. Azman†1 M.S.S. Ahamad2 Universiti Sains Malaysia School of Civil Engineering, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia. Email:
[email protected] [email protected] T.A. Majid Universiti Sains Malaysia School of Civil Engineering, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia. Email:
[email protected] M.H. Hanafi Universiti Sains Malaysia School of Housing Building and Planning, 11800, Penang, Malaysia. Email:
[email protected] Abstract - Industrialized building system (IBS) is defined as a construction system where components are manufactured at factories on or off-site, transported and then assembled into a structure with minimum work. It involves prefabrication and installation of components at the construction site. Currently the most popular type of manufacturing in Malaysia is off-site which situated at significant distance from the site. Modern methods of construction (MMC) is the term used by the UK government to describe a number of innovations in house building, most of which are offsite technologies, moving work from the construction site to the factory. The term Offsite Manufacturing (OSM) and Offsite Production (OSP) are different with respect to construction processes which are away from the construction site, such as in a factory or created in temporary production facilities close to the construction site. Thus the Malaysia construction industry faces unique challenges in transforming construction into a modern and efficient industry. Over the years, the total number of IBS factory sites has increased from 21 (2002) to 143 factories (2009). This research studies the demands of IBS components under different category and identifies the pattern of off-site in Malaysia. The research findings will benefit both the government and private sectors in fulfilling the demand of IBS components in Northern Peninsular, West Peninsular of Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak where the number of manufacturers is still low. Keywords: Industrialized Building System (IBS), Modern Method of Construction (MMC), Off-site Manufacturing (OSM), IBS components, pattern of off-site
1. INTRODUCTION The construction industry has currently been transformed into a mass production in developing the standardization of products in line with the global market. The government is aware of the importance of developing a capable construction industry driven by technological developments in the manufacturing and service industry that can to contribute to the economy. In Singapore, the
________________________________________ † : Corresponding Author
great concern was stated in the C21 report that highlights the blue print of Singapore‘s construction industry identifying six strategic thrusts requirement for Singapore to become a world-class construction industry (Dulaimi et al. 2004). The six strategic thrusts are enhancing the professionalism of the industry; raising the skills level; improving industry practices and techniques; adopting an integrated approach to construction; developing export capabilities; and developing export capabilities. This
The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010 strategy has an effect to the Malaysia construction industry in learning the value added from the construction industry from countries that has achieved global recognition such as UK and Australia. Effect In Malaysia, the IBS was initiated in 1964 by the Housing and Local Government after making reference to the success of several European countries (Thanoon et al. 2003). The players in the industry preferred to use the conventional method until the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) educated the industry on the essential usage of IBS components and conducted awareness programs on usage of IBS since 1998. CIDB have conducted three IBS survey in 2003, 2005 and 2008 where the respondents comprised of contractors and architects (Majid et al. 2010). It recorded recent trends of the IBS components system and shown increasing number of correspondents giving good response on the benefits of using IBS as reflected in the Malaysia‘s achievement of IBS usage in the building construction. As part of the government policy in encouraging the use of IBS, the government has make authorization that 70% of IBS components must be use in government projects that valued RM10 million above (Treasury 2008). Creativity and innovative ideas is needed in improving the usage of Malaysian IBS components through the usage of appropriate technology suitable to the Malaysian climatic condition. As in the ancient world, construction materials is being made to adapt to the climatic condition, natural resources, collective local skills and able to comprehend the performance characteristics of the construction materials (Ngowi et al. 2004). This paper is divided into four sections. The first two section explain the principles underlying the improve performance in manufacturing by illustrating some similarity of the construction industry in UK and Australia. The third section assesses the principles of modern method of construction in Malaysia by highlighting the similarity and difference between UK and Australia. The final section reviews the pattern of IBS manufacturing in Malaysia.
2. OFFSITE MANUFACTURING IN UK The UK government initially learned the manufacturing system from Japan through the Toyota concept (one of the largest car manufacturers in the world) that builds up the ‗Toyota Homes‘ for house manufacturing in 1975 (Gann, 1996). The concept has given the added value to the customer in having the both properties made up by Toyota. Gann (1996) visited Japan eight times between 1990 and 1995 along with ongoing collaborative research between UK and Japanese researchers on the innovation in the construction sector. In 1940s, Toyota came out with a new approach on the organization of production, the use of
plant, management resources, quality control and relationships between producers and costumers. Womack (1990) identified that approach as the new system of mass production which is more efficient and responsive system and named it as ‗lean production‘. The circumstances in UK construction industry is facing ‗traditional‘ technology that comprise of brick/concrete block cavity wall methods, timber/precast floors and timber truss roofs (Pan et al. 2007). Moreover, the house buyers are strongly influenced by negative perceptions of the MMC innovation in houses construction that will spoil the authentic ‗traditional‘ houses (Edge et al. 2002). This has affected the construction industry and the innovative in building technologies is having difficulty to be implemented by industry players (Pan et al. 2007; Ball 1999; Barlow 1999; Roskrow 2004). The UK government came with a solution by introducing the modern method of construction to describe the number of innovations in offsite technologies which can be applied in house building (Gibb 1999). This is a challenge to adopt the combination of growth demand with poor quality and low productivity that the construction players need a ‗step change‘ in construction techniques and processes (Buildoffsite 2005). The purpose of focusing on the step-increase in offsite is to ensure the increased quality and productivity with a consequent reduction in true unit cost. The MMC also increased the speed of construction works and save cost as compared to traditional houses. There have been numerous studies on the perspective of MMC in UK by Edge et al. (2002), Wellings (2003), Venables et al. (2004), Goodier and Gibb (2004), and the most recent is by Pan et al. (2007). Pan et al. (2007) performed a survey on top 100 house builders using mix qualitative and quantitative questionnaire through methodical use of Likert scales. The trend of the house building indicated that nearly two-thirds needs to increase the take-up of offsite MMC applications. However the scenario shows that there was a gap in getting complete modular buildings and buildings build up by mix MMC and ‗traditional‘ methods. Conversely, the barriers in applying the MMC is the higher capital cost, difficulty to achieve economies of scale, complex interfacing between systems, unable to freeze the design early on and the nature of the UK planning system. The suggested solution was to reveal the essentiality of MMC between the industry players and end users to have construction community framework strategies in encouraging the take-up of offsite technologies in the housing sector. Pan et al. (2007) designed a decisionmaking process on the use of offsite technologies and transferring knowledge to house building from the general construction as shown in Figure 1. Further associated studies has also illustrated that the usage of OSM in UK housing sector was very low (Pan
The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010 et al. 2008). OSM may be useful in helping house builders to understand off-site-MMC practice of such firms. But there is still reluctance among clients and contractor to adopt OSM as it happens to barriers in using MMC in house building. The UK government has already spent up to £10 million in research projects that included construction OSM between 1997 and 2001 (Gibb 2001). The government and researchers have tried give awareness and ‗step-change‘ to the industries of the essential MMC and OSM construction industry in order to structure the formalization productivity and quality.
They analyzed the problem encountered on OSM usage in construction industry and recognized future investment and research to dissolve the setbacks (Blismas 2 0 0 7 ) . OSM is similar to the term used in Off-Site Fabrication (OSF), Off-Site Production (OSP), Off-Site Construction (OSC), pre-assembly and prefabrication (Goodier and Gibb 2004; Buildoffsite 2005). But for consistency in using the construction term in Australia, OSM was used as being stated in Construction 2020 Report (Hampson and Brandon 2004). Goodier and Gibb (2004) experienced some difficulty in tracing the history value of OSM in Australia. There was vague boundaries exists between some traditional and OSM approaches, as well as data reported on the performance of construction and manufacturing industries. Blismas and Wakefield (2008) performed a qualitative survey-based methodology in Australia to study the state-of-the-art of OSM. Eventually, the approaches of research OSM are merely web research, workshops, interview survey and case studies. The details of research findings are shown in Table 1 and 2 respectively. In a further research attempt, Gibb (1999) produced a categorization of OSM where the system groups are broken up into four levels that was associated with the degree of off-site work as indicated in Figure 2. Level
Source: Pan et al. (2007) Figure 1: Model of house building stakeholders from the perspective of house builders
3. OSM IN AUSTRALIA Off-Site Manufacture (OSM) term has been well known in Australia and internationally as in UK, US and European countries. The government of Australia and researchers have played vital role in educating their construction industry and they have come out with a master planned of C2020 Vision for future construction industry of Australia (Blismas 2007). The national research has established the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) in 2001 to determine the ‗state-of-the-art‘ OSM in Australia.
Increasing level of OSM
1
Category Component manufacture & sub-assembly
2
Non-volumetric preassembly
3
Volumetric pre-assembly
4
Modular building
Definition Items always made in a factory and never considered for onsite production Pre-assembled units which do not enclose usable space (e.g. timber roof trusses) Pre-assembled units which enclose usable space and are typically fully factory finished internally, but do not form the buildings structure (e.g. toilet and bathroom pods) Pre-assembled volumetric units which also form the actual structure and fabric (e.g. prison cell units or hotel/motel rooms)
Source: Goodier and Gibb (2004) Figure 2: Levels of OSM
Table 1: The design approach study of OSM No
Approach
Findings
1
Web-search
Indicate fast types & variety of products OSM
2
Workshops
3
Interview surveys
4
Case studies
45 participants among clients, designers, constructors, suppliers and researchers. Open discussion on the issue of OSM and recorded all the discussion by ‗note taker‘. 18 interviews undertaken during workshops to support the workshop data 7 case studies had involved site visits and interviews to key persons in the organizations and project teams.
Constraint/ Strength Methodology is weak but makes sense scope of OSM. The comprehensive search produced 50 manufacturers. Focus on the drivers, benefits, constraints and barriers of OSM. The notes and delegates responses were collected into four documents coded with NVIVO into 12 general themes show in table 2. Highlight the benefits, barriers and lesson learnt
The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010 Table 2: 12 Themes of OSM as drivers and constraints No Theme 1 Onsite trade skills 2 Process and program 3 Cost, value and productivity 4 Industry and professionalism knowledge 5 Industry and market culture 6 Quality 7 Environment sustainability 8 Occupational health and safety risks 9 Supply-chain and procurement 10 People and work conditions 11 Logistics and site operations 12 Regulatory Source: Blismas and Wakefield (2008)
construction industry market into global market chain value. With the intention to adopt the increasingly rapid technological changes, IBS is expected to play a greater role in ensuring improvement in construction activities and sustainable economic growth. The commitment of the government in encouraging the use of this approach can be seen with the development of the Roadmap IBS 2003-2010. The Roadmap was aimed at providing guidelines towards the establishment of an industrialized construction sector as well as achieving an open construction system by 2010. However, the effectiveness of implementing IBS at construction sites approach should be reviewed and tested in more detail towards the success and effectiveness of the Construction Industry Master Plan (CIMP) 2006-2015 (CIDB 2007). Figure 3 described the key milestone of the IBS.
Based on the comparative analysis, the main theme for the drive and the constraint for OSM are both regarding skills and knowledge. The OSM industry is expending and will have great demand of the trade skills worker as well as changing the focus on the explored alternate procurement and the vital assessment for the logistic and site operation of OSM.
3. IBS MALAYSIA The vital issue on the awareness of Modern Method of Construction (MMC), Off-Site Manufacturing (OSM) and Industrialized Building System (IBS) has common related drive and attribute constraints that started seriously in early 90‘s. In addition, the global economic expansion and the growth of population causing the increase market price of houses has forced the government to concern with the bottom billion having an affordable houses. In Malaysia, the CIDB (Construction Industry Development Board) have played an important role in changing the paradigm of construction industry into more knowledgeable, achieving high skills and flexibility of competitive products having the same view as the construction industry in UK and Australia (Blismas et al. 2006, Blismas and Wakefield 2008, Pan et al. 2008, Nadim and Goulding 2009, Majid et al. 2010). The similarity and obstacle of IBS, MMC and OSM is to have a break through to the end user and client‘s negative perspective of the architectural value as well as to make aware of the construction industry benefits when applying the off-site technology for the long term investment. In addition, the government and the financial support play an important role to ensure the policy and regulatory work well with construction industry especially in training and adequate monetary aid to the small and medium entrepreneur. The main benefits will be high quality products, fast track completion projects, reduced foreign workers and changing the perception of
Source: IBS Info 2010 Figure 3: Key Milestones IBS
4. THE PATTERN OF IBS MANUFACTURER The shift in the trend of construction industry in Malaysia is shown in Table 3. Table 3: The trend construction industry Malaysia Traditional
Construction
Manufacturing
Project based
Project based
Product based
Short term project
Short term project
Undefined profit and gain low profit
Profit from customized solutions
Take long time to complete project
Delay project (Lim and Mohamed 2000, Alaghbari et al. 2007)
Very manual
Manual
Long term project Profit in volumes of similar products (Gann 1996) Early completion project/ meet timeline (Kadir et al. 2005) Higher mechanization due to repeatability process and able to produce high quality
Consequently, the IBS component has also undergone changes since the early 60‘s until 2010, following the new trend of technology as being described in Table 4.
The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010 Table 4: Categorization of IBS Components IBS Introduce in
Categorization of IBS
Early 60‘s
Badir et al. (2002)
Early 90‘s
Badir and Razali (1998)
2003
2010
CIDB (2003)
CIDB (2010)
IBS Component i. ii. iii. i. ii. iii. iv. i. ii. iii. iv. v. i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.
Frame System Panel System Box System Precast concrete framing, panel and box systems Load bearing block Sandwich panel Steel frame Pre-cast concrete framing, panel and box systems Formworks systems Steel framing systems Prefabricated timber framing systems Block work systems Pre-cast concrete systems Formworks systems Steel framing systems Prefabricated timber framing systems Block work systems Innovative
Based on the evolution of IBS components and extension types, the number of IBS manufacturer and IBS products has also increased. The number of IBS manufacturers has gradually increased from 75 (in 2009) to almost twice the number as reported in IBS Info 2020 (Azman et al. 2009). The most popular IBS components used in construction industry are precast concrete system and formworks system as described in Figure 4.
number of IBS manufacturer in each state is shown in Table 5. Most of the construction sites of government funded projects are concentrated in South-East Peninsular especially Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. The main factor for IBS manufacturing set up are due to the government projects availability, demographic, facilities management, proximity to the development area and high prospect of economic expansion. Table 5: The number of IBS Manufacturer for each state Total IBS Manufacture
Project Government 1 Dec 2009
Value Government of Projects
3
5
81940361
Perak
2
17
367556944
Selangor
49
96
1689576357
Kuala Lumpur
26
35
1697471063
N. Sembilan
1
22
703288724
Melaka
3
9
169265901
Johor
4
50
532674838
Pahang
2
9
415560236
Terengganu
5
8
248445655
Kelantan
1
9
307717400
Sabah
3
12
539498898
Sarawak
3
5
191200000
State Pulau Pinang
Source: Orange book (2009) and Coordination Unit (ICU), JPM (2009)
Implementation
5. CONCLUSION
Source: IBS Info (2010) Figure 4: The number of IBS Manufacturer and IBS Products An analysis to correlate with Government mandatory rule pertaining to government funded construction projects using 70% of IBS components in proportion with the
In order to establish the IBS, MMC and OSM in the construction industry will require all participants to acquire knowledge on the current technology in the construction industry in order to compete globally and adjust to the current economic changes. The industry should also respond and co-operate with the initiative by the government to encourage off-site manufacturing and to embark on research work to increase the standard of the construction industry. The experience and problems faced in setting up off-site manufacturing should be shared and there should also be an exchange of knowledge to motivate and educate other countries to move to a higher level of development for the construction industry. The trend or change in the pattern of the IBS industry has gone through a few transitions from the conventional method to the prefabrication stages. The precast concrete system and formworks system are the most popularly use in the IBS industry and the government needs to be responsive to this phenomenal change and provide more capital investment for automation and robotics technology in order to make Malaysia ahead in the transformation of the IBS industry. This research manages to determine the
The 11th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Conference The 14th Asia Pacific Regional Meeting of International Foundation for Production Research Melaka, 7 – 10 December 2010 physical and social factors for the setting up of IBS, MMC and OSM manufacturing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Authors wish to thank the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for the providing the data.
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[email protected].
