Abstract:
Traditional on-site construction, as a common method, has been criticized because of its inherent drawbacks; such as, long construction time, low productivity, weather sensitivity, wastage of resource, environmental pollution, poor safety, etc. To mitigate the mentioned challenges, prefabrication has been introduced as an alternative mode for promoting sustainability and performance to the construction industry. This study investigates the use of prefabricated concrete technology, which is currently at its infant stage in our country as a best alternative strategy considering, two governing parameters; time and cost. The main objective of the research is to examine the impact of prefabricated concrete technology on cost and time. The study focused on comparing in-situ construction method with prefabricated concrete technology practice. The study also tried to identify factors that hinder the industry from adopting this technology in local building construction projects. It attempts to show direction for investors to take part in this supposedly alternative strategy. The study aims at filling the knowledge gap by analyzing cost and time-savings, and productivity improvement that can be achievable by the use of prefab in place of the conventional building system (CBS).To achieve the stated objective questionnaire surveys, interviews and desk studies were conducted. The data were analyzed and discussed in-depth to arrive at a conclusion. The findings indicated that pre-cast construction method happens to increase in investment cost in the range of 16.5%-25.4% than that of the cast in-situ method. However, since the construction time of the conventional method is more than 423%, the saving in time using pre-cast concrete system undoubtedly disproves the cast-in-situ manifestation through a quick turnover period to pay-back the incurred cost.