Considerations for assessing the benefits of standardisation and pre-assembly in construction

This paper describes the findings of a six-month, pilot study funded by the EPSRC under the Meeting the Client's Needs through Standardisation (MCNS) LINK programme. The research explored the needs and opportunities for identifying and evaluating the benefit of standardisation and pre-assembly to the construction industry. The pilot study focused principally on pre-assembly in the Mechanical sector, drawing data from both manufacturing and construction processes. A principal aim of the study was to take a snapshot of how construction clients could derive greater benefit from pre-assembly. This was much broader in concept than the case studies within the Mechanical sector but nonetheless sufficiently related to maintain cohesion in the research. The principal conclusions of the pilot study were that: 1. No existing metrics were currently available to evaluate the benefits identified; and 2. Without these metrics comparative design decisions were being made based on capital cost or intuition alone.