ANALYSIS OF HVAC SUBCONTRACTOR MECHANISMS FOR JIT MATERIALS SUPPLY TO A CONSTRUCTION SITE

Industrialization has been pointed out as a major requirement to improve efficiency, quality, and safety in construction projects. Nonetheless, some of the side effects of industrialization are increasing the complexity of construction by including new technologies, engaging different subcontractors; increasing interdependencies between trades; and so forth. The aim of this paper is to develop a planning procedure for facilitating the integration between off-site fabrication and on-site installation, for achieving a just-in-time delivery, based on an action research study conducted with an HVAC subcontractor. It is part of a wider research project, aiming to develop a planning and control model for engineer-to-order (ETO) prefabricated building systems. The procedure developed in this research helped the team to review the schedule proposed by the GC in terms of constructability, get team consensus regarding installation sequence, improve communication between contractor and fabricators, support fabricators in defining fabrication rhythms and mix of production; and helped the project team solving logistic challenges. The main challenge faced in this research was related uncertainty and unforeseen changes to the developed plans. As a result, we also explored a way of tying fabrication plans to critical activities in the job site to facilitate matching fabrication rate with site demand.