Prefabricated construction has been widely accepted as an alternative to conventional cast‐in‐situ construction, given its improved performance. Great efforts have also been made to develop prefabricated construction technologies in China. However, there is a lack of an appropriate pattern for evaluating its comprehensive economic merits, and reasonable mathematical models for providing a comparative analysis of conventional cast‐in‐situ and prefabricated building projects have yet to be developed. Therefore, the research in this paper aims to comprehensively evaluate the economic benefits of implementing prefabricated construction techniques in order to surpass the economic barrier and promote the development of prefabricated buildings in China. The comprehensive economic evaluation is formulated in terms of resource‐use efficiencies, project progress, and incentive policies. An apartment building in Shanghai is selected as a case study. Construction progress is simulated on the BIM platform when the same case study is rationally transformed from the prefabricated to the conventional cast‐in‐situ construction technique. The results reveal that the comprehensive economic merit can reach ¥739.6/m² when selecting the prefabricated construction process. The economic benefit brought by shortening the construction period can be regarded as the most significant contributor. Yet, the current incentive policies only contribute 7.1% of the comprehensive economic evaluation. Overall, this research contributes an assessment framework for decision‐making in the technique management of building construction. The BIM‐based simulation approach can greatly help investors to identify the relevant economic factors and adopt the latest incentive policies.

Previous studies have explored the factors to the usage of construction robotics (CRs). However, what is the most important factor affecting adoption of CRs considering multistakeholders? Do different stakeholders share similar interests or concerns? These questions have yet to be answered. Therefore, this study aims at identifying and assessing benefits and barriers affecting adoption of CRs in Hong Kong from a multistakeholder perspective. Factors were firstly identified through a systematic literature review in a scientometric approach and validated through a questionnaire survey. Then, the relative importance of these factors was calculated using mean scores ranking, and the stakeholder groups were segmented using $k$ -means algorithm. As a result, 14 benefit factors and 14 barrier factors were identified. Stakeholders were segmented into five groups based on common interests and concerns. The results present a better understanding for the importance of benefits and barriers affecting CRs adoption in Hong Kong considering the multiple stakeholders both individually and collectively. The findings suggest ways to facilitate the improvement of CRs to be more focused, efficient, and user-oriented. The results also contribute to finding further collaboration patterns between different stakeholders.

In order to achieve the sustainable growth of its urbanization and natural resources, China has been making great efforts to develop prefabricated construction technologies. However, the high incremental cost of prefabricated buildings (PRBs) is a fundamental obstacle to the latter. The current study mainly focuses on analyzing the incremental cost of the on-site construction stage. It is hard to comprehensively identify the incremental cost composition without considering the incremental cost caused by prefabricated components (PFCs) production. Moreover, the results of incremental cost calculation are not accurate enough by comparing the cost of two similar but different PRB and traditional buildings (TRB), and the case-based calculation results suffer from a lack of representation. To address these issues, we first establish a two-dimensional incremental cost index system from the dimension of cost items and prefabricated technologies to study the incremental cost composition of the whole construction stage. Additionally, based on China’s latest policies documents, the applicability of incremental cost composition items can also be improved. Then a building information modeling (BIM)-based calculation model is presented to avoid the calculation error caused by comparing the cost of two different PRBs and TRBs. To validate the proposed index system and calculation method, an actual prefabricated project in China is also conducted as a case study. The results suggest that: (1) Incremental cost is composed of band bearing and retaining walls and inner walls PFCs production, PFCs hoisting and grouting, post-pouring concrete, and full decoration. (2) The BIM-based incremental calculation result of a PRB case from Shanghai is within the range of the national average PRB incremental estimation results. The incremental cost composition items and BIM-based calculation approach can greatly help investors to identify the largest increase in cost and make effective cost optimization strategies.

Purpose: Digital technology, which is regarded as a prominent and transformational force in modern society, encompasses a wide variety of technology that utilize digital data to process, store and transfer various types of information. Digital technologies have continually been introduced as cutting-edge information tools in order to achieve effective management of vast information that arises from the prefabrication supply chain. However, without a sufficient performance evaluation, drawbacks of technology investment, such as financial losses and ineffective resource allocation, keep occurring, which hinders the widespread implementation of digital technologies. This study demonstrates a comprehensive evaluation of digital technologies’ effects on the prefabrication supply chain based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) theory. Design/methodology/approach: Specifically, the targeted digital technologies and project constraints were first identified through a systematic literature review. The effects of the digital technologies were then scored using a questionnaire survey. The TOPSIS model was established to quantitatively rank the effectiveness of selected digital technologies. Findings: Overall, BIM technology shone out in the rankings and is regarded as the most beneficial digital solution by multi-stakeholders to the existing constraints, such as working efficiency. Collaboration patterns between different stakeholders and technology integration trend were also indicated. Originality/value: Compared with existing outcomes, this study specifically focused on examining the effects of digital technologies on the prefabrication supply chain, the most significant link in the process for prefabricated structures. New findings indicate the overall performance that considered both multi-stakeholders’ preferences and project constraints. The quantitative evaluation presents a comprehensive understanding of digital technologies’ effects, enabling industrial participants to reach well-informed, strategic and profitable investment decisions.