Performance of the Supply Chains for Prefabricated and Offsite Construction

Globally, the construction industry increasingly relies on technological innovations to address its historical challenges, such as delays, cost overruns, poor quality, increasing accidents, and sustainability. Prefabricated and offsite construction (POC), which falls under modern construction methods, is considered a technological innovation with the potential to improve product, process, and people dimensions in the construction industry. The need for POC emerged as an alternative construction approach to support the need for providing quick solutions for establishing new settlements and recovery from natural and man-made disasters. Nevertheless, the successful implementation of POC relies mainly on the performance of the supply chain, which includes manufacturers, suppliers, subcontractors, and builders, each positioned at different tiers of the project supply side, sourcing prefabricated products. These supply chains could be acknowledged as the flag bearers of innovation and are defined based on involvement in the design, manufacturing, and construction processes, with full or partial integration. That being said, a concerning trend in the market is that most of these supply chain members fail to sustain their businesses beyond a few years due to not being aligned with the performance requirements of the competitive environment. This emphasizes the need for understanding the links and interrelationships between the dynamics that affect the POC supply chains through a systems theory perspective.



The primary aim of this topic is to provide a platform for theoretical and empirical approaches to improve the performance of the POC supply chains. We aim to bring together researchers and practitioners and explore all the venues of interventions and the adoption of theories and practices from other disciplines to POC. There is broader potential for strategies, models, frameworks, or more systematic approaches to be conceptualized, developed, or implemented. This issue will provide guidelines for the supply chains of prefabricated construction to improve performance by considering viable solutions. This issue only focuses on the performance of supply chains, and how these supply chains are selected or evaluated from the buyer perspective is not within the scope.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Performance measurement and benchmarking

• Capability, competency and skill needs

• Organizational management and behavior

• Digitalization, automation and Industrialization

• Structuring and Business model innovation

• Risk management and resilience

• Business failures

• Supply chain management and alignment

• Lean, agile and leagile practices

• Buyer-supplier relation and connectivity

• Knowledge development, sharing, alignment and management

• Logistics and on-site integration

• Sustainability and Circular Economy

• Social Interaction and Relational Marketing





Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts that offer novel perspectives, empirical evidence, or practical guides on how the supply chains of prefabricated construction improve their performance. Papers should be original, unpublished, and not currently under review elsewhere. Submission guidelines and deadlines will be available on the Frontier in Built Environment website.



All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserve the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any peer review stage.