Effect of stakeholder collaborative management on off-site construction cost performance
Introduction
The off-site construction (OSC) method includes many innovations in the construction and building industry. The benefits of OSC include but are not limited to: reduction in waste (Perera et al., 1999, Yusof et al., 2017), time (Chen et al., 2010), labor, cost (Mao et al., 2016), health and safety (HS) risks, and environmental pollution (Fan et al., 2016, Law et al., 2017, Matic et al., 2015); as well as improved profits, predictability, and life-cycle performance (Polat, 2008, Samani et al., 2017). However, the development of OSC has not been optimistic (Rahman, 2014). There were some hindrances to OSC such as high cost, lack of standards, over-reliance on traditional on-site mode, and poor quality problems (Hwang et al., 2017, Polat, 2008, Rieckhof et al., 2015). Among these hindrances, high cost has been seen as the most important factor hindering the OSC development (Mao et al., 2016). 85% of the clients refused to choose the OSC method due to the high cost (Dainty, 2012). The government has formulated specific polices to buffer price difference, such as area exemption, pre-sale, and tax relief, etc. (Tam et al., 2007, Winch, 2010). However, the cost of OSC was still 10%–20% higher than traditional on-site construction (Chen et al., 2010) and the cost issue of OSC has not been effectively solved (Zhang et al., 2011). Exploring cost-saving strategy has become one of the most important step to OSC development.
However, Polat (2010) revealed that 93% of the contractors achieved cost savings due to collaboration. The stakeholders can form long-term cooperation or alliance relations for benefits in project management by communication and cooperation (Kishna et al., 2017, Safford et al., 2009). Based on communication and coordination, stakeholders set up network relationships. Information and resources are transferred through network relationships among the stakeholders. Information flow, and resource sharing positively tend to affect project management and reduce cost in OCS (Yang et al., 2009). Collaborative management mode derives from information and resources sharing among stakeholders (Sánchez, 2015, van Popering-Verkerk and van Buuren, 2017). Stakeholders further explore collaborative management modes to achieve information exchange and resource sharing (Park et al., 2011), and then improve cost performance for OSC. Hence, exploring the effect of stakeholder collaborative management on cost performance of OSC is a successful way to solve the high cost problem of OSC, which can further promote the OSC development. Although the collaborative management among stakeholders is conducive to OSC cost management, few studies have explored the stakeholder collaborative management relating to clients, contractors, designers, supervisor, and PC manufacturers in a systematic way. Meanwhile, the effect of stakeholder collaborative management on OSC cost performance has not been quantitatively studied by actual cases of OSC. Our study aims to explore the inherent relationship between stakeholder collaborative management and cost performance of OSC through interviews and case studies. The research objectives are to combine network relationships with stakeholder collaborative management for quantitative analysis, and explore the relationship between stakeholder collaborative management and cost performance of OSC.
Section snippets
Off-site construction
Previous studies have played an important role in promoting the OSC development. Numerous studies have identified its implications, general values, drivers for and barriers to OSC. Jaillon and Poon (2008) reported the feasibility and effectiveness of OSC, and found that OSC achieve an average 15% and 16% reduction in construction time and labor requirement, respectively. Timber formwork and concrete works can be reduced by 74%–87% and 51%–60%, and saved 55% of the concrete quantities on-site (
Research instrument
SNA has been recognized as a successful tool to explore the stakeholder collaboration relationship social network (Yang et al., 2011). This technique was proposed by Rowley in the field of stakeholder research (Freeman, 1979). Further, SNA has been used in stakeholder management in the construction industry (Mok et al., 2015). The technical foundations of SNA are sociometrics and graph theory. Social network is mainly made up of actors, groups and relations. The position of the actor in the
Data collection
This study was supported by the MOHURD and a large-scaled Chinese developer in the construction industry, which has contributed to promoting the OSC development for more than ten years. A total of 14 cases implemented from 2012 to 2016 years were provided by the firm to explore the OSC project management mode. Considering that there are some uncontrollable variables (i.e. technical innovation, geographical variation, management level and project characteristics), three similar cases were
Comparison the OSC cost performance
In contrast to case A, the designers established collaboration with the PC manufacturers in case B. Collaboration increased the information exchange and resource sharing between the designers and PC manufacturers. The cost saving in case B was achieved as follows: unilateral cost was reduced by 3%; PC production cost was reduced by 2.4%; labor cost of production workers was saved by 11.4% due to technology maturity and training reduction; mold cost was saved by 11.9% because of design
Conclusion and recommendations
OSC is at the early stages of development. Higher cost was the most significant barrier to the OSC development. 85% of the clients refused to choose the OSC method due to the higher cost (Jørgensen, 2008, Pan et al., 2007). Cost management is the primary task for promoting the OSC development. Collaborative project management was conducive to reduce cost of OSC through collaboration among stakeholders (van Offenbeek and Vos, 2016). The following conclusions were drawn from this study:
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Project of the National Thirteenth-Five-year Research Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFC0701600). The authors are grateful to people who helped undertake the research and improve this article. We would also like to thank the editors and reviewers of Journal of Cleaner Production for their insightful comments on this research.
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