Offsite Construction Survey Early Results

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As an ongoing part of our Adoption Leaders Program,  this past month, we have been surveying members on their Offsite Construction practices. Results are being discussed in our E & C Adoption Leaders Forum, and are informing follow-ups like next week’s Modularization Analyst Call, and while we have garnered fewer responses in this leg of our surveys than in other surveys such as Preconstruction and Project Management Systems, we are able to see some clear trends within the membership. Further, the lower response rate, itself is indicative of the level of adoption of modularization as compared to other areas. While all of our contractors manage projects and, therefore, have need for project management systems, not all contractors automatically have need for modularization and prefabrication systems. Despite the lower rate of engagement in modularization from our members, we did find some interesting data in our surveys.

A significant majority of responding members do plan to increase the practice…

More than 70% of survey respondents indicated planning to increase use of offsite construction practices, as part of their three year strategies, indicating that for those companies that are engaged in offsite construction in their businesses, the majority are planning to increase the practice.

Offsite 2021 Survey response

…but application still focused on three primary product types.

2021 Offsite Survey Product Types

Another apparent reason for the more limited engagement around modularization and offsite construction stems from the apparent indications that modularization and fabrication techniques are still heavily concentrated in the multi-family, hospitality, and healthcare markets, and while those are big markets, only certain builders are heavily focused on those markets. Other contractors in other markets may, therefore, not see the applicability of modular techniques.   We expect to gather more data and survey results in the coming months, and while our data set is limited at the moment, it nonetheless points to an area of the ecosystem that continues to see growth, but on a much more limited basis than what we would expect to see in areas such as project management, accounting, and even certain areas of job site IoT.

The Adoption Leaders program has been developed to help those within industry organizations charged with identifying and adopting new technologies for their companies. If you are interested in the Adoption Leaders Forum, the Benchmarking Program, and other elements of our Adoption Leaders Program, you can contact us at research@builtworlds.com.