Pro Tips for Your Prefab Project

Faster, cheaper, more efficient. Prefabrication helps many architects in their work, especially in the cramped urban areas or in unfavorable terrain. However, prefabrication is not the easy way out. Prefabrication still requires sufficient skills from its architect and strong planning. As with many architectural techniques, there are some tips to utilize prefabrication to its fullest.

1. Know Your Needs

Will you build in a suburb area? Are the clients asking for an eco-friendly home? Is the land you will build on brittle?

Answering many questions like these are important for prefabrication because they will impact your project greatly. Know the needs of your construction project and order the right materials from the prefabricators.

2. Collaborate with Your Team

Collaboration is the key to successful prefabrication. The whole board has to be involved, starting from the contractors, subcontractors, and the prefab manufacturers.

This is very important, especially during the early stage of the project. Successful collaboration will make you achieve maximum value of your project

3. Manage Time Effectively

Prefabrication is not a magical technique. It will not solve all your problems in one go if you cannot manage the time for each assembly. 

Parallel time management is needed for prefabrication: instead of thinking sequentially, think that each material has its own fabrication time. Then, plan which item that gets assembled first.

4. Plan with Details

Prefabrication needs detailed planning, as with any architectural techniques. Planning for prefabrication especially requires knowledge of subcomponents’ fabrication time and each team’s schedule.

Photo: Pixabay

Good prefabrication planning entails which team goes first, which teams work together, and when the subcomponent will enter the construction site. With good planning, contractors and prefabricators can avoid workflow traffic jams.

5. Consistency

Prefabrication is widely used for mass construction. Repetition is very common in prefabrication. Problems may arise in the first, second, even tenth construction. This is very normal in prefabrication for mass construction. The most important mindset is not to give up when the result is under your expectation. 

As prefabricators and contractors keep collaborating and understanding each other’s workflow, they will improve each other. Therefore, the more they work on constructions, the better the products will be.

Photo: Microlibrary Warak Kayu, Semarang. Prefabricated by KLI

Prefabrication is a powerful method if you understand the optimal way to do it. Whether it is steel, wood, or concrete, doing the tips above will make you achieve the maximum value of your project. Especially for wood, we at Kayu Lapis Indonesia are pleased to supply prefabricators out there with high-quality, FSC®️ and SVLK-certified wood for a new generation of sustainable constructions made of wood. Kindly reach on Instagram for more information and collaboration.

References: BDCNetwork