Challenges of off-site construction: A critical review

Off-site Construction (OSC) has been recognised as a promising construction method to tackle challenges of constructing structurally and functionally intricate contemporary buildings. Considering the current scale of OSC is not commensurate with traditional construction methods, to understand OSC-related opportunities and bottlenecks, a significant amount of research works has been carried out over the past decade. It is also perceived that formulation and utilisation of state-of-the-art technologies, applications and methods have gained growing attention for researchers that are striving for improving OSC performance in construction projects. Therefore, a rational understanding of technology development, bottlenecks and improvement is certainly of pivotal importance, which became the motive of this literature review study. This study, methodically, identified a total of 1212 publication records using Web of Science, followed by a literature screening process which remained 834 publications for further examination and analysis. Next, a co-citation network, co-occurrence keywords network and a timeline view of co-occurrence keywords were generated to visually present the solicited knowledge domains and research trends. With the fundamental challenges presented, this paper examined a wide range of information and communication technologies (ICT) that can be tentatively applied in OSC process. Last but not least, this paper also presented an in-depth reflection on the gaps-in-knowledge and resolutions for technological evolvement.