Grant: Alliance Grants

Building construction is an important industrial sector, yet it is lagging in innovation, employing conventional methods with high rates of waste, human error, rework, and occupational hazards. To address these issues, the following objectives will be pursued: (1) characterize the current practice and use lean concepts to improve the productivity of the offsite building construction sector; (2) develop technologies to facilitate mechanization and automation of the offsite building construction sector; (3) develop a framework for data-driven planning and management in construction manufacturing; (4) propose a building information modelling (BIM)-based framework to automate drafting and design for manufacturing, automate the assessment of GHG, and automate the assessment of building system energy demand to support low-energy building technologies; (5) apply artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to digitalize the manufacturing process; (6) improve occupational safety through ergonomics studies; and (7) develop a framework for onsite installation of prefabricated building components using mobile cranes. ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS: (i) carry out simulation-based/comparative CO2 quantification as the basis for developing low-ecological impact construction practices; (ii) reduce material waste; and (iii) minimize emissions from the manufacturing process through the application of BIM, automated drafting and design, and advanced automation. OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH BENEFITS: develop manufacturing technologies and best practices that improve safety through ergonomic measures. This will involve intelligent work assessments and physical demand analysis to establish best practices for injury prevention in construction manufacturing. ECONOMIC BENEFITS: contribute to Canada's economy by: (i) contributing to job creation, including skilled positions in automation; (ii) improving productivity by mitigating human error, reducing rework, and enabling continuous production through automation; (iii) training HQP with expertise in implementing industrialization; (iv) enhancing affordability through more efficient construction processes; and (v) developing exportable building products/components.