Comparative Study on Precast and Conventional Building Constructions for Housing Project

Tan, Let Hui (2020) Comparative Study on Precast and Conventional Building Constructions for Housing Project. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

This research presents an overview on the comparative study between the precast and conventional building construction method for low-rise housing project. In this research, double-storey terrace houses was chosen for the comparative study since it shows that Malaysia construction industry usually integrated the precast building construction method into high-rise governmental projects or projects with high repeatability in structures instead of a low-rise residential housing project. This is due to the problem of which precast construction method raised the least economic benefits for building projects of less than 5- storey. In this research study, the same building submission drawing was designed into both conventional and precast structural layout respectively in order to obtain direct comparison results. In this research, all the structural components integrated in both construction methods were listed and each critical component cost, for instance the project direct and indirect costs were broken down further to evaluate the total building construction costs. From the results, the relationship between the time and costs has induced. The overall construction period for the conventional building construction method was 240 days while the precast building construction method was 82 days. It shows that the precast building construction method is more time effective with 158 days less as compared to conventional building construction method. In term of project construction costs, the conventional building construction method used up of 10% on the labour costs and 65% on plant rates. Conversely, precast building construction methods consumed only 27% on plant rates but 15% on labour costs. The results indicate that the expenditure of the plant rate for conventional building construction method is significantly different by almost 2.5 times higher than the plant rates of precast building construction method. However, precast building construction method shows relatively higher costs with 31% on the labour costs. In term of material costs, precast building construction method only showed cost benefits in terms of ultilising the precast slab, precast staircase and precast wall panel. It is however, the precast building construction method showed higher material costs in precast column and precast beam. Nevertheless, the conventional building construction method only used up 25% on the material costs. Conversely, the precast building construction method has used up 58% on the material costs. As compared across each cost component for the project construction direct costs, it showed that material costs (58%) is the critical cost component for the precast building construction method while the plant rates (65%) is the critical cost component for the conventional building construction method. As summed up with the project indirect costs of RM211,500.00 for the site management personnel to each respective building construction methods, the project total costs for conventional building construction method is RM634,187.85 while precast building construction method gave a total of RM566,468.50. Therefore, the precast construction method is more cost effective with about 19% less than the conventional building method. The results imply the significance on selection of the construction method, namely the precast building construction method, is not only shorten the construction period but also tend to reduce the construction costs since it reduced greatly the expenses on the project direct costs particularly on the machineries costs.

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