The traditional multi-person mode will gradually be eliminated. For the construction industry, "specialization," "precision," "distinctiveness," and "innovation" are also key factors determining whether construction companies can survive in the fierce market competition in the future. Each aspect of prefabricated construction is bringing new development opportunities for innovative enterprises.
01
Prefabricated construction will maintain a high-speed development trend in the next five to ten years.
From entering people's vision to forming a vigorous development trend, prefabricated construction only took a few years to become a "national policy." The development of prefabricated construction is an important part of the country's strategy to promote urbanization construction and is a key component in reforming the construction industry.
During the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, a strategic period for China's economic and social development from 2021 to 2025, efforts will be made to promote the new type of construction industrialization represented by prefabricated construction. The organic integration of the entire industry chain will be achieved by developing key elements such as the industrial chain, prefabricated construction, and hardware and software. This new path of construction industrialization, characterized by high technological content, good economic benefits, low resource consumption, minimal environmental pollution, and full play of human resource advantages, is an inevitable choice to address prominent problems in China's construction industry, such as being significant but not strong, weak industrial foundation, low level of coordination in the industrial chain, fragmented industrial organization, and backward construction methods. Prefabricated construction will enter a period of rapid development.
The State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Sustainable and Healthy Development of the Construction Industry," proposing that by 2025, the proportion of new prefabricated buildings in China's latest construction should reach 30%. Housing and Urban-Rural Development Departments across the country have also issued local development goals for prefabricated construction, with Shanghai leading the nation in popularizing prefabricated construction.
02
EPC's (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) general contracting mode and product competition will become mainstream in the market.
The EPC integrated construction mode, which meets the requirements of "highly planned" industrialized construction, is flourishing in China. Under this model, risks and benefits converge towards the general contractor, and the requirements for EPC general contractors are continuously increasing. The ideal state is that EPC general contractors should better understand the owners' needs and be able to provide rich, specialized, holistic solutions for owners to choose from. This capability requires EPC general contractors to have a sufficient accumulation of technical, management, professional teams, and supply chain resources in segmented industries and markets to win projects in fierce market competition. However, due to resource limitations, individual EPC general contractors can only form specialized competitive advantages in limited segmented markets. The earlier they lay out in specialized segmented markets, the more they can seize opportunities. The "specialization" advantage of segmented markets of EPC general contracting enterprises is often more favored by owners than the advantage of enterprise scale.
"Productization" of construction is a significant source of differentiation and core competitiveness of industrialized construction. The "standardization" accumulated by EPC general contractors in terms of technology, management, professional teams, and supply chain resources for segmented industries and markets will form a series of "building products" available for owners to choose from to meet different needs, such as cost, construction period, and quality. The construction of "proprietary products" by enterprises and the corresponding "vertical supply chain" construction are the primary sources of core competitiveness for EPC general contractors to win markets and improve quality and efficiency. EPC's general contracting mode and product competition will become the mainstream in the market.
03
Intelligence drives upgrading industrialized construction, promoting efficient integration of vertical industrial chains.
The development of prefabricated construction itself is a systematic project. Compared with traditional cast-in-place structural systems, prefabricated construction has brought about many changes, including structural systems, production methods, and business models. It requires that enterprises develop, design, produce, and decorate the entire industry chain, which is still a significant challenge for many enterprises. The development direction of industrialized construction is to develop new methods to achieve efficient, high-quality, low-consumption, and low-emission construction processes.
From a macro perspective, new construction methods are realized through integrated design, lean construction, digital integration, mode innovation, and technological leadership. The future development path of industrialized construction includes dry connection processes, high-strength and high-performance materials, prefabrication combined with replication methods, the model of partner industrial chains, and intelligent technologies with little or even no human involvement.
04
The transformation trend of migrant workers into industrial workers accelerates with industrialized construction.
As prefabricated construction and industrialized construction gradually become the new normal in the construction industry, it brings about revolutionary changes in the construction industry: outdated production processes and equipment are progressively replaced by new technologies and equipment, and the main battlefield of the construction industry gradually transitions from construction sites to factories. Workers face complex drawings, advanced construction techniques, large-scale machinery and equipment, and rigorous management. What is needed on the front line of construction is no longer traditional manual laborers but industrial workers with professional skills and overall high quality.
The construction industry has entered a new stage of deepening reform, and the labor employment model of the construction industry faces new changes and characteristics: changes in the mode of labor provision. As labor service companies gradually withdraw from the stage of labor provision, the traditional labor employment model dominated by labor service companies' comprehensive subcontracting will also progressively exit the stage of labor provision and move towards a new labor employment model dominated by construction operation enterprises providing qualified labor resources. The primary forms and carriers of labor employment will change.
In the future, construction operation enterprises will replace the primary forms and carriers of labor employment in the construction industry. The rise of prefabricated construction systems will prompt general contracting enterprises to transform into industrial production and establish their skilled workforce, accelerating the transformation of migrant workers into industrial workers.
05
Waste disposal and the application of new materials are essential opportunities for the green development of industrialized construction.
China's total emissions and per capita emissions of construction waste rank first globally. As a manufacturing power, China has a vast amount of industrial solid waste that needs to be disposed of urgently. The transportation cost of these solid wastes is high, and they can only be processed by manufacturing them into prefabricated products in factories. The promotion of industrialized construction methods will significantly reduce construction waste generation. On the other hand, ultra-high-strength concrete, new carbon fiber materials, and new insulation materials have high requirements for the manufacturing environment, which construction sites often cannot meet. Manufacturing them into high-quality products with market competitiveness through factory prefabrication is essential for promoting and applying these new materials. It may also form segmented high-growth markets.
This above is excerpted from "Construction in China under the Dual Carbon Goals (双碳目标下的中国建造) " by Mao Zhibing (毛志兵) for the AAPM official WeChat account.