Modular Construction

Abstract

The housing market in the Netherlands faces two challenges which are the housing shortage and the climate crisis. Modular construction can help solve these challenges due to the many advantages that modular construction has over traditional construction. The advantages that are most related to solving these challenges are the reduced construction time, reduced waste production, reduced transportation movements and the reusability of modules. On top of these advantages modular construction offers many more advantages over traditional construction such as reduced construction cost, reduced failure cost, increased quality, increased worker safety, reduced disturbance for neighbouring buildings and reduced need for traditional labour. Despite all these advantages, the uptake of modular construction is still quite low, mainly due to three problems. The summary of these problems comes down to that there is a lack of knowledge about how to implement modular construction properly, so that the advantages of modular construction can be realised. Therefore, in this graduation research, recommendations will be given on how modular construction can be implemented better so that modular construction performs well. To do this, the following main question has been used: “What is the current performance of 3D modular multistorey student accommodations in the Netherlands and how can this performance be increased?”. As the research question says, this research will focus on 3D modular construction that is used for multistorey student accommodations in the Netherlands. This research will include theoretical review, a performance measurement of modular buildings and recommendations to improve this measured performance for future modular buildings. The theoretical review forms the basis for this entire research, as it gives knowledge to the state of the art about 3D modular construction. The performance measurement considers the objectives of the entire built environment and the student housing association DUWO. Based on these objectives the performance of three modular student accommodations will be measured. The final product of this research will be to give recommendations about how the measured performance of the modular buildings can be increased. These recommendations are based on interviews with experienced stakeholders, combined with the theoretical review.