Building Design and Construction Handbook - Merritt - Ventech!

CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGEMENT 17.69
recycled building materials, recycling materials used during demolition, and demonstrating
sensitivity to depletion of endangered natural resources.
17.25 SYSTEMS BUILDING
The term systems building is used to define a method of construction in which use
is made of integrated structural, mechanical, electrical, and architectural systems.
The ultimate goal is integration of planning, designing, programming, manufacturing,
site operation, scheduling, financing, and management into a disciplined
method of mechanized production of buildings. Application of these systems should
be controlled by an engineer-construction management firm rather than by use of
prevailing contract building-management procedures.
Housing Production. The greatest concentration of effort has occurred in the
realm of structural framing, leading to development of mass-production methods.
These have, in general. been of the following types:
Panel type, consisting of floors and walls that are precast on site or at a factory
and stacked in a house-of-cards fashion to form a building.
Volumetric type, consisting of boxes of precast concrete or preassembled steel,
aluminum, plastic, or wood frames, or combinations of these, which are erected
on the site after being produced in a factory.
Component type, consisting of individual members of precast-concrete beams
and columns or prefabricated floor elements, which are brought to the site in
volume, or mass produced.
These systems have displayed inherent disadvantages that came about through
lack of opportunity to use the entire systems-building process, and because the
systems often were not able to attain sufficient volume production to pay for the
many fixed costs and start-up costs for the component factories that were built.
Experience has shown, however, that housing can be built efficiently and economically
from standardized, modular designs. Some examples are as follows:
Mobile homes manufactured, complete with floor, roof, walls, electric wiring,
plumbing, and cabinetry, by techniques similar to those used by automobile
manufacturers. Built in factories, mobile homes are trucked to the sites and then
installed and finished by on-site builders.
Packaged homes, also known as prefabricated or panelized. They are factory
subassembled and, with an assortment of other building components, are delivered
to the site for final assembly.
Modular homes, also known as sectional homes, manufactured in off-site factories,
usually on an assembly line similar to that used by mobile-home manufacturers.
Completely furnished, three-dimensional sections, including mechanical
systems, of one or more rooms are factory assembled and then delivered to
the sites by truck, railroad, or barge.
(A. D. Bernhardt. ‘‘Building Tomorrow: The Mobile/Manufactured Housing Industry,’’
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.)