Assessment on effectiveness of precast and cast-insitu concrete in building construction: case study in mekele city

Abstract

Prefabrication is defined as the production of entire building, or significant building constituents offsite in a workshop and transported for assembly to construction site. Prefabrication is a very beneficial construction approach with widely accepted benefits including shorter project duration, reduced project cost, improved quality product, enhanced control of construction activities, improved safety of workers and environmental friendliness compared to conventional method. There is a huge gap on the demand and supply of residential houses and quality problem in our country especially to concrete structural elements & delays in construction of building projects are common, and its price is not affordable by majority of population. It is an undisputable fact that, stakeholder’s of construction industry (clients, consultants, and contractors) do not highly work on prefabrication methods of construction leaving the construction industry to continue to heavily depend on in-situ construction, which does not encourage diversity in the method of construction and that’s why most of construction companies entitled to delay, cost overrun and sub-standard quality The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of precast and cast in-situ concrete method in building construction projects. The research made use of literature review of existing work. Questionnaires administered to respondents and interview of selected stakeholders in the construction industry. The statistical tools used in the analysis comprised descriptive statistics using tables and graphs. RII was used to analyze the qualitative data’s, and, the selection of samples from the total population were nonprobabilistic sampling, and selection of stakeholders was purposive. For this study, the total duration and total cost estimation per cubic meter have been determined for both prefabricated and cast in-situ concrete construction and prefabrication is effective in terms of time and cost (have 62.9% reduced time offered and 12% less cost) and have better quality since these materials are produced in controlled environment i.e. easy for control. Since prefabrication method of construction is a new method, future research in to the concept of prefabrication should be conducted in order to solve the misunderstanding of stakeholders and the government and investors should work together to handle the high demand of home at short period, small budget and specified quality