Prefabrication in the Australian context

Australia actually has a long history with prefabricated building since its early settlement days. However, methods of prefabrication have, until the past decade, been relatively few and almost non-existent with the exception of relocatable school building or portables. The revival of interest in pre-fabricated building has been quite recent, involving a few selective construction companies, and the interpretation of prefabrication has mainly resulted in a ‘volumetric’ product as the solution. In response to this, first the paper describes the profile of prefabrication in Australia, and then addresses a pathway for the processes and methods to pre-fabrication based on the identified challenges in Australia. This paper presents these ideas and discusses the up and coming directions of prefabrication in Australia.