Azman M.N, Kamar K.A.M, Nawi M.N.M, (2013) REVIEW INDUSTRIALISED BUILDING SYSTEM IN REDUCING WASTE OF CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY, Journal of Science and Technical Education, Vol. 2. Feb. 2013

REVIEW INDUSTRIALISED BUILDING SYSTEM IN REDUCING WASTE OF CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY MohamedNorAzhariAzman,KamarulAnuarMohamad Kamar and MohdNasrunMohdNawi Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education, Sultan Idris Education University, 35900 Tanjong Malim, Malaysia. Construction Research Institute of Malaysia (CREAM), Makmal Kerja Raya, Jalan Chan Sow Lin, 55200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. School of Technology Management and logistic, Northern University of Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia.

ABSTRACT Industrialised Building System(IBS) technology has changed the past practices of the construction industry. The Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) of Malaysia has been actively promoting the use of industrialised building system (IBS) in the local construction industry since 1998 as a way to overcome one of the major problems in Malaysia i.e. construction waste. Implementation of major infrastructure projects and commercial buildings in Malaysia has contributed to a negative impact on the environment. IBS is the term to represent the prefabrication and construction industrialisation concept in Malaysia.IBS is a construction technique in which components are manufactured in a controlled environment (on or off site), transported, positioned and installed into a structure with minimal additional site works. The CIDB has introduced the concept and educate the contractors to function as “assemblers of components” instead of “builders”. Conventional method for construction work cannot be environmental friendly because of the poor quality control at the construction site and the uncontrolled waste production. This has contributed to pollution problems to the environment in the form of air and water pollution, and construction waste. The IBS technology will be the best option in order to overcome the present problems. Keywords: Industrialized Building System (IBS), reduce construction waste, full environment control

ABSTRAK Teknologi Sistem Pembinaan Berindustri(IBS) telah mengubah amalan industri pembinaan. Lembaga Pembangunan Industri Pembinaan (CIDB) Malaysia telah giat mempromosikan penggunaan Sistem Pembinaan Berindustri (IBS) dalam industri pembinaan tempatan sejak tahun 1998 sebagai satu cara untuk mengatasi salah satu masalah utama di Malaysia iaitu sisa pembinaan. Pelaksanaan projek-projek infrastruktur utama dan bangunan komersial di Malaysia telah menyumbang kepada kesan negatif terhadap alam sekitar.IBS adalah istilah untuk mewakili pra-fabrikasi dan pembinaan konsep perindustrian di Malaysia.IBS adalah teknik pembinaan di mana komponen dibuat dalam persekitaran yang terkawal (atas atau di luar tapak), diangkut, ditempatkan dan dipasang menjadi sebuah struktur dengan kerja tapak tambahan yang minimum.CIDB telah memperkenalkan konsep dan mendidik kontraktor untuk berfungsi sebagai "pemasang komponen" dan bukannya "pembina".Kaedah konvensional untuk kerja-kerja pembinaan tidak boleh menjadi mesra alam kerana kawalan kualiti yang teruk di tapak pembinaan dan pengeluaran sisa yang tidak terkawal.Ini telah menyumbang kepada masalah pencemaran kepada alam sekitar dalam bentuk pencemaran udara dan air, dan sisa pembinaan. Teknologi IBS akan menjadi pilihan yang terbaik untuk mengatasi masalah tersebut. Kata kunci: Sistem Pembinaan Berindustri (IBS), pengurangan sisa pembinaan, kawalan penuh persekitaran

INTRODUCTION Rapid population growth, urbanization, industrialisation and economic development have resulted in mass solid waste especially in the rapid growing cities of the developing world.The issue of minimising construction waste is becoming great concerned to the developed countries such as United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, United States and Japan with total solid waste annually of more than 50%, 42%, 38%, 29% and 16% respectively (Tam et al., 2010). While in Malaysia, the study done by Nasir et al. (1995) showed that 28.34% of waste comes from industrial and construction waste in the Central and Southern regions of Malaysia. Therefore, Fishbein(1998)

reported that construction and demolition (C&D) debris frequently produced waste in the course of construction, renovating and demolishing buildings comprises 10–30% of the waste received at many landfill sites around the world. The development of cities and increasing high demand for the major infrastructure projects, schools, housing projects and commercial buildings resulted in high mass construction waste are being produced and the clients are less aware of the negative impact to the environment and to the community. The public have greatly increased their concern to the construction waste especially to those who live near the landfill sites and the authority needs to take immediate action with a regulation that provide high security and protection for the wellbeing of the public. The trendshows that the volume of municipal solid waste keep increasing in major urban areas in Peninsular Malaysia as showed in Table 1(Periathamby et al., 2009). Thus, there are 130 landfills and dumps to collect and disposed off the solid waste (Periathamby et al., 2009). The Malaysia government had design an appropriate technology method to overcome the solid waste; this is to establish several incineration plants, implement the 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) in the future as proposed in The Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management (SWPCM) Bill 2007 (Fauziah et al., 2009). This paper would like to highlight how does IBS play an important role in the 3Rs to overcome the construction industry waste as it is a vital target in 2020 as shown in Table 2(Periathamby et al., 2009) The concernfor using IBS technology in the construction industry does not occur in Malaysia only but also in other countries such as United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Azman et al.(2010) reported that the term IBS have similarity with the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. In the US, manufactured home (MH) industry is described as Off-Site Construction Techniques (OSCT) (Lu, 2009). However in the UK, the Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) is defined in various ways; prefabrication, off-site production and off-site manufacturing (BURA, 2005). While, the term Offsite Manufacturing (OSM) is the term used in Australia construction industry.

Table 1. Generation of Municipal Solid Waste in Residential Area, Peninsular Malaysia (1970-2006) Urban centre Solid waste generated (tonnes/day) 1970 1980 1990 2002 Kuala Lumpur 98.9 310.5 586 2754 Johor Bahru (Johor) 41.1 199.6 174.8 215 Ipoh (Perak) 22.5 82.7 162.2 208 Georgetown (Penang) 53.4 83 137.2 221 Klang (Selangor) 18 56 122.8 478 Kuala Terengganu (Terengganu) 8.7 61.8 121 137 Kota Baharu (Kelantan) 9.1 156.5 102.9 129.5 Kuantan (Pahang) 7.1 45 85.3 174 Seremban (Negeri Sembilan) 13.4 45.1 85.2 165 Melaka 14.4 29.1 46.8 562

2006 3100 242 234 249 538 154 146 196 186 632

Table 2. Methods of Waste Disposal in Malaysia Treatment Recycling Compositing Incineration Inert landfill Sanitary landfill Other disposal sites Total

2002 5.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 5.0 90.0 100.0

Percentage of waste disposed 2006 5.5 1.0 0.0 3.2 30.9 59.4 100.0

2020 22.0 8.0 16.8 9.1 44.1 0.0 100.0

IBS Role in 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse. Recycle) The players in the industry preferred to use the conventional method until the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) educated the industry on the essential usage of IBS components and conducted awareness programs on usage of IBS since 1998. As part of the government policy in encouraging the use of

IBS, the government have mandated that 70% of IBS components should be used in government projects with the value of RM10 million (Treasury 2008). The shift in the trend of construction industry in Malaysia is shown in Table 3(Azman et al., 2011). This scenario has led to the encouragement of IBS adoption in construction activities in order to reduce dependency on foreign labours, to improve construction’s productivity and quality, wasteful construction method, environmental friendly, to achieve design standardization and to speed up construction time. Anecdotally, based on the IBS Survey 2008, the ranking of IBS benefits listed from the most beneficial to the least beneficial are (1) minimal wastage; (2) cleaner environment; (3) less site materials; (4) reduction of site labour; (5) controlled quality; (6) faster project completion; (7) neater and safer construction sites; and (8) lower total construction costs (Majid et al., 2011). CIDB have conducted three IBS survey in 2003, 2005 and 2008 where the respondents comprised of contractors and architects (Majid et al., 2010). It recorded recent trends of the IBS components system and shown increasing number of correspondents giving good response on the benefits of using IBS as reflected in the Malaysia’s achievement of IBS usage in the building construction. The IBS components can be divided into a few categories and has undergone several changes following the new trend of technology. The transformation of construction industry from traditional method to manufacturing method (IBS) is not possible and Malaysia is in the process of industrialised the construction works (Badir et al., 2002, Sabharwal et al., 2008). This scenario has led to the encouragement of IBS adoption in construction activities in order to reduce the waste construction and dependency on foreign labours, to improve construction’s productivity and quality, environmental friendly, to achieve design standardisation and to speed up construction time. Table 4 described the trend of IBS since the early 60’s until 2010 (Azman et al., 2011). The IBS components have some degree of potential for waste reduction, depending on the degree of prefabrication or the numbers of prefabricated building components used for the particular projects and the natures of buildings (Nawi et al., 2011b; Kamar et al., 2009). It infers that IBS is an effective construction method for waste minimization. Begum et al. (Begum et al., 2010)had run a comparison research on waste generation between an IBS and conventional method for normalized to 100m2 of floor space. The results showed that of the total waste generated at each site, 94% waste generated at IBS site was able to be reused and recycled as compared to 73% at the conventional project site. In addition, at both sites, the frequently reused and recycled materials are concrete and aggregate, soil and sand, wood as well as brick and blocks. The achievement of the reduction waste generation is similar to Tam et al. (Tam et al., 2007). Therefore, IBS components are effective in reducing the waste, saving the cost of materials and improve the environmental performance for overall site conditions.

Table 3. The Trend of Construction Industry in Malaysia Method Scope Project Specification Profit Earn

Project Duration

Applied technology Transportation requirement Erection Procedure Crane requirement Environmental Awareness Type of workers

Traditional

Construction

Manufacturing

Project based Short term

Project based Short term

Undefined profit or low profit gain

Profit from customized solutions

Long period

Possibility of project being delayed (Lim and Mohamed 2000, Alaghbariet al. 2007)

Manually

Manually and semi mechanization

Product based Long term Profit in volumes of similar products (Gann 1996) On time project completion / meeting timeline (Kadir et al. 2005) Higher mechanization due to process repeatability and high quality production

Not important

Important

Very important

Manually Not required 3-D Syndrome (Dirty, Difficult & Dangerous) Required unskilled worker

Occasionally required Occasionally required

Very important Very important

3-D Syndrome (Dirty, Difficult & Dangerous)

Environmental friendly and recycled waste

Required a large number of unskilled worker

Using minimum skilled worker

Table 4. Categorization of IBS Components Year of IBS Introduction

Categorization of IBS

Early 60’s

Badir et al. (2002)

Early 90’s

Badir and Razali (1998)

2003

CIDB (2003)

2010

CIDB (2010)

IBS Component i. Frame System ii. Panel System iii. Box System i. Precast concrete framing, panel and box systems ii. Load bearing block iii. Sandwich panel iv. Steel frame i.Pre-cast concrete framing, panel and box systems ii.Formworks systems iii.Steel framing systems iv.Prefabricated timber framing systems v.Block work systems i. Pre-cast concrete systems ii. Formworks systems iii. Steel framing systems iv. Prefabricated timber framing systems v. Block work systems vi. Innovative

Role of MalaysianGovernment to Educate the Construction Industry IBS was promoted since the 60’s as mentioned by Majid et al. (2010), but the construction industry still used the conventional method (Nawi et al., 2012). This have caused a negative impact with the delay in the implementation of the projects to the Malaysian Construction Industry (MCI) and thus in certain cases the budget was exceeded, projected completion dates were not achieved and quality was not always up to the expectation (Nawi et al., 2011b; Ibrahim et al., 2010, Alagbari et al., 2007, Lim and Mohamed, 2000). As a result of this, the government have set up the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) in 1994 to educate the construction industry and to regulate and register construction firms in seven categories of grades from G1 to G7. The CIDB has been actively promoting the use of IBS in the local construction industry since 1998, and educating the contractors with the concept of functioning as “assemblers of components” instead of “builders” (Majid et al., 2010). The CIDB had implemented the IBS Score in construction industry to measure the level of IBS usage in building. Based on the CIDB requirements (CIDB, 2010), all public buildings are required to achieve the 70% IBS Score at the minimum while in the private residential buildings, the contractor need to acquire a minimum of 50% IBS Score to receive an exemption of construction levy for the project. The scoring system is made accordingly to the principles of usage of prefabricated and precast components, off-site production of components, the use of standardised components, repeatability and design building component based on the Malaysian Standard “ Guide to Modular Coordination in Building”, MS 1064 (IBSCentre, 2010). Consequently there is a high demand for the IBS precast concrete among the contractors, whereby they can obtain high IBS Score by using the precast components. The CIDB manage to impose on the government projects to use the IBS componentsand this has enable to minimise the waste produce from the construction industry. Thus, the Ninth Malaysia Plan (EPU, 2006) had encouraged the use of alternative construction material ad technology under the IBS and designs based on the modular coordination concept in housing construction. As part of government roleto enforce and mandate the use of modular coordination concept through Uniformed Building By Laws (UBBL) by the local authorities; the construction players are required to use IBS components in the affordable homes and government buildings (EPU, 2006). On the other hand, among the successful countries that have applied the use of prefabrication building is the United States, which has been able to fulfil the housing demand with full environment control. In the early 1970s, the US government explored several prefabrication building systems (Jaillon and Poon, 2009). Among

the largest prefabrication building system in US is the manufactured house (MH) which is the second largest provider of housing units and shares about 20% of the total housing market (Jeong et al., 2006). The houses are constructed in a controlled factory environment based on the national building code specified by the US and the entire structure is transported to the site and installed (Jeong et al., 2009, MHI, 2011). The federal standards regulate manufactured housing design and construction, strength and durability, transportability, fire resistance, energy efficiency and quality. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Code also sets performance standards for the heating, plumbing, air conditioning, thermal and electrical systems. MH providesfinancial aid and compared to site-built (traditional stick-frame) homes, manufactured homes are about half the cost per square foot. This shows that the important role played by the Malaysian government and United States government to implement the regulation and educate the construction industry has enable to increase the awareness of the important concept of environment friendly factory and reduce waste.

The appropriate technology for recycling waste in construction industry The vital promotion of the appropriate technology for the environment management wasteand the mission of sustainable developmentas an important tool to push the construction playersto protect the environment and minimize waste, have exerted the pressure demanding for the adoption Figure 1 which shows the hierarchy of construction and demolition waste in disposal options, categorizing environmental impacts from low to high into six levels; reduce, reuse, recycle,compost, incinerate and landfill (Peng et al., 1997). The best solution role for the construction industry to minimise the waste is by running the strategies of reuse, recycle and reduction (3Rs) which cause low environment impact as compared to the compost, incinerate and landfill that will cause high environment impact and will increase the cost of the projects. The benefits of 3Rs are that it will reduce the demand of new resources, minimise the transportationcost and saving the production energy cost. Thus, prefabrication technology (IBS technology) have several benefits viz. shortened construction time, lower overall construction cost, improved quality, enhanced durability, better architectural appearance, enhanced occupational health and safety, material conservation, less construction site waste, less environmental emissions, and reduction of energy and water consumption (Chen et al., 2010).

Low

Reduce

Reuse

Environmental

Recycle

Compost

Incinerate

High

Landfill

Figure 1: Hierarchy of Construction and Demolition Waste (Peng et al., 1997)

Conclusion The government policy in encouraging the use of IBS hasmanaged to change the perception of the construction industry to use IBS. IBS is an effective construction method for waste minimization. The IBS components are effective in reducing the waste, saving the cost of materials and improve the environmental performance for overall site conditions. Although technology is vital to accelerate the development of a country but it requires the appropriate technology as one of the major factor in contributing to the sustainability of environment. The stakeholders are highly recommended to use the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) to minimise the

disposal of construction industry solid waste and eliminate the negative perception of constructionindustry as 3D Syndrome (Dirty, Difficult & Dangerous). In conclusion, the IBS technology must be affordable to the construction industry especially for the small contractors; and it is important to reduce the knowledge gap, and future research should be continued to educate IBS players. This will enable to reduce the negative impact on the environment and ensure the sustainability of the environment and wellbeing of the community is well protected.

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