Automated Building Code Compliance Checking for Prefab Designs - Key Barriers and Recommendations

Summary: Prefabricated building is a promising solution to address the housing affordability and supply challenge in New Zealand (NZ). However, the current audit of prefabricated buildings for compliance with Building Code follows a manual, error-prone and time-consuming process, leading to the challenge of meeting timely delivery expectations. In recent years, some automation efforts have been observed internationally to improve the productivity and performance of Building Code compliance processes. We propose to investigate what lessons NZ can learn from these international efforts. The project aims to identify key barriers and provide recommendations for adopting automated Building Code compliance checking for prefab designs in NZ. It will carefully analyse selected international and NZ cases that deliver automated Building Code compliance checking and focus on transferring evidence-based knowledge and experience to NZ. To validate the proposed recommendations, it will then implement the latest automated code checking technologies on two real NZ prefab designs.

Funder: Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ)

Team: Yang Zou (PI), Johannes Dimyadi (Codify Asset Solutions), Brian H.W. Guo (University of Canterbury), Eleni Papadonikolaki (UCL)

Duration: 2019-2022

This is an external link to the research project in Build Magzine