How Prefabrication, Design For Manufacturability And A Committed Team Achieve Megaproject Success

When Loehl O’Brien meets with semiconductor manufacturers, data center operators or other megaproject stakeholders, he tells them their success can depend on two important mindset changes. 

First, they need to view their project from a manufacturing rather than a construction point of view. Because of their complexity, he said, large mission-critical facilities shouldn’t be approached like ordinary construction jobs.

“Treating a megaproject as a conventional construction job raises a host of coordination and supply chain issues on a very complex worksite,” said O’Brien, project executive with Clark Pacific, a provider of prefabricated systems for building design and construction. “In addition, the sheer magnitude of these jobs often is beyond the capabilities of many construction partners.” 

Second, he said, they must embrace this manufacturing mindset from the outset of a project to ensure success. 

“To yield the most value from a manufactured product, whether it is a car or a mission-critical building, you have to embrace the concept of off-site manufacturing upfront,” O’Brien said. “Manufacturability needs to be built into the design from the inception of the project.”

To minimize their risks while meeting high-quality standards and tight schedules, O’Brien said megaproject owners are best served by an approach that combines prefabrication of building components with a process known as design for manufacturing, logistics and assembly, or DFMLA.

With this approach, most of the work is performed off-site by Clark Pacific. The prefabricated components are then shipped to the worksite on a just-in-time basis to be assembled by a trained team of specialists. 

But for prefabrication and DFMLA to work most effectively, the owner and all stakeholders must be fully committed, O’Brien said. Otherwise, applying this approach in a piecemeal manner or after construction is already underway means the project might not reap the full benefits. 

One beneficiary of early and sustained team buy-in was a 1.8M SF project that included several multistory buildings on the busy Stanford University campus. With stakeholders fully on board with the prefabrication and DFMLA process from Day 1 — and with a site crew of only 25 people — Clark Pacific trimmed 30% to 40% from the original timetable and minimized disruption to the site’s neighbors, O’Brien said.  

“With DFMLA, you’re doing much of the work off-site and in advance, which allows you to get going on design and fabrication before you even begin to prepare the ground on your site,” O’Brien said. “Then, when you’re ready to start assembling on the site, you’re creating a pull from the field as to what supplies you need to be fabricating. This is much more efficient than conventional construction methods.” 

Why Megaprojects Are Different

Large and complex projects can run up against serious challenges that are difficult to manage when using a traditional approach that requires many teams of trades to continuously communicate on the site, O’Brien said. 

Megaprojects require the management of hundreds of thousands of activities and the real-time processing of very granular data, all of which can make it difficult for multiple on-site teams to communicate and set priorities. Other obstacles to success include inconsistent execution capabilities among the construction teams or misaligned incentives between owners and contractors.

Combining prefabrication and DFMLA allows the team to avoid these problems by matching on-site complexity with a high level of off-site manufacturing repetition, which can integrate similar scopes of work to improve efficiency and maximize opportunities for automation. In addition, communication is improved when multiple trades are integrated into a single team responsible for off-site fabrication and on-site assembly. 

O’Brien said the process also provides greater supply chain visibility than when multiple vendors are supplying the project. And it ensures that an experienced team is always available and accountable, eliminating concerns about workforce shortages or instances of finger-pointing among the trades.

A Shared Vision

The advantages of prefabrication and DFMLA are only fully realized if the entire megaproject team buys into them from the beginning, O’Brien said. It also requires the early involvement of Clark Pacific so that components can be designed for maximum manufacturability.

“What doesn’t work nearly as well is to begin the project and then later realize, OK, we've designed this product without any thought to designability or manufacturability,” he said. “That will force you to make difficult choices to fix a project that’s already well underway, and that’s how a team can find themselves in a bad spot.”

O’Brien said the team responsible for the four-building megaproject on the Stanford University campus avoided such pitfalls thanks to stakeholder buy-in and early involvement of the manufacturer. As a result, the buildings were erected in 11 months — two years faster than a conventional construction approach would have required, he said.

“The critical element in all of this is the shared vision among the team,” O’Brien said. “Whether the team prioritizes speed, quality or cost — and everybody says they want all three — they need to embrace prefabrication and DFMLA from the very beginning.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Clark Pacific and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.