Industrialized construction (IC) is about better products and processes through increased robotization and automation with off-site manufacturing of components to be transported and assembled on site. FPInnovations initiated a multi-year research program to identify and prioritize major Canadian research focus areas to position wood as the preferred material as construction shifts offsite and into factories.
FPInnovations and its partners first developed a research roadmap to explore, test, and deploy innovative products, technologies, tools, processes, and practices to enable the transformation of Canadian building industry towards low-carbon, industrialized construction (prefabricated off-site construction). It was built upon a series of foundational technical studies identified through consideration of the key drivers. The goal for FPInnovations is to help position Canada as a leader in deploying innovative forest products and building systems for light wood frame (LWF) and mass timber (MT) constructions.
The research on industrialization of the wood construction is done along the entire value chain by considering the full potential of the wood. The focus is to protect and expand the North American light wood frame market in the shift to offsite construction by modifying the solid wood and engineered wood product (EWP) mix to align with factory production, working with equipment suppliers to build in flexibility for North American products, and optimizing modular and panelized design for energy efficiency, low-cost, buildability, durability, sound, vibration, and deconstruction.
Consult An Overview of FPInnovations’ Industrialized Construction Program In 2019-2020
Since the publication of the roadmap in 2020, various publications have been published under the four main research themes:
Market
Reports (restricted to members)
- Industrialized Construction: Business Practices and Relationships in Off‐Site Construction
- Industrialized Construction: Light Wood‐Frame Construction Costing Comparison—Site‐Built Vs Closed Panelized Vs Modular
- Industrialized construction: mass timber construction cost comparison to concrete frame for 8- to 12- storey buildings
- Industrialized construction: impact on wood, lumber demand and supply balance in the growing prefabrication market
- Industrialized construction: wood-steel comparison
InfoNote
Products
Reports (restricted to members)
- Construction Industrialization: Lumber Optimization (available soon)
- Industrialized Construction – Forest to Building (Phase II) Task 2: EWP Program
- Industrialized Construction Lumber 2.0
InfoNotes
- Best practices for straight and dimensionally stable lumber. From forest to offsite construction manufacturing
- Lumber portfolio for industrialized construction
Processes
Reports (restricted to members)
- Industrialized construction: status of Canadian sector, part 1
- Industrialized construction: status of Canadian sector, part 2
- Industrialized construction: production technologies and equipment prefabrication
- Industrialized construction: digital tools, technologies, and practices
- Industrialized construction II: Machining optimization (available soon)
InfoNotes
- Industrialized construction program, Machining optimization: equipment and software suppliers
- Technology gaps to achieve automation for industrialized construction
Performance
Report (restricted to members)
InfoNotes