A Comparative sustainability of Conventional and Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) Construction Methods

Lately, many governments have been significantly promoting modular building instead of conventional as a practical solution toward enhancing sustainability in the construction sector. Therefore, this research aims to compare traditional and modular building construction to find each environmental and cost difference as a criterion for comparison. This study’s life cycle sustainability assessment comprises embodied energy, greenhouse gas (GHG), and cost. The result showed that the steel modular has the lowest embodied energy and carbon emission following conventional steel construction. For traditional construction, 28% of GHG emissions are related to on-site activity, while PPVC is less than 1%. However, the development of the factory is about 11% of the total construction emission for PPVC. On the other hand, the concrete, conventional method has a lower construction cost following by concrete modular. The transportation cost of modular building is responsible for up to 13% of the total construction cost. While the conventional building has a higher worker wage by 11%, compare to modular construction. Multi-attributes decision making (MADM) using WASPAS has been applied to reveal the best construction material and method. The result showed that steel modular is the best option for
construction.