An offsite construction scoping study for occupational health and safety

Abstract

Abstract Within the sustainable construction philosophical worldview, the construction industry is transiting towards adoption of offsite construction (OSC) as a sine qua non for resolving ill-performances of construction industry. However, its various definitions have potential to obtuse its industry wide benefits and challenges. The aim of this paper is to give a concise description of OSC and its benefits for improving occupation health and safety (OHS). With a framework for conducting a scoping study, this paper highlights various appellations of OSC using scholarly articles by various researchers and practitioners from 2000 to 2020, collected from multiple sources, i.e., Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. The scholarly articles are reviewed regarding research contribution and methodology used. A plethora of OSC studies with divergent scopes and objectives highlight its benefits to environmental sustainability indicators of energy consumption, waste generation and carbon gas emissions, with only implied link to OHS. A new OSC focus that is explicit on OHS benefits and challenges is suggested for future research. The paper contributes to the body of offsite literature by providing a broader OSC definition and reviewing the benefits of OSC to OHS based on their production systems.