Coordinator(s)

  • Mohammed Arif – Leeds Trinity University
  • Jeff Rankin – University of New Brunswick
  • Volkan Ezcan – Liverpool John Moores University
  • Brandon Searle – University of New Brunswick (Coordinator ECR)

Background

CIB W121 was established as the successor of the former Task Group TG74 – New Production and Business Models in Construction. Over the past decade, W121 has developed an active community of researchers and practitioners through various activities such as conferences, webinars, and journal special issues, focusing on the priority areas that were identified in the Research Roadmap developed by TG74.

Nevertheless, offsite continued to gain momentum at a significant pace over the last ten years. In response to these new developments, a new roadmap, “CIB Global Report – Revisiting Offsite: A new Capability – Driven Research Roadmap for Offsite Design, Manufacturing and Construction”, has recently been published by W121. In this new term, the commission is committed to advancing offsite construction capacity and capability across the world, taking this new roadmap as a guide.

Against this background, the commission`s aim, scope and the work programme for the next three years are given below.

Aims and Scope

The aim of the commission is to act as a global platform of exchange and collaboration in offsite construction research and innovation. The scope of this ‘platform’ is to build offsite capacity and capability within and across the design, manufacturing, and construction phases/sectors through a socio-technical systems perspective, focusing on people, process, and technology domains.

Current work programme

Main programme objectives for the period 2024 – 2027 are:

  • To initiate and encourage research efforts and outputs focusing on offsite construction, particularly the priority areas highlighted in the recent research roadmap.
  • To develop and introduce a new commission structure, which includes:
    • “regional ambassadors”, to enhance global engagement, influence, and impact of W121.
    • “working groups” to focus on sub-research themes to encourage collaboration among members and the development of `expertise`. 
  • To maintain and enhance the collaboration with other working commissions, on the areas of common interests (such as W78).
  • To organise events, such as W121 conferences, joint conferences with other working commissions, or sessions within conferences (WBC) to create knowledge and experience exchange platforms, travelling different regions of the world, bringing academia and industry together to widen the capacity and impact of W121 and offsite construction.
  • To organise/support international conferences and manage sessions within the triennial World Building Congress (WBC2025).
  • To support the development of early career researchers, encouraging their involvement in the W121 activities.

Planned outputs

  • Proceedings from annual (supported) conferences/sessions.
  • Proceedings from the designated sessions in the WBC2025
  • At least one special journal issue
  • Hosting of one or two high impact workshops with industry
  • Reports of W121 bi-annual meetings and activities

Membership

Members of the Commission are appointed representatives of CIB Member Organisations or Individual CIB Members.

Status

This Commission was established in October 2017 as successor to the former Task Group TG74 – New Production and Business Models in Construction.

Details of all the CIB working commissions are available here.