Resilience in Offsite Construction: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Abstract

Offsite construction is a growing construction method that improves quality while reducing cost through optimal resource utilization in a controlled environment. Recently, resilience aspects, such as adaptable supply chain management, labor resource allocation, and dynamic scheduling, have been explored in the context of offsite construction, given the opportunity to allow workers to foresee, anticipate, and respond to unexpected disruptive events, as well as adapt after these events occur through the adoption of resiliency perspectives. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive review of the manner in which, and the extent to which, resilience has been incorporated into the offsite construction industry, particularly in regards to practices and frameworks for technological implementation. The aim underlying the present study is to identify trends and gaps in the body of knowledge regarding the integration of resilience with offsite construction over the last 25 years. For the literature review, a mixed-methods review approach is employed, searching the Scopus database for articles published during the 2000–2024 period. A scientometric review is carried out to identify prolific journals in the area of interest, their development over time, the co-occurrence network of keywords, and their citation bursts. Following this, a systematic review is carried out to identify the primary categories of research on resilience in the offsite construction domain. Four main categories of research are identified: supply chain management, design and construction processes, environmental and social sustainability, and workforce management–related areas. The systematic analysis reveals a significant research focus on supply chain management issues and the inclusion of resilience-related concepts. With regard to design and process control, meanwhile, a growth trend in studies developing optimization models for offsite construction–related projects is observed. With respect to environmental and social sustainability, research related to developing standardized sustainability assessment tools is found to exhibit a trend of emergence. Regarding workforce-related research, the inclusion of human-centered analysis and skills management is a notable trend. In addition to identifying the notable trends and gaps in this research domain, this study elaborates on the need for further integration of offsite construction with resilience-related elements in order to improve scheduling efficiency and effectiveness in offsite construction.