Donna Laquidara-Carr of Dodge Construction Network, outlines how new cross-regional research shows that industrialised construction maturity is defined less by whether firms use prefabrication, than by how deeply those methods are embedded.

Industrialised Construction is gaining ground in regions across the globe, but recent research by Dodge Construction Network, published in ‘The Rise of Industrialised Construction SmartMarket Brief’ in partnership with Autodesk, reveals major differences in how different regions are implementing it, the benefits they experience from its use and the factors that will increase their engagement with it. Despite an overall commitment to doing more industrialised construction among those familiar with it, the varying levels of maturity in the current use of industrialised methods suggest different paths to that goal.

Research scope

The research was conducted as an online survey of owners, architects, engineers, contractors and building product manufacturers in late 2025 in five regions: Australia/New Zealand (ANZ), Germany, Japan, United Kingdom/Ireland (UKI) and North America. It examined three specific industrialised approaches: prefabrication, productisation and Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA). The 763 respondents to the survey had to be familiar with at least one of the three approaches.

The analysis provided below focuses on the responses of the owners, architects, engineers and contractors. Building product manufacturer responses are included when they add an interesting perspective.

The five regions can be divided into three categories based on their levels of familiarity with and implementation of the three industrialised construction approaches:

Advanced: Germany and Japan

When looking at the findings as a whole, it is clear that Germany and Japan are the most advanced adopters of industrialised construction out of the five regions included in the study. This finding is less apparent when looking solely at the share of respondents who have simply used one of the three methods.

The degree of implementation is a far better indicator of market maturity than simple use. Implementation combines the share of an organisation’s overall projects on which these approaches are used with the average proportion of work delivered using each approach on individual projects. It was measured for prefabrication and productisation. Implementation therefore reveals how well established each approach is within an organisation.

For both prefabrication and productisation, Germany and Japan far exceeded the level of implementation found in the other regions. The difference is particularly stark for productisation: respondents in Germany and Japan report that it is used on around 35% of projects on average. By contrast, no other region reported use on more than 20% of projects.

The responses from manufacturers also suggest that Germany and Japan are the most advanced industrialised construction markets. More than 40% of the German building product manufacturers surveyed, and at least 30% of those in Japan, believe that prefabrication and productisation are already standard practice on at least 50% of the projects in which they are involved. No manufacturers in ANZ, North America or UKI report seeing either approach as standard practice.

Moderate: ANZ and UKI

Very high awareness of all three methods is a hallmark of the regions at the moderate level, even though use and implementation are much lower. Nearly all respondents in ANZ and UKI (96% to 100%) are familiar with all three methods. ANZ has the highest share of respondents using DfMA (69%), but its shares using productisation (37%) and prefabrication (10%) are below the global average. UKI has moderate to low use across all three approaches: 35% for prefabrication, 28% for productisation and 58% for DfMA. Implementation levels are also moderate to low in both regions.

Low: North America

Use and implementation of prefabrication are high in North America, but other research from Dodge Construction Network reveals that prefabrication in this region often consists simply of moving work from site to an offsite location, rather than adopting a more fully industrialised approach.

In addition, North America falls short of other regions in its familiarity with, use of and implementation of productisation and DfMA. Only half of North American respondents are even familiar with productisation and DfMA and use levels for each are among the lowest reported (35% for productisation and 17% for DfMA). North America also has the lowest level of implementation for productisation.

Factors associated with advanced markets

While they are very different markets, there are a few factors common to both Germany and Japan that may have helped them become more advanced in their use of industrialised construction. They tend to be more collaborative: Most contractors work with designers to facilitate the use of productisation, a practice that rarely or never occurs in ANZ, North America or UKI.

They engage stakeholders earlier: Far more designers work with their owners and manufacturers early in the process in these two regions to support the use of DfMA than in the other regions. Also, they have more formal partnerships with their supply chains: most respondents using productisation and DfMA report having long-term partnerships to support each approach, compared with one third or fewer in the other regions

Industrialised construction benefits

In the regions with relatively low implementation, the most important benefits of using productisation, DfMA or both are schedule compliance, project cost predictability, and design consistency and reusability. Only a handful of respondents in ANZ and UKI report any other benefits. Other benefits are also cited by far fewer respondents in North America than the leading three.

In contrast, respondents in Germany and Japan report a wide range of benefits. Although they were asked to select only their top benefits, between one third and one half of respondents identified nearly every option as important. These included the leading benefits reported in the other regions, as well as improvements in quality, safety and productivity, reduced unplanned rework and better onsite materials management.

Turning Point

Not surprisingly, Germany and Japan are also much closer than the other regions to industrialised construction becoming business as usual on their projects. More than 60% of respondents in Germany and around 40% of those in Japan believe that all three industrialised construction methods – prefabrication, productisation and DfMA – are already, or will soon be, business as usual on more than half of their projects. With the exception of prefabrication in North America, respondents in all other regions expect this transition to take at least three years.

Notably, even in the less advanced regions and over a longer time-frame, nearly all owners, designers and contractors familiar with industrialised construction expect these approaches eventually to become business as usual. However, the findings suggest that this is likely to happen on a company-by-company basis, rather than through an immediate market-wide transition, as individual businesses gradually increase their use of these methods. They also provide a roadmap for accelerating implementation by changing how companies work together across the supply chain.

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