Prefabricated Housing System

The prefabricated housing system is a building form that involves the industrial production of building components and their on-site assembly. It encompasses various technical types and components, offering advantages such as shortened construction periods and energy conservation, but also faces challenges related to high industrial base requirements.

Technical Types and Components

The technology of the prefabricated housing system includes prefabricated concrete structures and steel structures, with component types such as prefabricated beams, slabs, walls, and columns. These components are produced in a standardized manner in factories, ensuring controllable quality and providing a foundation for subsequent on-site assembly.

Main Types

• Panel-based Prefabrication: Using prefabricated wall panels and floor slabs as core components, it can expand usable area but has limited design flexibility.
• Box-based Prefabrication: By combining prefabricated functional units, construction speed can be increased by 50%-70%, but it has high requirements for transportation and lifting equipment.
• Frame-based Prefabrication: For example, the Nanjing Jindi Yufang project adopts a prestressed prefabricated concrete integrated frame structure system.
• Modular Construction: With higher integration, buildings are disassembled into independent modules, manufactured in factories, and then assembled on-site, reducing construction periods by more than 60%. For instance, the E-MIC prefabricated concrete box housing system reduces module usage by 30%-40% through spaced module unit arrangements while improving occupancy rates, construction speed, and spatial flexibility.

Advantages and Challenges

Advantages: It can shorten construction periods, reduce pollution, ensure quality control, conserve energy, and facilitate maintenance. For example, Fujian has established industrial bases through policy support, achieving a reduction in construction waste by over 70%. Challenges: It places extremely high demands on the industrial base, requiring support from technical systems, production systems, and industrial clusters.

Market Performance

Domestic Applications: The public housing project in Shenzhen, Guangdong, was assembled from 6,028 concrete modules, reducing the completion and delivery time from 2.5-3 years to 1 year and decreasing on-site labor by approximately 50%. Overseas Exports: Chinese-made prefabricated houses are in high demand overseas. In the first four months of 2026, the Guangzhou Customs district exported movable houses worth 1.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.1%; the Shenzhen port exported 1.68 billion yuan worth, a year-on-year increase of 19.6%.