Evaluate the Digitalization Degree of Prefabricated Construction Industry in China

Decreasing demographic dividend, extensive management process, severe forms of production safety, uneven industrial chain and lack of effective data assets are all problems that China's prefabricated construction industry faces at the current stage. Digital transformation has gradually become an affordable way to guide the prefabricated construction industry to continuously realize compliance, avoid risk, reduce cost and increase efficiency. Digitization and digital transformation have also become research buzzwords for decision makers and researchers. Yet, the debate is mainly about building information modelling (BIM) and some mature digital services in other industries, and there is no unified research on all the digital technologies and digitization degree of the prefabricated construction industry. In this paper, we sort out each stage of China's prefabricated construction industry chain, and sort out the digital technologies used in each stage. Through literature review and expert interview, this paper evaluates the digitization degree of each part, and gives the situation of each digital technology and the challenges of this industry. Based on the evaluation, a better understanding of China's prefabricated construction industry, which is in the early stage of digital transformation, we offer reasonable suggestions and assumptions.