COMPARATIVE STUDY ON PRECAST BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND CONVENTIONAL BUILDING CONSTRUCTION FOR HOUSING PROJECT IN SARAWAK

This paper presents an overview on the comparative study between the precast and conventional building construction methods for housing project in Sarawak. In this study, a residential building project with double-storey terrace houses was chosen for the comparative study as they have typical structural layout plans with minor variation. The same building was designed into both conventional and precast structural layout respectively in order to obtain direct comparison results. To ensure the results obtained are representative and unbiased, the structural components integrated in both construction methods are listed and each critical cost component, for instance the project direct and indirect costs were broken down further in order to evaluate the total building construction costs. From the research results, it can induce the relationship between the time and costs evaluation. The overall construction period for the conventional building construction method was 240 days while the precast building construction method was 82 days. As compared across the results for the project construction costs, it shows that precast construction method with RM 354,969.50 is more cost effective with about 19% less than the conventional building method with total amount of RM 422,687.85. The results reflect the significance on selection of the construction method, namely the precast building construction method not only can shorter the construction periods but also reduce the construction costs since it reduces greatly the expenses on the project direct costs particularly the machineries costs.