Bridging the Housing Prefabrication Gap: A Comparative Study of Project Management Practices in Australia, Sweden and Japan

Introduction: Australia's housing crisis has been driven in large part by rising construction costs and increasingly long delivery times. Prefabrication offers a genuine solution, cutting construction time by as much as half and reducing material waste considerably. Despite this, prefabrication accounts for less than 5% of Australian construction, compared to over 85% in Sweden and roughly 15% in Japan. This study investigates why Australia has fallen behind, and how project management practices might help close that gap.

Method: This study takes a qualitative, interpretivist approach, comparing Australia, Sweden and Japan as three markets sitting at different stages of prefabrication adoption early, mature, and fully industrialised, respectively. Fleetwood Houses, BoKlok and Sekisui House were chosen as case studies within each country, being the most established and best-documented providers in their respective markets. Primary data was gathered from five Australian construction professionals through a questionnaire; Sweden and Japan were examined only through case-study material and secondary sources. Responses were grouped into five themes policy, manufacturing, logistics, workforce, and digital capability and cross-referenced against the case-study and secondary data.

Results: Five interconnected constraints appear to be holding back prefabrication growth in Australia: inconsistent regulation between states, a shortage of prefabrication-specific skills, limited digital capability across the industry, high logistics costs where transport isn't well planned, and comparatively underdeveloped certification systems and factory networks. Together, these help explain why Australia trails so far behind more mature international markets.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that governance and management, rather than technology itself, are the main forces behind Australia's prefabrication gap. Workforce shortages, inefficient logistics, and fragmented state-level regulation all appear linked to weaker outcomes compared to more established markets. These five constraints inform a proposed PMBOK-aligned response covering policy integration, regional manufacturing hubs, digital logistics, workforce development, and lifecycle procurement put forward here as a basis for future testing.