Construction Week Middle East's video: Riad Bsaibes on the rise of modular construction driven by demand supply

The Middle East built environment has seen a shift in the construction methodologies. And one of these methods, which has been touted as the future of developing large scale buildings is modular construction. In the latest episode of Construction Week's expert interview series, Ranju Warrier sits down, virtually, with Amana Investment’s CEO, Riad Bsaibes, who talks about Amana DuBox's projects in the region, working with The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), and the era of off-site manufacturing. There has been a constant increase in the preference for prefabrication and modular construction in the region, and according to Bsaibes, "it is a progression, a natural progression that is driven both by the supply and the demand, [where} the supply [referes to the] supply of technology." "So, 10 years ago, what we're doing would not have been possible. And the technology over the last 10 years, especially computational technology has enabled the use of Building Information Management (BIM), which has enabled 3D drawings, allowing for the ability to fully design a building, and eliminate clashes in different disciplines very quickly, and do different scenarios computationally on the computer before going to construction." According to Bsaibes, "without BIM as a foundation, off-site construction would have been very difficult". Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for social distancing, where "the advantage of off-site construction has gone exponential". Talking about the challenges that developers can overcome by shifting to off-site construction, Bsaibes tells Construction Week that apart from being able to control the number of workers on the site, especially during the pandemic, turning to modular construction helps "to provide high quality in large volumes in a remote location". He adds: "Less waste is produced, than in traditional construction, because the building is fully designed before we go to manufacturing. And when we go to manufacturing, we are using scaled manufacturing methods, and therefore the wastage is minimised. "Further, the use of materials is optimised; plus the advantages of safety, since everyone is working on ground-level. So even if we are building a ground plus four or ground plus six facilities, everything has been done on ground-level. And then those boxes or modules are installed at the site on top of each other. Therefore, it's much safer." For Bsaibes, one of the "game-changing" advantages of off-site manufacturing is "the ability to scale up and scale down whenever necessary". That is not it. There is more to the video, and to get more insights, watch the full interview. PRODUCER Ranju Warrier EDITED Sydney Stanislas SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/c/constructionweekonlinecom READ MORE ON OUR WEBSITE: http://constructionweekonline.com FIND US ON FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/constructionweekonline/ FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/cwmiddleeast TUNE IN TO OUR SOUNDCLOUD STREAM: https://soundcloud.com/constructionweek FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/constructionweek/ © ITP MEDIA GROUP