Analysis of directions for improving education and training system to foster offsite construction architectural professionals in South Korea

Recently, Off-Site Construction (OSC) which includes Precast Concrete, modular, and prefabricated construction has been expanding. This represents replacement of traditional construction, reduction in the construction site labor, and major change in the working procedures and methods, such as design for manufacturing & assembly (DfMA), factory manufacturing & quality control, and logistics & transportation. However, from this perspective, OSC has not received much attention in the current construction education and training system, and few studies have investigated new education-related aspects. Therefore, herein, through a literature review and survey analysis for construction engineers, we derived the importance of 18 technical factors and directions that must be reflected in education and training programs to train professionals in OSC. According to an analysis of 978 construction engineers who more than 80% of construction engineers that OSC will be actively used in the future but the current knowledge level is low with an average of approximately 49% at the low knowledge level. Through statistical analyses, such as cluster analysis, we suggest educational directions for specific technical fields for each knowledge level group of construction engineers among the “high-,” and “low-” level groups. The results will serve as a guideline for determining the training time and content level for developing OSC education programs.