Typologies of industrialized construction adoption: configurations in conventional construction firms

Research on industrialized construction (IC) has predominantly focused on either the manufacturer's role at the system or component level, emphasizing off-site production technologies, or, when addressing the building level, on vertically integrated industrialized construction firms (ICFs) that fully control design, manufacturing, and assembly. This emphasis has generated valuable insights into integration and modularization but has left limited understanding of how conventional construction firms (CCFs)-developers and general contractors operating in decentralized production networks-adopt IC within their existing technical systems. This study aims to characterize the technical strategies through which CCFs adopt IC and to identify empirical configurations of IC adoption across different national contexts. Using an abductive, multi-phase research design, a characterization framework was developed and empirically validated through application to 29 firms in Chile, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Principal Component Analysis and K-means clustering revealed six distinct technical configurations representing alternative strategies of IC adoption. These configurations demonstrate that IC in CCFs is not linear but can emerge through diverse combinations of six analytical dimensions: impact on the main production line, systematicity and sourcing structure, design coordination, extent of adoption, level of predefinition, and the relationship between design predefinition and supply chain transfer. The study makes three contributions to the body of knowledge: (1) conceptually, it reframes IC adoption as a set of configurational production strategies, challenging linear models of industrialization; (2) analytically, it provides a replicable framework and typology for comparative research; and (3) practically, it offers a diagnostic tool enabling firms and policymakers to identify viable pathways toward adoption within decentralized production networks. Practical Applications This paper provides a practical framework that helps general contractors and developers plan industrialized construction (IC) as a technical strategy, while continuing to operate in decentralized networks. The six-dimension framework serves as a diagnostic checklist through which firms can assess: (1) how much site work is transferred to the supply chain, (2) whether they rely on open components or closed systems, (3) how they coordinate design and interfaces, (4) whether practices are isolated to projects or embedded across the organization, (5) how much of the design is predefined, and (6) how predefinition fits with off-site transfer. Positioning themselves within these dimensions enables firms to identify six validated adoption paths, each with different implications for flexibility, supplier dependence, and standardization. Managers can use the typology to plan gradual improvements-such as strengthening fabrication-aware coordination before investing in proprietary platforms-or to reduce procurement risk by maintaining open sourcing while codifying internal design rules. Policymakers and industry associations can apply the framework to target support mechanisms-standards, incentives, and training-that reflect the actual diversity of IC strategies, rather than assuming a single vertically integrated model.