Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) Communication Network and the Impact of COVID-19

Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) encourages upstream and downstream construction stakeholders to involve early and communicate openly before developing a manufacture and assembly-oriented design. However, this communication network is understudied and currently challenged by many infection control measures against the pandemic, e.g., lockdown, isolation, and social distancing. This research, therefore, investigates multi-stakeholder intensive communication underneath DfMA implementation and the impact of COVID-19. It does so by participatory action research, tracing stakeholders’ activities, and thematic analysis. It discovers an underlying decentralized mesh communication network, involving the iteration cycle of inquiry and response, submission and feedback, and reporting and acknowledgment. Amid the pandemic, these actions cannot be taken through traditional communication mediums, forcing stakeholders in the case study to adapt multiple generic, virtual platforms to convey various message forms, including technical information and three-dimensional models, without systematic guidelines or integrated platforms for visualization, validation, and tracking. To stabilize this network in the post-pandemic era, the DfMA practice, together with integrated project delivery (IPD) and building information model (BIM), is highly recommended. The communicators, connections, messages, and mediums visualized in this research are valuable resources for governing future practice and developing an integrated platform-empowered mesh communication in DfMA.