Industrialised Building System (IBS) in Malaysian Housing: An Emerging Innovation System Explanation.

The building industry has many challenges, such as growing demand for affordable housing, increasing construction costs, relying on unskilled labour and failing to produce acceptable quality of construction outputs. These challenges are prevalent in most country in the world including Malaysia and have always been associated with adherence to existing practices and a reluctance to accept innovations. This situation has prompted policy-makers in Malaysia to set targets for the introduction of Industrialized Building System (IBS) but the aims have yet to be accomplished. Based on the System Functions approach, this paper aims to create an understanding of the IBS development pattern in Malaysian housing construction from 1963 to 2010. The data was collected from archive data and verified with interviews. From the findings, positive perception in IBS and government policy on IBS development are the two inducement mechanisms identified. Meanwhile, uncertainties of IBS opportunities among potential construction clients, inadequate knowledge of relative between investments and benefits, inconsistencies of demand for IBS application, lack of IBS suppliers, and unpreparedness among construction designers and contractors are the discovered blocking mechanism. Based on this development pattern, the blocking mechanisms identified are stronger vigorous and have decelerated IBS development in Malaysian housing projects.