Prefabricated Structures: Focusing on Regulations, Advantages

What is a container? What are prefabricated living container modules? And what are their pros?

The first advantage of prefabricated living container modules is of course its cost. Generally speaking, prefabricated houses are cheaper for a number of reasons.

In addition to being cheaper than brick houses, prefabricated structures – let it be a house or an office – offer two more advantages: they can be customized from the early design phase and easily transported.

And what are the laws about prefabricated structures?

One section of the website of the High Council of Public Works (Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici) is dedicated to prefabricated structures. The Central Engineering Service (Servizio Tecnico Centrale, or STC) is a supervisory body in charge of complex and delicate functions in the civil engineering field as per security of the public and private buildings.

These functions – which are mentioned in article 9 of law no. 1086 of 1971 about prefabricated structures – can be summarized as follows: qualification of mass-produced prefabricated structures, certifications of suitability for unconventional building systems, and authorizations for use of unconventional building aggregates.

The expression “unconventional building systems” indicates building systems other than masonry, or frameworks made of Reinforced Concrete (RC); pre-stressed reinforced concrete (PRC); steel; or a combination of the above, for four or more-storey buildings, either above or partially below ground and for structures with bearing panels.

The expression “unconventional building aggregates” indicates those building aggregates not envisaged by the Engineering Regulations for Building Works (Norme Tecniche sulle Costruzioni), whose use is subject to ad hoc directives issued and certified by the STC.

Documents such as the “Qualification of Prefabricated RC and PRC Frameworks”, the “Body of Regulations”, the “STC Guidelines about the Ministerial Decree of 3 Dec 1987 concerning prefabricated structures”, the “Guidelines for RC and PRC structures”, and the “CE Certification of Conformity for prefabricated RC and PRC Frameworks”. On 4 March 2008, the Tax Office (Agenzia delle Entrate) issued Resolution no. 76/E that applies to (a) construction of buildings whose elements are assembled at the building yard and (b) the production of the aforementioned elements using concrete. Both of the above are applied the so-called reverse-charge principle.