Institutional readiness for industrialised social housing in Vietnam

Despite policy endorsement and pressure to accelerate delivery, why are industrialised building systems (IBS) concentrated at lower levels of prefabrication in Vietnam’s social housing sector? Drawing on semi-structured interviews (n = 21) with government and regulatory actors, developers, consultants, contractors and IBS suppliers, the study uses a Gioia-informed qualitative analysis and institutional theory as an organising lens. The findings show tier-differentiated readiness. Precast components are largely accommodated within existing standards and approval routines, whereas panelised and volumetric modular systems face uncertainty around technical codification, cost appraisal, factory-based quality assurance, design freeze, supply-chain coordination and market trust. The study therefore reframes IBS adoption from a catalogue of discrete barriers to a problem of institutional alignment across regulative, organisational-technological and cultural-cognitive dimensions. It develops a Vietnam-grounded institutional readiness model (IRM-VN) explaining why lower-tier industrialisation can be absorbed by existing governance systems while higher-tier modularisation requires deeper adjustment. The paper concludes that scaling IBS depends less on technical feasibility alone than on coordinated reform of approval, inspection, procurement, capability development and legitimacy-building mechanisms.

POLICY RELEVANCE

This study offers four practical insights for policymakers, housing authorities and industry practitioners:

• Higher-tier IBS should not be promoted through targets alone: approval and inspection procedures must explicitly recognise factory-based production and modular evidence.
• Cost appraisal and procurement systems should account for front-loaded design, manufacturing and logistics commitments rather than relying only on conventional site-based norms.
• Aggregated pilot programmes, repeatable housing typologies and predictable project pipelines are needed to reduce investment risk and build production capability.
• Public confidence depends on visible performance evidence, enforceable warranties, maintenance transparency and post-occupancy evaluation.

The central implication is that Vietnam is not uniformly ready or unready for IBS. Precast systems are comparatively well accommodated, while panelised and volumetric modular systems require stronger alignment across regulation, organisational capability and legitimacy. Policy interventions should therefore be tier-specific, sequenced and supported by measurable governance indicators.