Innovative building equipment cuts down construction time

Building construction of 10.25 lakh sq. ft to erect 14-storeyed 15 skyscrapers, totalling 1,200 flats, on 45 acres of land would normally take minimum five years under conventional construction methods and that too if all the 15 towers are built together. However, the ultra-modern and innovative French, German and Chinese material handling and construction techniques adopted by B.G. Shirke Construction Technology Ltd, Pune, would take hardly one-third of this time. In fact, B.G. Shirke has already built three 14-floor towers with these technologies within a short span of 22 months, as part of the Rs 84 crore Millennium Towers residential complex project of City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) at Sanpada in Navi Mumbai. With age-old conventional methods, this would have taken minimum five years for completion, M.T. Lalvani, Deputy Chief Executive of the project, told Project Monitor. The French construction technique called Tunnel Form (TF), adopted for this project, eliminates building material-handling by one-third since the construction is not only fully mechanised but most of the site activities like foundation, columns, beams, slabs, infill walls, lintels, chhajaas, door-frames and internal/external plastering are clubbed together into only one single synchronised construction action, Lalvani explained. Interestingly, this technique is called Tunnel Form because it works on the principle of tunnel construction. The TF technique is a properly industrialised system and patented by a French innovator company, namely Outinord, by exploiting the theory and concept of tunnel construction to building construction. Besides, the TF technique is so called because a tunnel is formed out of the inside walls and the slabs together for monolithic casting of load-bearing walls and slabs in one continuous concrete pour. After casting of the unit of form work, a part of the tunnel is pulled out by wheels mounted on jacks/hydraulic system. As such TFs are necessarily required to be very rigid and sturdy. The TF work is a high performance tool enabling Striking, Erection and Concreting on the same day as compared to three different actions, compulsorily separate and extended up to many weeks! Whereas in TF the speed is achieved on account of: * Mechanisation in form work. I Handling of large room-size form work by fully electronic tower crane up to any height. * Minimum number of components to be handled. * Placement of form work is very rapid as the kickers forming the base of each wall are cast simultaneously as the slab. * Works of columns, beams, slabs, walls, lintels, chhajaas, door frames and internal/external plastering is done in a single action. * It creates a simple focus for operation, concentration and production resources. And the most consolidating and also aesthetic aspect of TF technique is that the entire construction doesn't have a single joint. Moreover, its plaster is all weather-proof and doesn't chip out the way convention plaster does, more so in the moist weather of Mumbai, Lalvani claimed. Regarding the strength of a building built under TF technique, Lalvani said, "The building won't collapse for a minimum of a century!" According to Lalvani, the electronic tower cranes used in this project are manufactured by B.G. Shirke Construction Technology Co. Pvt. Ltd under collaboration with a French company, namely Potain. The crane is costing from Rs 65 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore each, depending on its size. The crane's unique feature is that it has in-built power-transformer and voltage stabilizer. In addition, to own use, the company is marketing them to other builders in a big way. The concrete mix for the project also eliminates the material-handling process to a large extent, as it is done at a fully computerised batching plant at the site. This Rs 1.5 crore plant is fabricated under collaboration with a German company called Elba. The JV company is named as Shirke-Elba. The capacity of this plant is amazingly large like 40 cubic metres per hour. The Shirke story of minimum material handling doesn't end here! At Millennium Towers project, for instance, they have installed Chinese pumps to push concrete mix from the ground-level to construction spots right up to the 14th floor automatically. Shirke is in the process of collaborating with the Chinese manufacturer of these pumps to make them in India.Source: http://www.projectsmonitor.com/