Case Studies

Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) wanted to construct multi-storied buildings for HIG in Mumbai in the shortest possible time. The project involved the construction of six buildings 8-storeyed high consisting of 168 flats covering about 1,20,000 sq. ft. area. Each building is 16.5 m long, 16.6 m wide and 24 m high with a stilt floor at the ground level for parking vehicles. The building consisted of precast columns, prestressed floor beams, and hollow core slabs. The structure was designed as a coupled shear wall with frame action. Columns for the buildings were cast and erected in two pieces. The entire 8-storeyed building was erected in 45 days. The buildings were constructed in 1987 and are performing well till now.

Military Engineer services wanted to construct quarters for their officers in Leh Ladakh where temperature goes up to -20 degrees. Logistics of site conditions demanded that entire project should be completed only in the span of three months during summer working season. It was difficult to produce good quality concrete in cold climate with limited resources of men, materials, and equipment. Moreover, the quarters should be insulated against the extreme cold. To meet these important criteria, application of precast concrete insulated sandwich panels were used for wall and roof panels. They were cast at an established factory near Mumbai and kept ready for transportation to Leh. Precast elements were loaded at Panvel (Mumbai) in train and transported to
Pathankot. From Pathankot, precast elements were transported in MES truck to Leh. The weight of the precast elements was kept minimum to handle precast elements during transportation and erection. Precast elements were directly erected from the trucks over the strip footing cast at the site. The unique feature of this projects was precast elements were by train and trucks for a distance of about 2000 km and erected in a short period using locally available equipment in the remote area with extreme climatic conditions.

The study reveals that affordable housing in the Government and segments is a huge opportunity for construction projects for implementing precast technology. As the transportation and the taxation (excise duty) are the major concerns of the industry as a whole, the precast professionals should opt for different strategies and alternatives in order in order to confront the problems by coming up with the concept of site based precast units for mass development by taking maximum advantage of the precast technology without compromising on the quality of the finished product. The strategy can be either factory based or site based precast plant provided that there are huge mass volumes to implement (approximately 30 to 50 acres) and secondly your precast solution should less than or equal to prices of conventional methodologies Residential sector which comprise of huge shortfall of affordable housing is the best segment to target for the prosperous precaster. Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai seem to be best places to implement precast Building technology in India. All the realtors in the India are absorbing the concept of precast technology well..Identifying the realtors who believe in precast technology and promoting this technology to them is the best strategy for precast to flourish All the Architect’s , Consultants, Main Contractors are the crucial stakeholders of the project so they need create awareness to the client about the alternative building systems in the industry.