Question

After graduating from this university you have decided to establish a contractorship company to do some building constructions. Your first job is to construct 10 similar reinforced concrete buildings with four stories each. The total area of all the buildings is 16,000m2 . You can find sufficient number of formwork carpenters to erect any kind of formwork materials. On the market both timber and steel formwork materials are available.

•Make an analysis on which type of materials you are going to buy for that construction job.

•From internet you will find the addresses of formwork materials manufacturers / suppliers and get prices.

•Explain the advantages and disadvantages of buying timber or steel type formwork materials.

•Make an analysis for selection of formwork materials.

•Decide to buy one of them and explain in detail why you have selected that one.

Answer 1

Analysis Criteria : The quality of the formwork will be checked and the one which will be more durable and can be reused many times with sufficient load bearing capacity. The cost will not be a concern here as better quality will lead to get more work in future time.

The cost of the steel form work is relatively higher as compared to the timber. Steel will be heavy also and due to that it will have more total cost. Steel formwork is around RS 78 per Kg and Timber is RS 53 per Kg in India.

Advantages Of Timber

• Easy handling
• Easily replaced and flexible
• low cost

Dis-Advantages Of Timber

• Limited reuse
• High moisture content will lead to open joints
• Dry timber absorb moisture from the concrete

Advantages of Steel

• Strong and handle heavy load
• Easy to fix
• Used for very long duration

Dis-Advantages Of Steel

• Limited size and shape
• Excessive loss of heat
• Smooth surface is produced due to which finishing is not good

By the analysis criteria it should be advised to use the Steel form work as there are 10 buildings and tiber cannot be used for more than 5-6 buildings. The load bearing capacity is also more for the steel formwork and will have slight issues regarding the finishing quality that can be solved further by the use of quality workers.

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