Construction firms find Prefab Tech to bypass COVID hurdles.
Construction firms find Prefab Tech to bypass COVID hurdles.
Prefabricated structures are a preferable choice for large construction firms for their huge sites as a stringent lockdown slowed the movement of men and material to work sites.
Project consultants and executives performing on large EPC projects said that even when the amount of workers fell by nearly half, the utilization of prefab structures kept project work going at a steady pace.
In prefabricated construction, entire structures like beams, slabs, columns and walls are built and transported to figure sites, where they're put together. As the bulk of the work happens at an off-site location, it increases construction speed, ensures consistent quality and reduces wastage.
While prefabs are typically utilized in mass housing projects or where on-site construction is difficult, like building an offshore oil rig, its use is now expanding to other areas such as Metros, roads, and highways.
Prefab structures have helped build new hospitals and quarantine facilities in record time amid COVID-19. Tata Projects Ltd, as an example , is building a 400-bed medical facility at Kerala's Kasargod, with the prefabricated structures coming by truck from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand.
According to K. Satyanarayana, chief operating officer - industrial systems at Tata Projects, one of the recent developments is increasing usage of prefab technologies for putting up faster, high-quality and cost-efficient structures,
He further added, unlike traditional technologies, which depend heavily on on-site construction, prefab structures are delivered as a finished product from manufacturing facilities to the project site. It involves a steel framework attached to factory finished cladding and roofing components.
This is also faster than conventional construction because different functions can be performed simultaneously. He further quoted, for example, in conventional construction, the walls cannot be set until floors are in position, and ceilings and rafters can't be added until walls are erected. But the advantage of off-site manufacturing facility production allows walls, floors, ceilings, and rafters to all or any be built at an equivalent time and thereafter be delivered to the location for assembly.
According to Pankaj Vatsa, Executive Director at Engineering consulting firm Egis India, Pre-cast construction is less labour-intensive and ensures better quality, but there is a threshold size of a project beyond which only it makes economic sense. Wherever there is a large requirement and there is a standardization of construction elements, prefab is the best option, like in mass affordable housing projects
