Design and construction of precast concrete benches
Abstract
The construction industry in Nigeria is becoming efficient in the area of cost and achieving advance technologies. The effective management of cost enables clients, developers, and facilitators to achieve value for money. Concrete is a major component in every construction project. The use of precast concrete technology has been embraced by the construction industry in Ghana. This study seeks to analyze cost estimating of the structural frame (column and slab) by considering cast-in-place and precast concrete slabs and columns, respectively. Relative importance and Kendall’s concordance agreement were used to determine the rankings and agreement of advantages of using precast concrete. The study established that precast concrete slabs were on average 23.22% cheaper than the cast-in-place concrete elements and precast columns were averagely 21.4% less than cast-in-place concrete columns. The study established that professionals prefer the use of precast concrete products because of the life cycle cost.
Introduction
Concrete material is the most widely used construction material on earth which comprises about 60% of the built environment in many developed countries CCANZ, 2014. Concrete has shaped civilization from as far back as the ancient Egypt and the Roman Empires and it is indispensable in the development of infrastructure, industry, and housing. Without concrete the built environment would fail to accommodate our modern and demanding lifestyle. For concrete the basic building materials provide strength, durability, and even elegance far in excess of many of its manufactured competitors William (2015.)Concrete has a wider range of uses in the construction of commercial buildings, roads, harbours, dams, bridges, electric poles, residential buildings, retaining walls, reservoirs, septic tanks, canals, and a whole lot more M. D. Rahim, S. Mohd, and H. N. Azam (2013). The durability of concrete is of vital importance regarding the life cycle cost of the structure, which includes not only the initial cost of the material and labour but also the cost of maintenance and repair A. Ashworth(2010) .The durability of concrete is therefore defined as its ability to resist weathering action, chemical attack, abrasion, and other forms of deterioration. Concrete has much higher level of fire resistance than other building materials. It is not combustible and would not produce smoke or fuel the fire G. M. E.(2001). Concrete product can be either precast or in situ concrete. This study seeks to analyze the elemental cost comparison of precast and cast-in-place slabs and columns of some selected public projects in Ghana. The construction industry in Ghana is not familiar to the use of precast technology for beams, walls, foundations, and so forth and the precast columns and slabs are the most common in the Nigerian construction industry.