Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Recent Innovative Construction Techniques – Level 2 Activity

On 31st January 2023 a workshop was organized on “Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Recent Innovative Construction Techniques” by the Entrepreneurship Development Cell and Institution’s Innovation Council in association with Civil Engineering Department. The speaker for the workshop was Mr. P. Krishna Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Francis Xavier Engineering College, Tirunelveli. 43 Third year civil engineering students and 2 staff members participated in the program. The session was coordinated by Mrs. P. Raja Priya, Assistant Professor, Department of civil engineering.

The speaker started the session explaining about the precast construction techniques and the recent innovations in that. Precast concrete is an alternative to cast-in-situ concrete. While cast-in-situ concrete is cast in its actual location, precast concrete is cast at another location, either at the building site or in a factory, and is then lifted to its final resting place and fixed securely. This means that unlike cast-in-situ construction, which is monolithic or continuous, precast concrete buildings are made of separate pieces that are bolted or connected together. The speaker added a note that this type of construction will be more economical in case of housing projects with identical apartments because wall and floor slabs for all the apartments could be pre casted and then they should be lifted into the place and connected. The speaker have shown the images of different precasted units. If a precasting yard is to be created, space must be laid out for the following activities namely Storing the raw materials such as cement, aggregate, sand, admixtures, water, reinforcement bars and steel or plywood sheets for formwork, a formwork making and maintenance yard, a concrete mixing plant, a steel reinforcement yard to make rebar cages to be placed inside the concrete, a casting area, a curing area and stacking area for finished components.He also added that lots of scope is available for precast construction sector for entrepreneurs to set up the precast units for the construction industry across India. By resorting to precast, project completion time lines will be realized faster than the cast in-situ and saves time by 40 to 50 per cent, which will automatically save cost on the project with reduced overheads.