Recently we have shifted our office at Pune to new premises considering the workspace and peaceful working along with the centralised location for equal commute for team. The location is elegant with no further commute road, which makes way less traffic on the road, also it has it’s Pune charm of green area and old big trees giving a much lively atmosphere. We are happy to be here in general.
One fine day I realized dust accumulation on the desk and as usual, I cleaned it up, thinking the of-fice assistant must be occupied with something to skip wiping the desk. To the surprise, I noticed an even higher amount of dust accumulation within a couple of hours on the desk and though I am not a that good housekeeper, I was sure of I cleaned it decently at first! Anyways, I kicked myself and cleaned the desk again! And guess what, again in a couple of hours time we have the same condition on a desk with dust all around. This made me keep the work aside for a while and notice it was a particular day of considerable high dust surrounding. And to no wonder the culprit… a couple of building construction in the vicinity.
There are two new buildings under construction using conventional cast in place concrete system with block masonry infill walls. Every work is carried out at site with lot of raw material movements. With particular wind and temperature conditions, the whole neighborhood environment was so dusty. Had my father be in office that day would have major health issue for he being asthma patient! Precast concrete technology could have helped tremendously in such a scenario as all precast elements are produced in a controlled factory environment and a minimal amount of work is required at the site. All precast elements, structural and non-structural as required to a particular project, are produced to the specifics and transported readily at the site, curtailing the work at the site by 80-90% depending upon project complexity.
For different buildings, depending upon their occupancy requirement, loading conditions including seismic loads, type of structural framing using precast system, etc., various connections are de-signed suitably. These structural and non-structural connections, which are an essential part of being executed at site, can be designed to minimize the amount of work required at site, which further can control site activities. Precast Concrete Technology has vast advantages over conventional practices and such small but very important aspect of improvement in environmental conditions would help our developing country to achieve better when we are one of worst polluted country in world!