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Recipe for Quality Concrete construction - Segment 1

I cite Sustainability and Quality to be the most discussed issue in all forum of modern life. Climate changes and its impact are being debated a lot. Countries and Corporate are deriving ways to reduce the carbon emissions and protect the generations from the clutches of global warming and subsequent disasters which occur repeatedly as ‘calendar events’

The stake holders of concrete - the end user, the specifier, the contractor, the ready- mix concrete manufacturer, the raw material producer and the supplier – all shall be concerned about the fact that Embodied carbon from the building materials produce 11% of annual global GHG (Green House Gases) emissions. Concrete, iron, and steel alone produce ~9% of annual global GHG emissions.

In construction industry, when we build structures, one of the primary objectives shall be the attainment of maximum service life as sought by the customer and as specified by the standards, which is considered to be a prerequisite for a sustainable world. In order to achieve this, we shall build a structure with materials of low carbon foot print in the most efficient way following stringent quality practices. By creating long lasting serviceable structures we are reducing the need for rampant construction and thereby eliminating the excessive extraction of natural resources.
Use of quality materials and quality construction practices contributes significantly to the sustainability of construction world.

Let us discuss the way in which the stake holders in construction industry shall move forward to achieve goals of quality and sustainability, through the perspective of a concrete technologist.

The recipe of quality ‘Concrete construction’ entails;

• Effective implementation of quality practices in various stages of design to curing of concrete to ensure quality of concrete in structure enhancing strong, durable and sustainable structure.
• The Culture, Commitment & Communication of stake holders – 3C
• A complete co-ordination of Man, Machine & Material – 3M
• The principle ‘Never break the chain of quality’
• The proverb “Try to be Proactive than reactive”

We will also discuss about the 3 R’s,
“reduce, reuse, recycle” to achieve Sustainability, in following segments.

To be continued….