Forming civil structures

Doka Framax Xlife - tunnel underpass project in Abu Dhabi.
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Take a journey through most of the Middle East’s major cities today and the vast scale of the infrastructure work underway quickly becomes clear.

Numerous roads, bridges, railways and tunnels are under construction and even more projects are planned, as the region’s governments seek to create infrastructure systems that will meet the intense growth rates in their countries.

This is creating opportunities for all firms involved in civil works, with formwork at the heart of the initial project build phases and one of the most visible aspects of many of the projects to date.

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“The proportion of civil engineering in the construction business is set to increase over the coming years,” predicts Doka Gulf technical manager Bernhard Lindner. In addition to the need for infrastructure to meet the future growth within the region, the sector’s dominance is expected to rise, as the economic downturn continues to impact on other building projects.

Its importance to the formwork industry is already being noted: “Certainly in Dubai at present the civil infrastructure sector is attracting the interest of Aluma and other formwork suppliers due to the current downturn in the commercial sector,” confirms Daniel Taylor, area manager (Abu Dhabi), Aluma Systems Middle East.

“As often happens during times of economic downturn, the Government stimulus packages pump investment into civil projects, meaning that the ratio of civil:commercial projects is increased,” notes Taylor.

Issues to consider
With infrastructure projects generally of a much larger scale and vastly differing proportions to most building projects, any formwork used should be carefully selected and designed to meet the required demands. There are several issues that should be accounted for with such projects.

“From a design perspective, one of the main challenges is to create a true model of the bridge geometry and ensure that the design solution selected works for all cases,” stresses RMD Kwikform regional chief engineer Moira Cameron. 

One way to reduce this problem is to use specially developed software programmes to ensure accurate designs.

“Traditionally this would have been done by cutting numerous sections through the bridge,” explains Cameron, “RMD Kwikform has developed a programme in-house that enables us to accurately model both the ground and bridge geometry in 3D and to place the falsework legs automatically in 3D, which cuts the drawing time.”

The sheer quantities of formwork required and their potential strength are other major considerations on infrastructure projects. “The amount of material will be high, so there has to be enough stock,” says Peri product manager Shalin Adiparambil.

“The biggest issue is the large scale of the scope of work,” agrees Taylor.