Construction underway for South Africa?s first light frame steel hospital

Construction is underway for South Africa’s first light frame steel hospital located in Hammanskraal, a town in northern Gauteng. The project, which broke grounds at the end of July and set to be executed within a span of 10 weeks will be completed by the end of next month, fulfilling government’s urgent need for additional hospital beds especially during this time when the country has been hit by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The project is being undertaken by Futurecon, the country’s leading light steel frame Construction Company, together with Concor Construction (formerly Murray & Roberts Construction), a diversified infrastructure and services construction company.

Mr. Gerrit Burger, the project manager and also the director of Futurecon, said that the construction of the 10 000 m2 facility housing 10 intensive care wards is on track to be delivered as scheduled. He explained that the light steel frame components are being manufactured a week ahead at Futurecon’s Gauteng factory (on a double shift basis) and then trucked to site for assembly.

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The distinctiveness of the project

Mr. Gerrit Burger explained that light steel frame construction delivers structures that are stronger than their counterparts erected using more traditional building methods and that is also more thermally and acoustically efficient.

“A light steel frame wall is 15 times more thermally efficient than a brick wall (with an R-value of 3.4 versus one of 0.29 for a brick wall). Acoustically speaking, a light steel frame wall blocks out at least two decibels more sound than a brick wall,” he clarified.

Burger added that these efficiencies also mean that it will cost the Department of Health far less to run the building in the future as it needs to spend much less on heating and ventilation than it would incomparable brick or concrete facilities.