Imagine a construction site inside a large urban centre or a heavily populated metropolitan area.
Now picture how you’d organize that job, especially taking into consideration the restrictions imposed by the location such as time limitation of when you can run your equipment, logistic difficulties due to traffic restrictions, and noise and dust emissions management.
Let’s not forget one of the more current problems: the problems with finding raw materials and obtaining them in a timely manner. In short, finishing the job by the deadline is challenging. If not well-managed these limitations will have a strong impact on the construction site, causing delays which will become penalties fees, expenses increase,
unforeseen downtimes and lastly inconvenience to traffic and residents.
There is never have enough time!
But now, let’s stop creating fictional scenarios and see what happened on three different construction sites in urban centres that had similar problems. Three different construction sites, on three different continents, with three different solutions.
Construction site number 1: how to speed up the entire process
In Epinay Sur Seine, France, in a demolition site in the middle of houses and busy streets. Blocking off the road or slowing the traffic for long periods for the trucks to access the job site was not feasible. On the other hand, to carry on working they needed foundation filling material, in large quantity and right away. Objectively there was plenty of inert material around coming from a partial demolition of one of the buildings. So what they did was crush down all the reinforced concrete, bricks, and plaster with a BF80.3 crusher bucket installed on a Yanmar SV100 excavator to create filling material ready to reuse on-site.
Construction site number 2: how to avoid waiting for trucks and creating traffic
Moving on to the Jiangsu province, in China, at a peculiar construction site located above a subway station. Where creating traffic or having too many trucks entering and leaving the construction site would have created an inconvenience and lengthened completion times. They needed to quickly recover suitable material to fill the new structures. Like the previous case, they also installed a BF80.3 crusher bucket on their excavator, this time on a Sany 215 and crushed the rubble: no more needing to wait for materials and no need to have trucks entering and leaving the construction site, all of which benefits the flow of traffic.
Construction site number 3: how to have materials immediately ready for use
In upstate New York, a house collapsed due to heavy snowfall. The house’s roof could not withstand the weight of the snow and when it collapsed, it destroyed the entire porch. What was left needed to be dismantled and then they had to rebuild the house. With a John Deere, 180G and an MB-G1200 grapple, the company in charge of the job sorted the lumber and stacked it in one truck while creating a separate pile for all of the concrete. Then, they used an MB-S14 screening bucket to screen the rock and soil to have material ready to use to construct the new foundation.
All of the materials remained within the construction site.
“But time is lost, which never will renew” the Roman poet, Virgil, wrote more than 2,000 years ago.
While you might think that reading these stories may have stolen time from work on the construction site: we prefer to think that you invested your time into reading these few lines to give you an idea on how to save later on.
