Project Brief
The University Campus in Telangana comprises of G+5+terrace buildings with a total built-up area of 2,43,252 sq. ft. This structure is designed as per IS800, IS 875, and IS 1893 using Etab and has been built using structural steel tubes.
Objective
This study aims to reduce the project execution time and cost as the plan is to finish the building before the next session begins.
The main focus of the project is to reduce the overall project duration so that there is no delay in starting the next session. To ensure that, structural steel tubes are the best solution, as studies suggest, tubular construction requires approximately 8-10 days to complete one slab; so the total time it would take for a 5-storey building superstructure to get ready would be around 50-60 days. While in built-up sections it requires approximately 15-20 days to construct 1 slab and with RCC it would need a minimum of 20-30 days for one slab. Therefore, with tubes, there is around 50-70 percent time saving as compared to any other conventional method.
Steel tubes not just result in faster construction, but it also gives us more carpet area since the column size in tubes is around 500×500 mm, as compared with RCC and built-up sections, whose column sizes are 800×800 mm and 650×650 mm respectively. Hence, with tubes, we get 1-2 percent additional carpet area giving us more usable area.
Additionally, in conventional steel buildings, steel columns need to get encased with concrete/gypsum board which requires more carpet area while in the case of structure tubes, such encasing is not required, which in turn leads to a smothering area around the column corners with a higher carpet area and reduced finishing cost.
As we talk about the cost, the tubular structure is a lighter structure, so the total steel consumption per kg is 7-10 percent less as compared to other conventional methods, thus, reducing the overall project cost and increasing the IRR. Also, our structural tubes are supplied in cut-to-length sizes leading to a faster fabrication at a lower cost while in conventional steel huge fabrication work is required.
In Conclusion
While designing this project, we calculated the overall tonnage of steel tubes, which was merely 1788 MT for a 5-storey building with a built-up area of 2,43,252, which is 10-15 percent less than the conventional built-up method.
After intense work on the design and considering all fabrication and erection concerns, we reached the conclusion that the project duration can be reduced by 50-60 percent through tubes while getting more usable space and a better finish as compared to any other conventional method.
