The continued investment made by RMD Kwikform into the development of its South Africa business is already having an important impact in the development of major infrastructure projects in the region. One such example is the new Gautrain Rapid Rail Link.

The project, which will deliver a much needed 80km rapid transit system to the residents of the Gauteng region of South Africa, an area that also incorporates the heavily populated city of Johannesburg, has been kept on-track by the heavy-duty support provided by RMD Kwikform South Africa’s Megashor shoring product.

As part of the construction phase RMD Kwikform South Africa was asked to supply the equipment and design for a landing girder system to launch pre-cast concrete segmental box girder segments, which were then glued together to form a concrete box style viaduct.

RMD Kwikform Sales Director, Melt Malan “Already nearly two years into the construction phase, The Gautrain Project is just one of many projects benefiting from our increased capacity and technical skills development in the region. With our new office in Cape Town now open, we are able to expand our offering to the region helping to service the needs of what is one of the worlds fastest growing hubs for major construction work.

“The large scale and time constraints of projects within the country are requiring an increased focus on organisation, design and the introduction of best practice techniques and engineering expertise and this is what we are focusing on. We recognize that as demand for a whole range of concrete structures grows, from commercial buildings to residential complexes and bridges to tunnels, the introduction of second stage development for the existing infrastructure, to support increases in population, is also adding to the construction needs of the country.”

Melt continues: “The real challenge is to combine local experience with expertise gathered from similar projects across the globe. In doing so, efficiency gains can be made for programme time, delivery and cost. It is for these reasons that civil engineering businesses and building contractors in South Africa need to develop a two-pronged approach to tackle the obvious challenges.

“The first is to put resources on the ground in the locality of the project in question, this is what we have no achieved with our head office in Pretoria, and now operations in Cape Town, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng. Gauteng in particular is working well to support the new rail link.

“The second approach is to share global expertise in a partnership style with local businesses that can provide the labour and additional manpower resources required to erect equipment for use in formwork and falsework schemes. Only by supporting local businesses with engineering, training and design expertise, can the industry be able to work together to secure a whole range of projects, large and small.

“The beauty of this approach is that the systems, which we have developed over the decades of experience we have in the market, are able to interact effectively with each other, enabling us to meet even the most challenging of project deadlines. For example our Alshor Plus, lightweight shoring system combines with our Airodek soffit support system to give customers, swift and easy method of creating large slabs of varying heights safely and effectively.

Similarly with our involvement in larger scale infrastructure projects, like the creation of Dubai’s $111 million interchange, known as the Arabian Ranches interchange, we are able to take our global experience to a local level, learning from best practice techniques and programme time management.

“With the Arabian Ranches interchange a total of eleven structures were required in less than six months. To enable our customer, Taisei to construct the ten cast insitu reinforced concrete post tensioned box cell girder bridges and the wall formwork for the cast insitu reinforced concrete cut and cover tunnels required for the project in time we were able to call upon the skills of our technical teams across the Middle East region.

“In order to meet the tight programme schedule, the construction of all eleven structures had to run concurrently. This meant that the team at RMD Kwikform Middle East had to work in partnership with staff from the Taisei Corporation to design solutions that allowed each structure to be constructed quickly and efficiently with the available resources.

“The real challenge for the design of the formwork and falsework solutions for the project was that most of the structures were curved in plan. This meant that our Middle East engineers had to go away from the conventional birdcage falsework solution commonly used for such jobs taking a more innovative approach to the shoring design.”

“This was made possible by using our heavy duty 80kN Rapidshor modular falsework system which was recently introduced into the South Africa market, specifically to service infrastructure projects of this type. The use of Rapidshor enabled our Middle East team to use a falsework support system designed as 1800mm wide by 2400mm bay towers. Each tower consisted of six to eight bays depending upon the width of the decks.”

Used to support primary Superslim Soldier beams and secondary GTX timber beams, products also now available in South Africa, the Rapidshor towers were designed to be simply adjusted to deal with the varying radius of the structures and changing soffit and ground levels on the project. Simplicity also played a major role in the erection process, with teams able to erect a large number of Rapidshor towers simply and effectively in a fraction of the time, due to the reduced number of components required when compared against alternative methods.

For the box cell design, the construction of the internal system used a combination of RMD Kwikform GTX timber beams and Superslim Soldiers. GTX timber beams also combined with Kwikstage falsework to support the construction of the top slab for the main bridge structures. Finally completing the overall provision of equipment for the project, RMD Kwikform engineers designed special steel yokes for the GRP pier moulds, to simplify the equipment assembly process.

Melt concludes: “ It is this ability to marry products together, whilst designing unique parts to enable specialist work to be carried out that really makes the RMD Kwikform offer so exciting to customers and structure designers, as they have the confidence in our abilities to make their vision a reality within their timeframe. This is why an increasing number of local and global players in the South African market are turning to RMD Kwikform for formwork and falsework solutions.”