The rapid construction of one of the UK’s largest concrete frame structures – for the £300 m Forth Valley Royal Acute Hospital at Larbert, was aided by the use of Bamtec, an off-site fabricated steel “carpet” of floor slab reinforcement, says its exclusive manufacturer in the UK, Hy-Ten.
With an extended finishing and fit-out period meaning a tight structural frame completion “window”, Hy-Ten was approached to see if Bamtec’s use could speed site placement of reinforcing steel in the floor slabs. Finite element analysis is used to determine the stress loading within the floor slab. From this, the precise diameter, length, and spacing, of reinforcement required in each “zone” is specified to achieve the engineer’s exact needs. Manufacturing data is fed to robot welding machines, which position and spot weld each re-bar onto steel tapes to create bespoke reinforcement “carpets”, then rolled out on site. Hy-Ten added: “Contractors using Bamtec often save up to one week per floor in build time – certainly true at Forth Valley, where the teams could place the steel reinforcement, to a complex floor plan, far more rapidly than with conventional manual bar placement.”
