Chapter

08

DISCUSSION & SUMMARY

Housing scarcity is one of the major problems India is facing at present. We are
adopting the conventional method of cast in-situ construction for mass housing. Precast
concrete construction has been advantageously used in many countries. The major
encouraging factors of precast construction are as follows:
1. High speed for construction
2. High check for quality control
3. Improved construction technology
4. Favourable for mass housing projects
In-spite of all these advantages, this method is not properly adopted in India. In this
report, exploration of various factors that made structural engineer to avoid the precast
construction and go for the conventional method is discussed. Some of these are:
1. High initial investment for manufacturing of the element
2. High cost for heavy construction equipments for handling and storage
3. High cost to transport the element from factory to site
4. Skilled labour required for construction
5. Small scale contractor being unable to handle the work due to high initial cost
For evaluating the difference in cost of precast and in-situ cast construction, an
attempt to study a singled storeyed housing unit is made. From the cost comparison of single
precast unit and cast in situ unit, the difference is negligible. But for mass housing projects
the difference is quite huge. It is lesser in precast compared to cast in-situ. If there is need of
more than thousand units than precasting would be the best option, though the cost of plant
setup is high. It will be difficult for small scale construction companies to take over such
projects. Hence, government should take necessary steps to finance for large precast projects,
so that housing problems can be effectively solved and slums can be removed at lesser cost.
Government should implement reduction on tax for those companies that come forward and
adopted such method of construction. Developing nation like India should be interested in
adopting such techniques, which will not only reduce cost of construction but also reduces
time of construction.

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S. V. National Institute of Technology, Surat