Singapore in the morning. Alagusundaram Palaniappan is supervising the installation of a concrete module in the Clement Canopy project (Dragages Singapore), in which two 140 meter residential towers are being constructed in the Jurong Lake student quarter in a western neighborhood of the capital. The chief surveyor is watching to see that the tricky operation goes off smoothly. A precast module weighing 23 tons is being lifted to the seventeenth floor of one tower so that it can be placed on the top of the other. Several things immediately strike one as unusual. First, only two men are involved in lifting the module; then a small team of just four men set it in place in ten minutes. No noise of trucks, no dust produced by concreting operations, no scraps of steel or plastic visible.

Dragages Singapore’s know-how in PPVC comes from experience acquired in the 2014 extension of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the first project of its kind in Singapore, and in the construction a year later of an assisted living facility, the Woodlands Crescent Nursing Home. Nevertheless, the Clement Canopy project presents some new challenges. The loadbearing steel structure that supports the modules in the previous projects is replaced here by reinforced concrete, a material preferred by the buildings’future owners because of its durability. The materials are also heavier, meaning that two cranes capable of lifting modules weighing up to 31 tons had to be brought from Germany.

Checking that the modules are aligned and that the mortar poured between them is up to standard; seeing that deadlines and safety instructions are respected: nothing escapes the eye of Palani and his coworkers at the top of the tower, where four modules are installed each day. They are performers in a continuous ballet orchestrated according to a meticulous strategy in terms of planning and logistics. And that is also true at the first link in the module production chain, sixty kilometers from here in Senai, Malaysia, where they are cast, and at the Tuas plant, west of Singapore, where the finishing work is done.

...Plus the possibility of reusing materials in a circular economy approach. Julien Esch, director of Dragages Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia at Bouygues Bâtiment International (a subsidiary of Bouygues Construction), says, “This innovative construction method is a key added value for Dragages Singapore, which is now positioned as a leader in this very promising market.” This article was originally published by Ludmilla Intravaia in le Minorange #90. For further information, visit BYLINK. https://bylink.bouygues.com/en/communications/publications/bouygues-group/internal-publications/le-minorange