Mechanisation in Building Industry

With the increasing rate of population, the housing problem in the country has become quite acute. The present building construction activity which is based mostly on traditional construction techniques and materials has not been able to keep pace with the fast speed with which urbanisation and industrialisation is taking place in the country. Ind ustr ial development and the resulting demand fo r skilled and unskilled labour with better prospects have been quite instrumental in adversely affecting the growth of traditional construction. Sometimes, use of partially prefabricated components have also been made along with the traditional construction for effecting saving in time and labour. Full prefabricated buildings have also come up at certain places.

To meet the housing problem the building industry has to orient its efforts in two main directions, namely:(1) Improvements of existing building techniques (2) Large scale industrialisation of buildings. For both these aspects, mechanisation has to be introduced in building industry in one form or the other. The scope of application of mechanical equipment in building industry appears to be extensive. This paper describes the various developmental works carried out by the Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee with a view to introduce mechanization in the traditional construction technique, material production and in the construction of large scale industrialised buildings.