Know Your Project Series – 3
The third Talk
in the Series was delivered by Mr. Rahul Kumar, Sr. Manager-EPC Division, on
Saturday, 4th September 2010. In his Talk, he simplified the complex
subject of plant and machinery that we have to help us understand them better. The
following summary covers some of the topics covered in the Talk.
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Recall the scene
when about 100 workers hurriedly pass on a small open disc heaped with concrete
up the scaffolding to lay the slab of a house under construction. In a whole
day’s effort, they would have moved about 50 to 100 cu.mtr of concrete. Imagine
pouring 4,000 cu.mtr of concrete in a day! Mind blowing? That’s the benefit of
mechanization. That’s exactly what the ROTEC Mixing Plant is capable of
delivering. A champion by any standard, the Plant churns out huge volumes
because of its creative, but simplistic design. A highly mechanized system,
fully automatic, the speed of the conveyor decides the mixing proportions and
the quantity produced. A massive tower belt carries the concrete and drops it
several metres away exactly just where it is required. The men at work have to
gasp keeping pace with the machine!
The 160 BP of
Schwing Stetter is not too far behind. It deploys a twin shaft mixer that
ensures homogenous blending of the ingredients. Fully microprocessor
controlled, the Plant is operated just through a keyboard! A few commands of
the fingers determine the quantity of various inputs and a batch of concrete
pours out in a processing time of just 30 seconds – shorter than preparing a
cup of tea!
To produce
aggregate, crushers are used. They are capable of generating over 200 MT of
aggregate an hour. In comparison, our meek neighbourhood stone cutter can do,
at best, 3 to 4 MT in a whole day!
Another special feature
of the project is the use of Creter Cranes. These are specially designed
equipment for pouring of concrete. It has unique features like a telescopic rotatable
boom that can pour concrete over a large radius and distance and feeding belts
that carry concrete at a very rapid pace thus augmenting speed of work.
Boom Placers are
much smaller versions of the crater crane concept. They are mobile, have the
ability to reach narrow spaces and pour concrete that is pumped through their hydraulic
& concrete piping system. Concrete Pumps, on the other hand, are stationary
but have the advantage of serving concrete as far as 500 mtrs
away.
In the Power
Channel, Inclined Pavers are used to spread the concrete uniformly over the
sloping surface.
In the Head Race
Tunnel (HRT), a specially designed Floating Gantry Concreting Machine is used
to build and pave the inner circular lining all through the 1 Km tunnel drilled
under the mountain.
Movement of
materials is done through transit mixers and dumpers. While usage of transit
mixers is commonly known, using dumpers for concrete movement is a special
innovation in our project. The idea has helped in moving larger than normal
quantities in a speedy manner.
Other equipment
includes silo feeding blowers through which bulk cement is carried through
blown wind force through a pipe to be dropped into cement storage silos. A
number of Tower Cranes help is movement of heavy materials within the sites.
Transportation of loose cement in specially built containers on truck chassis
(We call them Bulkers) makes it more economical to use and faster to feed the
silos. This is possibly the only project in the hydro power sector in the
country using bulkers.
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In his Vote of
Thanks, Mr. Sanjay Srivastava reflected on how Materials and Machines are like
two sides of a coin. He said a lump of metal that could just be worthless as
scrap, when modified and reworked by an engineer to form a component, could be
worth hundreds or even thousands. He said that value addition, whether to
material or to the mind is essential to enhance growth as could be seen in Mr.
Rahul Kumar’s career.
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Rahul is a Mechanical Engineer from Regional Engineering
College, Trichy. He worked with Gammon India for about 7 years after being
selected in the campus interview in 1996. He was actively involved in the Delhi
Metro Railway, the Golden Quadrilateral and the famous Signature Bridge over
the Yamuna- the second of its kind in the world. He was also involved in the
construction of Delhi’s tallest building- MCD Civic Centre – 31 levels, 112 mtrs tall, over 3.5 lakh sq ft of covered area, 4 helipads,
parking for 2500 cars and what not! In June this year, GVK invited him to join
in the EPC Division as Sr. Manager. He is a disciplined professional who values
time management, honesty and in looking ahead in a positive way. He is an
active sportsman, sometimes a workaholic and a loving parent of two little boys
3 yrs and 9 yrs old. His wife too is highly qualified and is an MA, BEd.
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