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23 Doody Street
The first commercial trial of BARMAT® in NSW, the 23 Doody Street project experienced a 50% productivity benefit through the use of BARMAT® in a fourth storey floor slab. This benefit was delivered with no material or labour cost increase when compared to traditional steel fixing.
Delivering efficiencies
Identifying benefits for the project began at the planning stage for the InfraBuild Reinforcing team. In collaboration with the project team, InfraBuild identified BARMAT®, our exclusive, customisable prefab bar mat as the perfect solution for the building’s upper floor slab where installation was complicated by an external hob beam.
Project Details
Location:
New South Wales
Name:
23 Doody Street
Solution:
BARMAT®
BARMAT® Benefits for 23 Doody Street:
In utilising a bespoke BARMAT solution, the onsite team were able to avoid the labour-intensive work associated with cutting traditional reinforcing steel to interact with structures. Maximising the flexible design inherent to BARMAT®, the mats were designed to fit around the hob beam. Each mat had its own configuration and was clearly labelled to indicate its position within the slab. Mats ranged in size from 3 x 3.35 m where they interacted with the hob beam and other elements, up to 7 x 8.5 m where interaction was minimal and larger mats allowed for more efficient steel fixing. Fabricated from N12 bar, the mats weighed up to 180 kg each and a crane was used to ease onsite handling for fixers on the fourth floor: installation was as simple as lifting, placing and fixing. Gavin Elterman, 23 Doody Street’s owner and project manager, identified BARMAT® as delivering significant time and labour savings.
“To complete this slab to my standards using traditional steel fixing would have taken two days. Using BARMAT®, a full day of work was completed in a morning using my team and a crane to lift and place the mats into place,“ said Mr Elterman.
A safer solution
Beyond time and labour efficiencies, BARMAT® offered safety benefits to the project. While a prefabricated solution has long been recognised as improving site safety through fabricating reinforcing elements offsite in a controlled factory environment, 23 Doody Street workers identified additional benefits. Rather than working atop traditional Class L mesh the welded N12 bars which formed the project’s mats were significantly stronger and allowed for surer footing.
“BARMAT® provided a more stable walking platform due to the welded intersections, providing a safer working platform compared to conventional tie wire fixed reinforcement,” Mr Elterman said.
In delivering labour and time efficiencies and improved safety for the project, as well as a better installation experience for the steel fixers, BARMAT® proved an essential solution in its first New South Wales commercial trial.