Construction World June 2015

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD JUNE 2015
ROADS AND BRIDGES
The company focuses strongly on the needs of its customers
and their projects to develop innovative holistic product
supply solutions. The approach is proving to be highly
effective, offering customers peace of mind and better
value in a competitive marketplace.
Lafarge South Africa is the local presence of the international
Lafarge Group, a world leader in building materials. The Group’s
brand baseline Building better cities is founded on the huge global
trend to urbanisation and reflects Lafarge’s commitment to help
create cities that are desirable, sustainable environments for all
people. This means contributing to better solutions that meet the
needs of communities for decent housing, hospitals, schools and
offices, together with the associated infrastructure to connect and
service cities, such as roads, airports, water and power utilities.
All round support at Eteza
A recent example of Lafarge South Africa’s efficient integrated service
was on the SANRAL contract to construct an overload control facility
and full diamond interchange at Eteza on the N2 in KwaZulu-Natal.
The main contractor was concerned about two main concrete issues.
The driver of the project was their ability to place the Continuous
Reinforced Concrete Pavement (CRCP) on time and within specifica-
tion, when the closest commercial ready-mixed concrete plant was
45 km from the project site. The second concern was ameliorating
the Heat of Hydration (HOH) in the extremely hot, humid conditions.
Lafarge’s successful offer to supply all main building materials,
concrete, cement, fly ash, and 165 000 t of road aggregates, as well
as 4 500 t of the company’s specialised cementitious roadbinder,
RoadCem 32,5N, made it viable to provide a Lafarge mobile concrete
batching plant on site. This enabled the required combined total of
13 000 m³ of CRCP mix and other Conventionally Vibrated Concrete
(CVC) to be supplied without compromising the quality or integrity
of the concrete.
The solution to assisting the contractor to control heat of
hydration was the supply of 6 500 t of Lafarge’s Powercrete Plus
CEM II 42,5R premium technical cement. This unique product is not
only a Low Heat Cement with a typical Heat of Hydration value of
227 J/g (compared with the EN 197-1 criterion of < 270 J/g at 41h), but
it can also be extended further on site with fly ash to meet the various
mix requirements.
Meeting a tight durability specification
Similar support was provided to the main contractor on the SANRAL
contract to upgrade Section 14 of the N1 freeway between Tromps-
burg Interchange and Fonteintjie, a distance of 20,8 km. The site
is some 120 km from the nearest fixed commercial ready-mixed
concrete plant and this represented a potentially significant risk in
terms of compliance with the tight durability specification.
ALL ROUND
SUPPORT at Eteza
Lafarge South Africa is in a unique position
to provide the construction industry
with building materials and solutions
through having a strong presence in all of
its construction related business lines of
cement, aggregates, ready-mixed concrete,
fly ash and gypsum plasterboard.
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