OMIRA SPEEDCON- A Cost Effective and Environment Friendly(CEEF)Building Technology developed by Ar.Sanjay Prasade. Text-Ar.

Suvarna Deshpande/Lele

Ar Sanjay Prasade Indian Scenario-

It is a well known fact that about half of the total Investment in our country goes to construction sector. About 90% of investments in this field come from the private sector. (Housing and commercial are two main branches of construction sector. Lately high scale infrastructure projects by state and central government are undertaken on priorities for resolving complex urbanization issues in all the major and minor cities of INDIA. It has badly affected the supply of building materials to housing industry. The Construction costs in India are increasing around 50 percent over average inflation levels. This cost rise is due to increase in costs of essential building materials such as steel, cement, bricks, timber, stone, sand and other inputs as well as cost of labour. As a result the construction cost of a structure ranges from 10000-12000 per sq.m. approximately for a standard type. It becomes necessary to adopt the use of alternative building materials and construction technologies to save the scarce resources. This may be done by up gradation of local technologies using local resources or by application of modern materials & techniques.
300 50

318 27

300 00

200 50
En r yCo t n (M eg n e t J)

Approximate Break -up of total Construc Materials and Labour

200 00 100 50 100 00

62 20

67 70

50 00

40 40

20 4
0
Co rs a e

19 20

60 6
L e im /t C m n/t e et Se l/t te Co c t n ree B c s /t lo k

70 0

How do we substitute these materials?

Cement 18% Energy Intensity Of Building Materials.

A g e ae /t g r gts C n ree oc t B ck /t lo s

B k ric s/t

H llo o w

B s/'0 0 rick 0

Labour Why Cost Effective Construction and Use of Alternate technologies? 27%
India is undergoing transition from rural to urban society due to increasing migration from rural to urban areas. There is a mismatch between demand and supply of sites

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and services and also a disparity between high land costs, cost of construction and lower incomes leading to a non-sustainable situation.

Several burning issues related to Low Cost and Ecological construction are1) Lack of equitable supply of land, shelter and services at affordable prices. 2) Environmental paradigms neglected while design and planning. 3) Depletion of natural resources in construction and negligence of ecology in design. 4) Lack of application of cost effective building material/technology and energy efficient methods in construction. 5) The conventional construction methods where the energy intensive and high cost materials are used in abundant having an adverse effect on scarce material supplies. 6) The appropriate technologies and their usage remains confined to lab and a few people because the delivery system is unable to establish a proper linkage from lab to land.

Depletion Of Natural ResourcesConstruction industries contribute in severe depletion of Environment. This extensive resource depletion occurs as the large volumes of materials are used for construction. The depletion of resources can be in several ways such as1) Ruining of forest lands due to extensive cutting down of trees for requirement of wood. 2) Destroying of mountains by quarrying. 3) Exploiting the river basins for requirement of sand. 4) Ruining the paddy fields for the want of clay for manufacturing the bricks.
All the above elements are used in construction along with cement or for the manufacturing of cement which are converted into concrete garbage after demolition of the dilapidated building. They have zero salvage value. More materials are used to create more concrete garbage. This concrete garbage has a total inappropriate use of land filling for reclaiming our sea shores, creeks, water bodies or lakes. The materials are thus consumed in abundance and this uncontrolled usage is leading to a dangerous situation .This degradation is leading to a global catastrophe.The damage of these non renewable resources is irrevocable and every little use of materials is leading towards the scarcity of natural materials which would be unavailable to future generations.

There are two methods which might diminish this inevitable environmental calamity1) By reducing the usage of construction materials. 2) By selection of proper materials and alternate technologies. Reducing the usage of materials, reusing and recycling them would certainly minimise the negative impact on environment to a certain extent. For a designer, he has a privilege of selecting materials and technology which is an integral part of the design. Ar.Prasade has been researching for alternate and appropriate technology to overcome this issue through out his career since the last 22 years to replace the conventional construction format which is to leading to this global catastrophe. Large volume of Housing is constructed all over India both in Urban and rural areas and there is a definite scarcity of materials as well as finance. Economically weaker, low income groups and lower middle income groups cannot afford these rates and are unable to fulfill their dream house. A Large chunk of middle-income group and lower income group invest their life long saving to build their own houses.It is very essential to help this large segment, by providing them necessary information regarding the cost saving techniques of construction, for saving their hard earned money. At the same time precious, materials like cement, steel, timber, bricks can be saved, which can be used for more construction. Here, it becomes necessary to consider the newer and alternate modes of construction using the least of resources and money. The best option is to use local resources as men, machine and materials. Similarly local enablement, education and information are vital condiments for the process of sustainable planning and development. Considering all above issues Ar. Sanjay Prasade continued experimenting on his latest projects in his regular practice where he worked on several typologies of construction such as sky scrapers, university campus,hotels,buildings,bungalows,villas,hospitals,transportation terminals, recreation clubs, residential layouts and low cost Vernacular Architecture following the principles of Ar.Laurie Baker. Ar Sanjay believes in principal of Building For Environmental and Economical Sustainability. Construction through a common mans perspective- It is a tiresome procedure to construct ones own house considering the management of several parameters involved like cost, time, men and materials. Moreover it is becoming more and more difficult for a common man to build a house of his dreams due to tremendous rise in material costs and their scarcity. The scarcity is due to diversion of these materials to Mega scale Infrastructure projects. The two reasons why a common man is scared to venture into a project of his dream house are 1) There is a continuous and steep rise in costs of basic building materials. 2) The building industry is very disorganised and he has to spend his valuable time and money chasing behind the contractors.

3) Due to ignorance regarding the required materials and technologies required to build the same. Not only a common man aspiring to build his home but various institutions such as educational,social,religious,health and several others are facing a similar problem of matching their resources with their construction demands .So many other genuinely operating social organizations are always facing funding problems for establishment or expansion of their projects. AR.Sanjays philosophy behind SPEEDCON- The Sustainable Development includes both ecological growth and maintenance of economical growth. The environmental factors play a significant role in the planning and development of human settlements. Due to depleting natural resources and non renewable energy, human race is facing an energy crisis.

It becomes necessary to select ecologically appropriate and affordable materials for a sustainable and an economical construction. It is necessary to substitute energy intensive materials and also reduce down the material consumption for a building. Ar.Sanjay has been practicing over 22 years and has worked on different building typologies, right from tall skyscrapers to small apartment buildings as stated above. After serious introspection he has drawn some conclusions and decided to contribute towards the environmental damage in whatever small way he can. He feels that a small contribution by every professional would help to save the environment in a big way. This will in turn be saving the future generations from facing the disastrous consequences due to the extensive use of materials. He holds primarily the Contractor responsible for these damages as it the contractor who is in charge of the Project and thus technology and materials. The user is an innocent scapegoat and the natural resources are wasted in abundant.

He feels that all the unnecessary use of materials leads in creation of more and more garbage which might only be used for unproductive works as land fills. The very precious materials are literally going down the drain in form of massive concrete constructions. Contractors concentrate only on huge earnings through this showing an utter disrespect towards nature and environment. A huge concrete garbage is formed which do not have any salvage value and hence huge amount of energy is also wasted which is consumed in manufacturing and construction of these materials. Building and construction activities worldwide consume about 40% of total global raw materials each year. India, being a developing country, the demand for the basic materials has become multifold. To incorporate sustainable design principles the easiest way is to select environment friendly materials. Ar.Sanjay has developed this technology which fulfills several aspects of Low Cost construction such as1) Promotion of local materials, cost effective, energy efficient and innovative technology. 2) Using cost effective, environment friendly materials, their quality improvement and cost reduction through standardisation and adoption of modern information. 3) Overcoming design limitation through variety of modules and their combinations with local materials. 4) Effective implementation of time management.

SPEEDCON TECHNOLOGY-

The continuous experimentation along with the regular practice made Ar.Sanjay to develop the SPEEDCON TECHNOLOGY which he is ready to share with common man and several institutions in want of cost effective and environment friendly technologies which would come comparatively cheaper than the existing technologies. Sanjay Prasades SPEEDCON technology is put to use to save time, money, material, labor on construction by industrializing the building components which have a greater salvage value that will be recovered after 50 years. Materials need a lot of money to be purchased and the same become scrap several years after that, at the time of demolition. Some materials can be recycled and put to use with a considerable depreciation in their values. Here, in this technology the materials can be reused as the new ones and there is a considerable appreciation in their value due to their ingredients and usability. The SPEEDCON system modules are standardized so as to achieve flexibility in space planning as per the desired brief of the clients requirement. The technology used here does not dominate the planning and the building. There is a lot of flexibility in planning with different possibilities of modules and joinery. The product is manufactured industrially but still it can be mixed and matched with the local materials to add vernacular essence to the character of the building. This gives and advantage to use the same system in different parts of the country giving it a local flair. So with the same system, if the house in Kerala is built, it will not disturb the vernacular character of the town and so on in Gujarat, Rajasthan or for that matter in Himachal Pradesh too. In short, with the same basic modules we can create the structures having characteristics of any state all over the country.

Several Advantages Of The system-

1) Cost and time Reduction-The basic ingredient of the units used here is fly ash which reduces the self weight of the structure by 40% so one can understand very well the cost optimization through materials. The time required for erection and completion of the project is brought down to 50% which save lots of overheads. The common man when goes for OMIRA SPEEDCON system for his dream project, he is almost clear on cost v/s benefit issues as buying any product off the shelf from a showroom like T.V, refrigerator, washing machine and car. He is absolutely clear about his personal choice of designing and facade materials, flooring and roofing materials which would provide an independent identity to everyones dream home. 2) Easy Handling-- Scarcity of water, vehicular inaccessibility to the site cannot be now the hurdles in erecting the project because all the individual elements used in this system can be carried on shoulders up to 50-100 meters easily by the labor on site. The construction system being almost dry types, the curing with water is not the main issue. Though the product is industrially manufactured it never gives a feel of artificiality as against vernacular essence of that region. 3) Portability- In case of temporary structure issues like seaside cottages this technique becomes more useful when applied in particular direction. 4) Design Flexibility- Modularization and standardization in engineering the house or building do no cast a shadow on artistic individual characterization of the house or building. 5) Running cost concept The 70% material when dismentelled after age of the house building is over would get a salvage value. It would support further activity on the same plot. As when we buy a car and use it for a favourable period then sell it off to buy new,

what we count is running cost the car, similarly running cost of the house or building can be calcutlated and this technology certainly proves to be cheaper than the conventional one. Life is very fast what is built by father children may wish to change completely.This adaptability can certainly achieved in SPEEDCON CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY.