The construction industry is primarily concerned with two issues: construction quality control and the speed with which any construction or project is completed. This is especially important for road projects, which are spread out over many kilometers and must maintain both quality and speed.
Road congestion causes a 2-3% GDP loss in India due to slow road construction. Bituminous roads and concrete roads are the two most common types of roads being built. While bituminous roads can be built quickly, their design life is only 10 years, and they require frequent maintenance. Concrete roads, on the other hand, take a long time to build but have a design life of 30 years and require little maintenance. A significant amount of traffic disruption is expected in both cases. It is necessary to develop a new type of road construction that has a long life, can be built quickly, and does not require extensive maintenance. This is possible with to Prestressed Precast Concrete Pavement (PPCP) Technology.
What is PPCP?
PPCP is a technology wherein, panels are pre-tensioned in a casting yard. The concreting and curing are completed there before being transported and placed on the construction site. Because casting is done in a controlled environment, it is very simple to maintain the road’s quality. Besides this, if any of the PPCP panels exhibit cracks or a lack of quality, that panel can be rejected at the yard, ensuring that the final road quality is always satisfactory. The primary benefits of PPCP are as follows:
- Ease of maintaining quality
- Fast Construction (indirect economic benefit). The construction duration can reduce from 30 days to 5 days which further helps save the diversion cost and user fuel consumption.
- Economical Construction
- Durable Roads: PPCP can provide the best quality pavement having a life of 50 years (as compared to concrete road having 30 years of life).
- Eco-Friendly: The thickness of PPCP panels is less than the regular concrete road and hence contributes in reducing the carbon footprint by almost 70%.
Projects completed in India
CC Precast Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is India’s first company to be involved in the design and construction of following Prestressed Precast Concrete Pavement (PPCP).
VNIT, Nagpur: India’s first PPCP road
- Lane length: 25m
- Width: 3m
- Thickness: 150mm
- Lane length: 900m
- Width: 10.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- Lane length: 900m
- Width: 5.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- Lane length: 12m
- Width: 3.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- Lane length: 260m
- Width: 3.5m
- Thickness: 200mm
- Lane length: 1900m
- Width: 10m
- Thickness: 200mm
| Sustainability and Cost of Construction of PPCP | ||||
| Location | Cost | Maintenance | Sustainability | Year of Construction |
| VNIT | - | Not required | - | Feb, 2018 |
| Inner Ring Road (NH) | 12% higher than CIP | Not required | 850500 kg of CO2 emission saved |
Dec, 2018 |
| Rajeev Nagar | 12% higher than CIP | Not required | 283500 kg of CO2 emission saved |
Oct, 2019 |
| Ultra tech RMC | 15% higher than CIP | Not required | 1890 kg of CO2 emission saved | Feb, 2019 |
| Deolamethi | 10% higher than CIP | Not required | 81900 kg of CO2 emission saved |
Mar, 2021 |
| Pathan Chowk | 7% higher than CIP | Not required | 495000 kg of CO2 emission saved |
Jan, 2022 |
- Solar power, self-charging vehicles, and other futuristic green technologies can be integrated into PPCP technology.
- This technology should be implemented in urban areas where there is traffic congestion as diverting traffic increases user costs. The pace of PPCP construction is very fast, so ambulance delays can be significantly reduced.
- Among the critical problems in rural areas is road quality, which can be easily addressed by using PPCP because it is a factory-made product that can also be used in difficult terrains and in bad weather conditions.
