It is worth mentioning here that currently most of the users are importing hydraulic cylinders, power packs and allied equipment from overseas offshore market and the practice unnecessarily increases the project cost by about Rs.15 to 25 lakh per gantry. Hence, according to Tunnel Formwork Consultants, it is wise to use Indian made pneumatic form vibrators, gantry wheels made with cast steel.
Pneumatic vibrators are developed by the designer himself and certified by Chartered Engineer. All hydraulics are manufactured by reputed suppliers of hydraulic cylinders and power-pack companies as per the design of Tunnel Formwork Design Consultants and even all wheels, turnbuckles, pins are made in the country using the high tensile steel like EN-8 or EN-9. In short, Tunnel Formwork Design Consultants offers extremely robust and reliable gantry design using 100% Indian manufactured ISO certified and ASME compliant components (hydraulic and mechanical).
Providng Preliminary Proposal is also in company's service portfolio. In this connection, the company clarified that as a part of a typical preliminary proposal, it provides one general arrangement drawing including one longitudinal section and one cross section of the formwork for the tunnel and an estimate of cost for the complete gantry can be provided if requested and agreed upon. Apart from this, it also provides shop fabrication drawings for each and every component of the formwork panels and components like windows, hinges, vibrator mounting brackets and detailed drawing for Turnbuckles, pins, among others.
Besides these, Tunnel Formwork Design Consultants' other services include vendor recommendations for purchase of machine parts and hydraulic components, vendor specification for pneumatic/electric shutter vibrators, supervision for fabrication of formwork and erection and assembly inside the tunnel or any other location, consultancy for erection at underground locations and recommend steel fabricators experienced in tunnel gantry fabrication.
The company offers extremely flexible deployment options exactly matching to the customers' requirements including developers of hydroelectric power projects, contractors of hydro power projects/irrigation projects, contractors of national highway projects, state government undertakings executing hydroelectric or road projects in hilly regions, contractors working on water supply and sewage tunnels and also contractors working on Udhampur Baramulla railway project for tunnels.
Since its inception in 1978, the company has successfully completed projects with varying degree of complexity right from 3 meters to 12.5 meters and has designed and deployed them all. Tehri Dam Diversion Tunnel is one of the examples, done by the consultant in 1979 where there was a challenge of squeezing rock, frequent falling of overt rocks compelled to give positive support to crown of the tunnel and to resolve the challenge, it designed travelling Gantry with overt shutter to take 600 thick lining concrete load as a result of which it was able to achieve 150 meter of lining per month on all the four faces of two diversion tunnels.
Apart from this, the company has also designed Teesta5 Hydroelectric Project in Sikkim for NHPC in 2002 by overcoming the challenge of 12.5 meter diameter full face lining was carried out to divert maximum peak flow of river Teesta. It provided designed with indigenous steel available in the local market of Kolkata/Siliguri and used Danver Hydromatics Kolkata for the hydraulic Systems. In fact, this fabrication was done at site and erected with the guidance within 2 months time, which in turn resulted in saving full season for the Dam contractor to start job.
