Housing in Southern Africa May 2015

Cement & Concrete

Madeira Isles Elematic SA’s precast hollow core concrete slabs have once again proved their worth when it comes to time- saving and efficiency on a building project.

the project. Boutel’s experienced team was renowned as a plastering and tiling firmbefore becoming firmly established as a formidable company capable of rolling out medium sized commercial construction. Boutel’s founder, Americo Pimentel and his management team, chose concrete slabs for the flooring. “We were concerned about the speed at which the project had to be done,” explains Pimentel. “For us to complete the project in the specified time period, we realised that we had to go the precast route and that was when we contacted Elematic South Africa (ESA) to get involved in the project negotiations.” He adds that the biggest challenge the contractors faced on site was that two other companies needed to complete their work first, in order for the precast slabs to work as planned. “There was brickwork to be done and the steel structure had to be com- pleted in order to support the precast

T he Benoni-based manufac- turer has supplied 30 500m 2 of concrete slabs for Madeira Isles, a rental stock housing project in Danville, Pretoria. The hollow core slabs have reduced the construction time by six months to fast track the 500 unit development. Madeira Isles residential hous-

ing typologies comprises of 14 four storey apartment blocks – a total of 40 700m 2 . There are 56 one bedroom, 388 two bedroom and 56 studio apartments. The units will be due for completion before mid-year. The client, ESS, appointed Boutel Projects as the main contractor to oversee the operation and manage