Steel Formwork Goes Back To Where It All Began

Location:	Mittagong, New South Wales
Country:	Australia
Client:	Woolworths Limited
Builder:	ADCO Constructions and Romanous Formwork Pty Ltd
Installer:	Geoff Reynolds Roofing Pty Ltd
Products Used:	LYSAGHT BONDEK® LYSAGHT W-DEK®

Construction of a new regional shopping centre on the New South Wales Southern Highlands involved the use of the latest structural steel formwork on a site which 160 years ago was home to Australia's first iron works.

Woolworths Limited has won wide praise for modifying its plans for the site of the former Fitzroy Iron Works at Mittagong after excavations revealed archaeological discoveries of much greater significance than had been expected.

The company changed its plans for the Highlands Marketplace development to showcase the relics, relinquished 60 car spaces and conducted an open day at the historic site before building work began.

As well as the major use of a LYSAGHT BONDEK® structural steel formwork solution for the predominantly concrete framed areas of the new retail centre, Highlands Marketplace also incorporates LYSAGHT W-DEK® in a mezzanine level steel framed slab to house office space for the centre.

LYSAGHT W-DEK® spans distances up to 40 per cent more than traditional re-entrant systems for steel framed structures and at 700mm wide its unique 'w' shaped profile minimises the number of sheets and props required.

The design of LYSAGHT W-DEK® optimises the way in which it bonds with concrete, giving it composite strength tested to be nearly four times the capacity of similar products tested overseas.

Experienced builder ADCO Constructions and Romanous Formwork Pty Ltd also used LYSAGHT BONDEK® formwork to speed construction of the 22,000 square metre concrete slab for the retail development to house a Woolworths supermarket, a Big W department store and 30 specialty shops.

"The original construction schedule was disrupted by what the early excavations uncovered," ADCO Constructions project manager, Brian Whealing said.

"ADCO has done many developments for Woolworths around Australia and this ranks at the large end of the scale, especially for a regional area. It will serve shoppers in the area from Wollongong in the east to Campbelltown in the north."

Brian Whealing has worked on numerous sites where LYSAGHT BONDEK® has been employed, but although Woolworths had used the system on its own headquarters, it had not employed it on a shopping centre project.

"Through discussions with BlueScope Lysaght about this project it became obvious that we could save considerable time by using BONDEK® instead of conventional formwork for the slab," he said. "We put the suggestion to Woolworths and they asked us to quantify the potential time savings."

ADCO consulted contractor Romanous Formwork Pty Ltd, which had not worked with the BONDEK® system but was familiar with it and keen to use it for the creation of the large slab.

"It turned out that the estimates of possible time savings were quite conservative," Brian Whealing said. "We saw slab time savings of six to eight weeks, which is a major gain for our client after the earlier unavoidable delays."

The switch from conventional formwork to LYSAGHT BONDEK® decking has led to an additional benefit for the shopping centre owners and users.

The product's competitive pricing enabled Woolworths to specify a white prepainted finish for the underside of the BONDEK®, sheets instead of the standard unpainted zinc coating of the DECKFORM® steel from which the product is made.

"All the parking area for the centre is located on the level below the slab and under the original plan there would have just been an unpainted concrete soffit," Brian Whealing said.

"The appearance of the underside of the slab is greatly improved and the whole area is much brighter than it would have been."

Other benefits identified on the Highlands Marketplace site as a result of the switch to BONDEK® structural steel formwork include labour savings and reduced rubbish removal costs.

"I estimate that we would have averaged 50 workers on site at any one time if we had used conventional formwork on this project," Brian Whealing said. "As it is we averaged roughly 35, so that's a saving for the formwork contractor and a reduced occupational health and safety risk for everyone."

BlueScope Lysaght's building products solution for the regional shopping centre also included 18,000 square metres of KLIP-LOK 700 HI-STRENGTH® concealed fix roof cladding in the COLORBOND® steel colour Paperbark®. Installation was carried out by Geoff Reynolds Roofing Pty Ltd.

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