Comparison of design, cost and duration of LGS and SCIP construction with conventional RC construction

Abstract

The research work presented in this paper was planned to have a comparison between “Cold Roll Light Gauged Steel (LGS)”, “Structural Concrete Insulating Panel (SCIP)” and conventional “Reinforced Concrete (RC)” constructions. The basis of comparison was decided to be structural design, structural analysis, construction detailing, project cost and construction scheduling for three types of systems. A school building, consisting of three classrooms, assumed as unit scale for comparison, was designed, estimated and scheduled for three types of construction. Commercial software was used for analysis and design purposes. Microsoft Excel was used for cost estimation while planning & scheduling was carried out with the help of management software. Comparison of three structures after analysis and design dictates that LGS and SCIP constructions result in economical dimensions of structural members having less depth of footing as compared to conventional RC construction. LGS construction costs almost half while that of SCIP construction is almost 0.65 times to that of conventional RC construction. It was also studied that cold-roll technology took 27 days for completion, SCIP 25 days while conventional method completed in 52 days for the same structure. Cold-roll structural steel is 98% recyclable with 60% industry recycling rate while conventional construction is 50% recyclable with 0% industry recycling rate. On the other hand, SCIP construction does not has much recycling value as compared to LGS and conventional RC constructions.