Concrete Trade: Quality Manual and Construction Standards

This report presents a comprehensive concrete quality manual designed to guide construction professionals. It emphasizes the importance of quality control in concrete construction, covering essential aspects such as formwork, reinforcement, and concrete itself. The manual provides detailed procedures for each stage, including material selection, installation, and inspection. It addresses critical factors like stability, tolerances, and structural design to ensure durable and defect-free concrete structures. The report also highlights the significance of adherence to standards and the identification of potential problems, offering practical solutions for efficient and effective concrete field practices. The document also covers the general aspects of concrete quality, including responsibilities, record-keeping, and control documents, emphasizing a proactive approach to ensure that the final product meets all contractual requirements and delivers a high-quality, sustainable construction outcome. The provided references give further insights into the subject.

Running head: QUALITY MANUAL FOR THE CONCRETE TRADE 1
Quality Manual for the Concrete Trade
Name
Institution

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Introduction
In the modern day concrete trade is quality centered. The concrete manual provides the
various procedures for responsible building. Based on the circumstances surrounding the
concrete manual, such as the labor and material costs that keep on rapidly rising as well as the
dwindling state of the construction industry, the demanding interaction between the various
disciplines of creating buildings gives the optimum efficiencies if certain manuals are involved.
In carrying out a quality risk assessment, there is need for the identification of the fact that a
quality manual is mandatory for the concrete trade on construction to ensure that a quality
product is delivered to the client. Factors such as construction, building skins, layout rooms,
exteriors, the running costs, among others take up technical and passive measures that need to be
exploited in a pre-meditated manner. These factors involve structural designs, material
properties, as well as sustainability. Therefore, the main objective of the manual is to identify
how one gets an assurance in the construction of a quality concrete job, free from defects and in
accordance with the contract documents.
This paper tackles the most important elements of the concrete manual like formwork,
reinforcement, concrete, and generally. The concrete manual provides the guidance and
information that drives the construction professionals into getting the various needs to be more
proficient an effective in the concrete field practice and construction. In going through the
concrete manual, the documents introduce the concrete tenets, the distinctiveness of the
conventional construction procedures as well as construction technologies. Quality management
systems give sustained quality construction within the frameworks of the ISO certified standards.
The examination of every stage of the process of the Concreter trade and the identification of
what problems are normally encountered involves the following:

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Formwork
The aspects of formwork involve quality of materials, sequence of installation and
stripping, storage on site, tolerances in dimensions, progressive (and mandatory) inspections etc.
At this stage, the material properties are very critical for the overall aggregation of the steel or
concrete. The following measures are critical for the adoption at this stage: the first one is the
provision of the stability against the expected lateral forces and in ensuring that the construction
are arranged in a suitable shear walls deployment with the best asymmetry (Nawy, 2008). More
than that, it is important to adopt a simple arrangement of slabs, beams, as well as columns
whereby the loads are carried to the foundations within the shortest time possible.
Tolerance in dimensions involves proper arrangements taken into account with possible
openings with effective stiffness. In this case, the effective depths of beams, slabs, and the waist
of the constructions should be of favorable size or volumes. Particularly, the beam should be of
sufficient depth to avoid the later need to give excessive compression reinforcement (Berke, et
al. 2014). This will also eventually ensure an economical amount of tension and shear
reinforcement and facilitate the placing of concrete.
After obtaining the position and the depth of the slabs and beams, it is important examine
the width of beams and ribs, the column size and reinforcement, shear in flat slabs at columns, as
well as the practicality arrangement in beams, slabs, and at beam-column junctions. At this stage,
it is also important to use columns that are stocky for which the ratio of the effective height to
the least lateral dimension does not exceed 15 since this dimension will ensure the avoidance of
the necessity of designing for the effects of slenderness. More than that, the columns should be
designed as axially loaded, but to compensate for the effect of peculiarities, the ultimate load

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from the floor immediately above the column being considered should be multiplied by the
factors mentioned above.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement involves quality of steel, bending tolerances, cartage to site, storage on
site, coding, sequence of installation, concrete coverage (and checks thereof) , progressive (and
mandatory) inspections etc. The other principle of concrete manual is the reinforcement
whereby concrete of appropriate quality with adequate cover to the reinforcement should be
specified. The stages that are initial ones in the design building structures are very mandatory for
the factors like steel quality, cartage site, storage on site, as well as sequence coding of
installation requires architectural and functionality evaluation and with costs (Taylor, et al.
2016). The main aim of this stage is basically to establish the structural scheme that I very
appropriate for the purpose and economically sensible without any undue sensitivity to the
various changes that are expected to be imposed with the overall concrete design or
development. Simple structures are easy and quick to design, build and reinforce in the
achievement of the optimum conditions required in the overall construction.
According to Chen, et al. (2010), reinforcement is examined from the perspectives of the
minimum and the maximum amounts of reinforcement. Therefore, the minimum areas of
tension reinforcement and the compression reinforcements should be kept in check. In the same
way, for the maximum areas, it is important to note that both the tension reinforcement and the
area of compression reinforcement should not go beyond 4% of the concrete area.
The need for estimation of concrete structural cost follows after the quantities of the
materials including the reinforcement. This is where the steel type, the diameter, and weigh are

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divided based on their elementary structures like foundation, slabs, walls, columns among others
and the bar shape i.e. straight, bent or hooked, curved, links, and spacers. However, for fabric or
mesh reinforcement, the steel type, fabric type, and the area are involved and divided also based
on the element structure and the bar. In this case, the strength properties of reinforcement are
expressed in terms of the characteristic yield strength.
Concrete
The analysis of concrete in this manner involves the quality of materials, testing before
placement, on-site handling, placement procedures, finishing, curing and tolerances. The
concrete important information involves the slabs, the structural frames, the beams, the columns,
robustness, foundations, the walls, the staircase, and retaining walls or basement.
The concrete slabs should be designed to withstand the most disparaging arrangements of
design loads. Based on the arguments of Sheety (2013), the subjection of the slabs uniformly
and predominantly distributed loads, it is important to consider the load arrangement of
alternative spans that carry the maximum design leads and imposed load. It should also be
important to consider the distributing moments to remain in equilibrium state with the load
applied. To avoid compression reinforcement in concrete slabs, it is important to check that the
applied moment is less than the limiting moment of resistance.
Generally
Generally in this case involves examining what happens when non-conformance is
identified? What records are you going to maintain? Who is responsible at the various stages?
What control documents are you going to set up? Design a suitable form layout to record
compliances.

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One of the principles of concrete manual is general, whereby some responsibilities is
assigned to an individual. For instance, one engineer being assigned the overall design
responsibility as well as stability to ensure compatibility of the design.
The general structural outlook of the concrete revolves around the robustness of the
structure, the walls, and the basement of the design. It is important to establish the requirements
for the internal and external environments with appropriations, ensuring that the strictures like
the walls complying with the slenderness provisions. There is also need to comply with the fire
resistance and durability requirements on every structural design.
Conclusion
The concrete manual gives the standard for construction specifications involving
concrete. It familiarizes the engineering personnel, contractors, as well as consultants within the
framework of fundamental construction principles and better practice of concrete construction.
More than that, it enables professionals to obtain the best likely concrete structures and
consistent concretes. The specific methods of the concrete manual are placed on test methods
and inspection procedures for the purposes of concrete production as well as placement. The
conventional concrete construction procedures, control and inspection procedures, as well as
exploration of the statistical quality methods are the proper segments of concrete manual.

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References
Ann, K. Y., Ahn, J. H., & Ryou, J. S. (2009). The importance of chloride content at the concrete
surface in assessing the time to corrosion of steel in concrete structures. Construction and
Building Materials, 23(1), 239-245.
Berke, N., Bentur, A., & Diamond, S. (2014). Steel corrosion in concrete: fundamentals and
civil engineering practice. CRC Press.
Chen, Y., Okudan, G. E., & Riley, D. R. (2010). Sustainable performance criteria for
construction method selection in concrete buildings. Automation in construction, 19(2),
235-244.
Delatte, N. (2006). Concrete pavement design, construction, and performance. Crc Press.
Grundy, P., & Kabaila, A. (2013). Construction loads on slabs with shored formwork in
multistory buildings. In Journal Proceedings (Vol. 60, No. 12, pp. 1729-1738).
Grundy, P., & Kabaila, A. (2013). Construction loads on slabs with shored formwork in
multistory buildings. In Journal Proceedings (Vol. 60, No. 12, pp. 1729-1738).
Nawy, E. G. (Ed.). (2008). Concrete construction engineering handbook. CRC press.
Randall Jr, F. A., & Panarese, W. C. (2016). Concrete masonry handbook for architects,
engineers, builders (No. EB008. 04M).
Schindler, A., & Frank McCullough, B. (2012). Importance of concrete temperature control
during concrete pavement construction in hot weather conditions. Transportation
Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, (1813), 3-10.
Sheety, M. S. (2013). Concrete technology. published by S. Chand & Company Ltd., New Delhi-
1999.

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Taylor, P. C., Kosmatka, S. H., & Voigt, G. F. (2006). Integrated materials and construction
practices for concrete pavement: A state-of-the-practice manual (No. FHWA HIF-07-
004).
Yee, A. A. (2011). Structural and economic benefits of precast/prestressed concrete construction.
PCI journal, 46(4).