24/7 Concrete Pour For Dublin Airports Newest Visual Control Tower
Building of the Year- Commercial, Building & Architect of the Year Awards 2021
Highly commended, 38th annual Irish Concrete Society awards 2019
A new Visual Control Tower (VCT) was construction at Dublin Airport to handle the continual increases in traffic volumes.
The 86.9m tall tower is Ireland’s tallest building and comprises of a 17 storey shaft with a control room sitting on top.
The tower is triangular in plan to account for the three modes of vertical circulation from bottom to top: two lifts and a single escape stairway.
To ensure the tower’s shaft has an elegant modern appearance a construction method that had no cold joints and an excellent surface finish was required. To do this a continuous 24/7 pour of concrete was utilised. Roadstone supplied Slipform concrete mixes for this purpose.
A range of mixes were designed and supplied by Roadstone with various setting times of slow, medium and rapid set, which allowed:
Setting characteristics of the concrete to be adjusted to suit the various stages of construction and achieve sufficient concrete strength to allow the formwork to proceed vertically without damaging the extruded concrete below it.
No cold joints due to the monolithic nature of construction.
Speedy construction
The tower was constructed in 22 days with over 320 loads and 1,700m³ of Slipform concrete supplied continuously by Roadstone.
In addition to meeting construction speed requirements the supplied mixes also met specified structural and durability requirements.
With an expected completion date of early 2019, the new VCT will become a focal point of the Dublin skyline and provide continued safety to the millions of passengers that travel through Dublin Airport each year.
Prior to the projects commencement, meetings between Roadstone and the contractor and site trial mixes ensured applicable mixes with suitable setting times were supplied for each stage of construction.
Find out more about Roadstone’s Slipform Concrete here