All for PEBs

Pre-engineered buildings (PEB) are expected to play an expansive role in efficiently accomplishing the dream of smart cities. A plethora of opportunities are opening up in areas like multi-storey, institutional, commercial and residential buildings along with the need of smart warehousing. Vishwa Murthy KM – CEO, HalleysBlue Steels Pvt Ltd, India I Africa shares his views on how PEBs are helping enhance smart cities.

How are PEBs contributing to making better smart cities?
The futuristic technology of pre-engineered buildings (PEB) is evolving every day in multi-dimension to support the cities turn smarter year by year in terms of more sustainable, efficient and affordable. As the cities are becoming increasingly urbanised, the PEB technology integrated with advanced concrete solutions & cladding options is making more sense contributing towards speed, ease & cost of construction. An imperative point that comes to spotlight in this context is that the structural members gets completely fabricated under controlled facility away from the worksite thus making the worksite much cleaner and triggers the work speed by at least 2X. The word ‘smart’ gets its importance when something is built in smarter way by boiling down the difficulties of construction.I would say, PEB construction could be used as a synonym to smarter way of construction adding utmost value in making the cities smart and more sustainable.

Talk about the latest trends and applications in PEB?
The biggest and eye catching example today that defines the trend in speedy and quality construction is the metro lines, steel flyovers, bridges and high rise steel buildings. The trend in constructing today starts with providing an open ground to the architects and customers for their exposition of imagination and aesthetics irrespective of major limitation that could be achieved and built to match their imagination. This includes the clear spans and cantilevers with the section sizes much optimised. Currently, in one of our ongoing projects, A G+3 Steel Building for a school at Bangalore, the depth of steel sections is restricted even by providing higher clear spans up to 11.0 m. In one of our other project, we have delivered 15-metre clear mezzanine span as it was much needed. These designs were double vetted to ensure higher stability and strength.

How do you see the demand for PEBs this year?
The demand for the overall construction is always high and is consistently increasing year by year. The rate of adaptability of PEB technology is what that defines the actual increase in demand for PEB’s. People are understanding the constraints in traditional construction methods, which have been little unsuccessful in meeting the increased demand for infrastructure from sectors such as power, warehousing, fast moving consumer goods, automotive and logistics. The demand for warehouses is also increasing with the increase in the number of e-retailers. The increase in demand over years was at least 5 per cent to maximum of 8 per cent. The demand in this year is also expected to hit the higher number. The overall demand will reach close to 12 per cent per year by 2020. The major challenges for adopting PEBs in India is over passing the persisting trust in traditional construction methods with the rise in the awareness of the advantages of PEBs.

What are the benefits of PEB?

• PEB reduces the total cost of construction by at least 40 per cent which leads to faster occupancy and early revenue.
• Saving is optimised design, manufacturing and construction cost.
• PEBs can be built up to 90.0 metre clear span (column free).
• PEBs provide flexibility of expansion and can be easily expanded in length by adding additional bays.
• PEBs are manufactured under controlled conditions depending on the site and hence the quality is highly assured.
• PEB’s have high quality paint systems for cladding which gives long durability and low maintenance costs.

PEB reduces the total cost of construction by at least 40 per cent which leads to faster occupancy and early revenue.
Vishwa Murthy KM, CEO, HalleysBlue Steels Pvt Ltd India I Africa

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