Smart design and production planning for drying of concrete slabs in high-rise buildings

Sammanfattning: The Swedish concrete industry is struggling to improve the design of the concrete mixturesand produce new types of binders to reduce the negative effects on the environment due tothe relatively high carbon dioxide emissions during the manufacturing process. Theseaccelerated efforts create new challenges for the construction companies due to the lack ofknowledge about the moisture performance of these new concrete mixtures and the impactson the drying process of the concrete slabs, where the concrete drying process is oftencritical to the project schedule.At NCC, which is one of the leading construction companies in the Nordics, carrying out RHmeasurementsin-situ according to the RBK-manual is the mandatory practice to ensure thatthe moisture condition of the concrete slabs meets the requirements before installing thefloor covering. The large amounts of data generated from these RH-measurements, besidesother data, can be valuable concerning the future management of the drying process indesign and construction phases.The main purpose of this study is to identify the needed data to make valuable decisions forNCC in design and production planning for drying of concrete slabs in high-rise buildings,and the aim is to digitize this process, enabling and facilitating data recycling within the NCCConstruction Connector (CC) initiative in the future.Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with five NCC staff members who havegood experience and knowledge concerning drying of concrete slabs to get a comprehensiveunderstanding of current procedures to manage the drying process, the input and output dataof the RBK-measurements, and the most decisive factors that affect the drying of theconcrete during the construction phase.The study results show all the valuable data needed for the assessment process of moisturein concrete floor slabs and the possible data storing locations. In addition, the study proposesutilizing a web-based system compatible with the NCC Construction Connector and allowsautomated data transfer to and from the project portal in all NCC projects to facilitate thedigital storing of these data during design and construction phases.