By Eng. Sarudzai Zhanje
There is much that African economies can learn about Construction from China and Chinese companies.
My first year in China I never really to understand, how I would wake up one morning and there is a new building next to my hostel this is something that would happen overnight.
Construction of buildings that are ten stories high can take up one month to be erected, this is because they don’t use the tradition way of construction that we use in Zimbabwe.
Before I knew and understood prefab technology, I would think maybe they would have hired thousands of masons and brick layers for them to complete building in one month. Surprisingly prefab construction uses less labourers on site. It is said to be cheaper than the traditional way of building and the buildings are also durable.
Prefab technology consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on site to form a complete building. Meaning that there is no mixing of concrete on the site everything is done at the factory and the site is the place of assembling the components to complete a building
The disadvantage of prefab technology is that, it eliminates work force. For an example a ten-story building might need two hundred labourers, but with prefab the same building might only need 10 labourers to help lay out the panels and control the machines that are moving the panels.
This technology is very fast and efficient, especially in building societies like our own national building society, prefab makes construction of thousand units faster than normal.
The down side of this technology if implemented in Zimbabwe is that it leaves many people unemployed especially the masons as everything will be done in a factory. However sooner or later we will need to move forward and engage technology that is being used in developed countries
In April 2015 a Chinese construction company claimed to be the world’s fastest builder after erecting a 57-story skyscraper in 19working days in central China. China has over 7000 prefab manufacturers.
Which means there are plenty of low grade too.
