Practice of Concrete Production in Gaindakot Municipality, Nepal

Concrete is one of the most used construction materials. Quality of concrete depends upon its ingredients and workmanship. The paper aims to assess the practice of concrete production and knowledge among practitioners regarding concreting at Gaidakot municipality which relies on manual concrete production. Only 30 under-construction houses in 10 wards of the Municipality were selected purposively for observation of concrete practice as field-based empirical research. A structured questionnaire was surveyed as scheduled with 30 practitioners (10 mixer operator, 10 ingredients pourer and 10 vibrator operator) and intensive observation by the researcher were recorded to analyze the practice for concrete production.It was found none of the respondents was aware of concreting code of NBC. They had not attended any training to practice NBC of Nepal. Similarly, the majority of practitioners learned about the method of concreting through experience or coworkers by observing at sites during work. However, 77% of them responded that the process of concreting was good. Similarly, there were a lot of problems in workmanship. Quality in ingredients was not taken in due consideration and dosage of ingredients varies from batch to batch and placement was done in segment wise for slab and beam. Compaction as well as curing was inadequate.Lack of formal education, inadequate guidance and training, proper skill and knowledge about NBC of Nepal among the workers involved directly in concrete production was making concrete production inconsistent and uncontrolled. The study will be significant for quality resident building construction by ensuring the effective implementation of building code, which is the minimum standard, the skill-oriented training and continuous supervision from the concerned local municipality