Trade Journals for the Concrete Industry

Despite the long history of precast concrete construction, the level of acceptance of the precast wall panel system in Malaysia is still considerably low. One of the reasons is the impediment of dry connection usage due to the humid and wet tropical climate throughout the whole year season. As a result, wet joint is the remaining choice for the country. Contemporarily, most precast concrete manufacturers in the nation are still resorting to conventional timber-made formwork when it comes to temporary strutting works and formworks for joints concreting. This article discusses problems faced by the construction industry in Malaysia that currently lead to lower precast concrete utilization throughout the country. Next, an innovated modular formwork which can be easily assembled and dismantled for in-situ concreting purpose to be used with precast concrete wall panels is presented. The main objective of the paper is to introduce a more comprehensive ‘precast concrete construction system’ for wet jointed precast works particularly among most developing countries in the South East Asia region to improve the current ‘precast concrete components’ construction sequence. It is worth to mention that this article is written from the viewpoint of the Malaysian construction industry.