AIBS National News

by Danielle Bowling

Bubbledeck, a new building system designed to reduce concrete usage in building, has made its construction debut on the $1.88 billion Gateway office project in WA. Gateway, a 30,000 sqm mixed-use development by Finbar Group and builders, Hanssen, has incorporated the environmentally friendly product into its design, reducing costs, on-site labour and the project's environmental impact.

Winner of an Australian designEX Best New Product Award, BubbleDeck uses plastic bubbles the size of soccer balls, encased in a lattice of steel to create a honeycomb effect eliminating the need for non-structural concrete and extending the distance between columns by up to 50 per cent. The system uses one kg of plastic balls instead of 100 kg of concrete to create a slab as strong as a normal one, only lighter.

BubbleDeck has provided all of the suspended slabs in the Gateway project building, including car park ramps, with a total of 24,000 sqm of slabs being used. "Hanssen primarily chose BubbleDeck for its ease and speed of construction and excellent safety profile, but BubbleDeck also supports the sustainability aims of the building, which is designed towards a 4 Green Star rating (office design)," said Gerry Hanssen, Gateway project constructor.

Every 5,000 sqm of BubbleDeck floor slabs in a three storey commercial building can save 1,000 cubic metres of concrete, 160 ready-mix truck tips, 270t of carbon dioxide emissions and 1,800t of foundation loads. Being a semi-precast system, BubbleDeck also delivers savings in on-site construction time. Almost all of the reinforcing steel for the slab is machine-made and delivered to site already in place in the BubbleDeck panel, rather than being lifted, cut, bent, placed and welded by hand on-site.

"Typically, BubbleDeck reduces floor cycles by between 25 and 50 per cent, and can reduce overall construction costs by between five and 10 per cent. Hanssen plans to complete the last two levels of Tower 1 at Gateway in just four weeks, which represents approximately a 50 per cent reduction on typical floor cycles in commercial buildings of this size in Perth," Hanssen said.

Karim Yngstrom, BubbleDeck director, agrees that the time-savings that BubbleDeck provides adds to its appeal. "Because we manage to build the floors in advance in a factory, you're not exposed to the risks of weather and you can produce quite a lot of floors and then put them on-site very quickly. We're very surprised at how quickly, actually ... That's the main reason that the builder who we are working with (at Gateway) has chosen BubbleDeck," he said.

BubbleDeck was invented by Danish engineer, Jorgen Breuning, and has been used to construct hundreds of buildings in Europe, including about 10 per cent of new buildings in the Netherlands. After its success at the Gateway project and at designEX, Yngstrom is hoping that the new building system will be just as well received in Australia.

"The early signs are very encouraging. We are getting enquiries every day and we are working far too hard - which is good! I think there is a lot of interest. There's obviously always a bit of a concern about the new-ness, but at least we've demonstrated with this Gateway project that we can do it in Australia too."