brought about by the material cost savings. In my opinion, this uncertainty makes cost-reduction a less significant benefit. I did not initially consider training costs, and so did not factor it in originally, but after researching, I see that it could partially neutralise the amount saved and decrease the strength of this factor as a merit of fabric formwork. I initially thought that fabric forming would have a far more significant impact on concrete cost reduction than it actually did. Upon researching, I realised that there was also a lot less information available than I would have hoped for.Therefore, I feel I am unable to make accurate conclusions about the impact of fabric formwork on the total project costs, meaning the benefit loses significance, in my opinion, as it cannot be precisely quantified. Sustainability As the years progress, it is becoming increasingly clear that the world we live in is experiencing a climate emergency.The temperature of the Earth is rising and bringing the sea level with it, the ever-growing population places a high demand on resources and living space that we do not have, and deforestation is destroying whole ecosystems and decreasing the quality of the air that surrounds us. Pollution levels are also on the rise, with record quantities of CO2, methane and particulates.As these facts become more broadly acknowledged within society, I think that it is important that our response to the climate crisis is considered on not just a personal level, but also an industrial one, where each sector of industry examines their own part in the problem and begins to take active steps towards a more sustainable future. I believe that the built-environment and the world of construction have a large responsibility concerning sustainability and the ecological state of our world. Upon researching, I found that the production of concrete, which is the most commonly used building material in contemporary architecture, creates roughly 2.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, which equates to 4-8% of all CO2 emissions worldwide (Nast, 2021). I then compared this value to national carbon dioxide levels for the highest polluting countries, and found that this value is greater than the total CO2 levels from any country aside from China and the United States of America, which places concrete production in the top 10 of worldwide carbon dioxide producers. Looking for a broader perspective, I found that the construction industry accounted for around 36% of final energy use in 2018 (IEA, 2019).While these figures sound convincing enough in themselves, when you analyse what they mean in context the situation becomes even more grave. In order to do its part towards bridging the 2030 emissions gap of 12-15 gigatons of carbon dioxide necessary to limit
spent buying materials. Per metric ton, concrete costs around £55-£75 (HomeAdvisor, 2019), and so if we take a mean value of £65 per ton and apply the 40% reduction in concrete costs, we would be saving £26 per ton of concrete.While this number seems small and does not necessarily hold a great significance at first sight, it does when you put this into the context of the billions of tons of concrete that we use across the world every year. Last year, we used over four billion tons of concrete globally (National Science Museum, 2021), and so could save hundreds of millions by employing more efficient concrete usage. It is worth noting, however, that fabric formwork cannot be used everywhere, and some structures simply cannot have any concrete cut out and still remain structurally sound. However, even with this being factored in, it is still clear that fabric formwork could enable us to decrease the overall amount of concrete we use, and therefore the total material cost. It is also worth noting that the fabrics used to cast the concrete are often relatively inexpensive and can be bought in bulk. Additionally, these moulds are most often supported by their own weight or by simple suspensions, meaning that very little supplementary cost for casting supports needs to be added.These factors all further reduce material cost as they allow for less monetary spending on the additional materials used in the casting process. Labour & Training Concrete casting is always a labour-heavy task, no matter what material is used as the membrane for the mould. Fabric forming concrete could help reduce the amount of labour needed in the casting process as it is significantly easier and less time-consuming to set up than original casting forms. Joseph Sarafian, who works with fabric formwork and robotics, describes traditional methods of casting concrete as “both labour intensive and unsustainable” and states that fabric formwork requires only a small percentage of the amount of work to cast. However, I do recognise that he might be a biased source, as fabric formwork is what his livelihood centres around and he provides no statistical basis in his report on fabric formwork when discussing labour reduction.Additionally, fabric formwork is still very much only beginning to gain significance, and therefore the process is unfamiliar to most construction workers.This means that labourers would have to be trained in fabric casting in order to safely carry it out on projects, an operation that will inevitably consume both time
and money.While, in my research, I was unfortunately unable to find any figures
pertaining to how much this training would cost, and therefore it is hard to quantify exactly how significant an impact it would have, it would naturally negate part of the cost-reduction
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