A refined formwork solution

With many of the world’s oil producing economies seeking to find cleaner and more efficient ways of generating fuel oil, the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), began construction on a new grass roots refinery named as Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) designed to produce low sulphur fuel oil, thereby replacing the high sulphur fuel oil used in local power plants. Upon completion, this large-scale refinery is designed to process 615,000 barrels per day of light Kuwait crude oil or 535,000 of heavy-mix while adhering to the most stringent environmental regulations and standards.

Thanks to its long-standing relationship with the KNPC, in addition to its excellent track record as a dependable contractor, Fluor’s joint venture team FDH JV was selected as the main contractor with Alghanim International appointed as subcontractor, who in turn awarded Doka the contract to supply a technical formwork solution for this section of the project. Focused towards the Utilities and Off-sites, Package 2’s scope the delivery of seven buildings, namely CC-R building, Admin building, Training centre, Laboratory, Fire station, Mosque, and Cafeteria. With construction having started in February 2017, the target delivery date had been set for July 2018, meaning progress to be swift and consistent. With such a tight construction schedule and with all major buildings being built at the same time, contractors also had to bear in mind the stringent regulations associated with the oil & gas sector to contend with. From the beginning of the project, Doka’s engineering team worked closely with the contractor to deliver a full formwork solution including formwork, scaffolding and safety products, while also delivering the quantities in line with the construction schedule.

Hany Gerges, Project Manager of Alghanim International said, “Doka has been excellent from a technical point of view in the design of the formwork systems and the suitability of said systems for our task. They worked with us to make sure we had an accurate supply for the height of the towers, crane lifted core systems and table forms for the typical floor slabs. They provided a purpose built up stair form system for easy access to the slabs, walls and columns of the project.”

In response to the requirement of a fast and efficient delivery, Doka’s team used Staxo 40 for its light weight frames and minimal single components, Frami Xlife Universal Panels for different column dimensions without the need for any modifications work and enabling the fast construction of columns without the need of any tie-rod. To increase efficiency, up to 10-metre-high walls were casted using Doka’s versatile Large-area formwork Top 50. Covering the project’s safety requirements, Doka used DokaScaff UNI rebar scaffolding, Safety Net Fan, Edge Protection, and Stair tower systems, ensuring all personnel could focus on doing their job to the best of their ability. With all buildings being built at the same time, Doka had to provide larger volumes of formwork to cope with the demand and at the peak of the project, 15,000 m2 of shoring material was in use at one time. Doka has been providing a full-time expert on-site to solve the technical problems and give training to the staff.