Matching of Construction Equipment and Plant

On any construction job a number of equipment and plant are employed for execution. They often work in combination to produce the end product. 

Take the case of a concrete dam. The construction involves the production of aggregates, handling of ingredients such as cement, aggregates, water and admixtures, batching and mixing the concrete, handling of the mixed concrete which involves  transportation and placement and compaction. Each of the items are performed by different equipment and plant. All the activities have to be performed at the same rate so that there is no stoppage of work for want of equipment or product of the previous operation. Thus matching of construction plant is essential. The crushed aggregates produced by the aggregate processing has to be handled by the belt conveyor system at the same rate. The batching and mixing plant which produces the mixed concrete should balance the aggregate processing and conveying plant. The transportation equipment be it flat body truck with concrete buckets, or agitator cars, bucket on cable way or dump trucks should match the mixers. The concrete vibrators should be adequate to compact the concrete as it is unloaded by the transportation equipment. Where cranes are needed to unload the buckets they should balance the transportation and compacting equipment. 

Another case is excavation and transportation of earth by a combination of power shovels or draglines and carriage by dump trucks. The product of excavation of the shovel has to handled efficiently by the carrier units.  

In either case, the matching between equipment and plant is very essential. Even if any one plant or equipment is inefficient or unable to handle the product which it has to handle at the same rate as the previous operation the production of the entire process is sure to fall. This will lead to increase in the cost of unit of production and in the project cost.