If you are in hopes of cashing big on the SGR construction by selling sand, we have some bad news for you!
The contractor has figured out a way of making sand out of the volcanic rocks strewn all over the Rift Valley floor, thus ditching ordinary construction sand.They call it m-sand and it is produced by crushing rocks, quarry stones or larger aggregates into sand-sized particles.
In making the big shift from river sand to manufactured sand, the contractor hopes to stem the tide of wasting riverine ecosystems across the country. But there are other factors that have made the Chinese contractor ditch river sand.
With river sand, developers and builders are often at the mercy of unreliable suppliers, price fluctuations, erratic supplies and inconsistent quality. Wastage is also high for river sand as it has to be sieved on site before use. Sporadic lifting and imposition of bans on sand mining by county governments has further compounded the problem.
According to construction experts, sand accounts for about 35 per cent of the volume of concrete used in the industry. Its demand has recently ballooned as the country rides a real estate boom, leading to plunder of river beds. Officials from China Communication Construction Company say m-sand will now be used in all the civil works on the 120-kilometre line between Nairobi and Naivasha as well as the intermediate stations in Ongata Rongai, Ngong, Mai Mahiu and Suswa.
“We have almost eliminated river sand in our projects by switching to manufactured-sand. The shift will not only address ecological issues but significantly improve project efficiency,” says Steve Zhao, CCCC Kenya spokesman.
The officials say using m-sand will not only lower the cost of big projects but also deliver them faster. Reduction in costs emanate from the fact that manufactured sand can be produced in rocks mined closer to construction sites, thus reducing the costs of transportation.In addition, manufactured sand guarantees a consistent and clean supply since it is free of silt and clay elements, and has denser particle packing than river sand.
“Land used for quarrying rock can be reclaimed for commercial or residential purposes or used for wetland restoration. Already, we have mined and reclaimed a few quarries around here as per our agreements with the locals,” says ZhaoLi Guang Ming, the man charged with ensuring that the sand – and the ensuing concrete mix – meets the highest possible standards says the decision to create m-sand was based on the fact that the railway traverses a region endowed with volcanic rocks with the chemical qualities needed to create sand.
As the company’s dean of material testing centre, Ming says the switch is a boon not just to railway construction but can be harnessed to support the government’s mass housing programme under the Big 4 agenda.