Paschal Concrete Forms of Bahrain, a branch of Paschal Werk Germany, continues to make further inroads into the market with a total of 51 contractors in the Gulf currently using its cost-effective and environmental-friendly formwork system.

Amir Delghandi, general manager of Paschal Concrete Forms, attributes this success to the outstanding quality of the system and the fact that it speeds up construction tremendously while offering a very important benefit, environmental-friendliness. In addition, the systems offer cost savings of up to 50 per cent, he says.

Paschal is a leading and highly-specialised manufacturer of concrete formwork systems with worldwide activities. Research and development are the main features of the company, founded in 1964 in Steinach, West Germany.

Elaborating on the Paschal formwork system, Delghandi says: "The plywood of Paschal panels can be reused up to 250 times. The panels are strong and durable, being manufactured of 6-mm-thick frames of sturdy flat steel and high-quality Finnish birch plywood with a phenolic resin coating. And even after 250 uses, only the plywood has to be replaced while the steel frame of the system will last virtually forever."

The company has supplied formwork to a number of works at Aluminium Bahrain's (Alba) ongoing $400 million coke calcining and seawater desalination project. Gulermak Construction of Turkey has completed 20 beams of 60 by 175 cm at the calcining coke silo project. Mannai Engineering, the contractor that undertook the onshore piling work on the project, used Paschal formwork for the pile caps.

Paschal formwork, which was previously used for the ring beams of water tank projects at Hidd, Seef and Riffa, is again put to use by Ahmed Mansoor Al A'Ali (AMA) for the West Riffa pumping station project.

For the Dana Mall, under construction at Sanabis, contractor Qasantina Contracting completed a total of 400 footings, 400 pedestal, hundreds of linear metres (lm) of ground beam and column encasing using Paschal formwork with record speed. It is continuing work on the reinforced concrete (RC) wall using the formwork, says Delghandi.

After successfully completing the structural work on the twin tower commercial building in central Manama, Cybarco is using Paschal formwork for the prestigious Citibank regional headquarters project at Seef, for columns and core walls along with a climbing system. The curved portions of this 80 lm core wall will be carried out with Paschal's flexible polygonal system to a height of 4 m at each casting. Also, Cybarco is carrying out a 31-m-high overhead tank project using the system at Sakhir.

Ahmed Omar Trading and Contracting Company is constructing two five-storey buildings simultaneously at Juffair. The raft foundation of these buildings has already been completed using Paschal formwork and the columns, beams, and lift shaft will be built using the system to speed up the project, says Delghandi.

Olympic Group is erecting the columns at the new car-park and cinema projects at Seef at a tremendous speed by using Paschal formwork system in order to complete the project in the stipulated time, he says.

Kooheji Contractors, which has been using the Paschal system for more than 10 years, has introduced the Paschal deck system for insitu slabs at a new 10-storey building project. "Being lightweight, strong and well-designed, our deck system will enable work to be carried out much faster and will reduce the use of props," says Delghandi.

With 11 years of experience with the Paschal system, Al-Ghana Contracting is using the formwork for its residential projects in Mahooz and Juffair and a shopping mall in Isa Town.

Having already well-established itself in the Bahrain market, Paschal Concrete Forms is widening its horizon within the region, especially in other GCC countries.

"Successful inroads have been made in Oman where the firm's formwork has been used on the Oman LNG project and the American School at Muscat by Bahwan Engineering. Paschal has also introduced its system in Qatar with an 18-villa project of Al-Madar Construction, Doha," says Delghandi.