Real Estate

Anyone who comes from another area of the country is usually puzzled by the way we build in South Florida. Most commercial buildings in the north of the country are steel structures and use as little concrete as possible. South Florida, on the other hand, tries to minimize the use of steel and uses concrete much of the time. Why do this? Concrete is a wonderful material. It is also a very forgiving material. What I mean by this is that once it is poured all the connections are solid. For example, there are no joints between beams and columns which could come apart during a hurricane. Unlike a steel system, which must have perfect connections between beams, floor decking, and columns in order to survive a hurricane, concrete, once it hardens, is very difficult to take apart, if the steel reinforcing was designed correctly. In addition, concrete is a natural fire-retardant. While steel joist systems must be fire protected, concrete joists are naturally fire-proofed. In precast systems su...

The last decade has seen the proliferation and increase in the number of private schools in many countries. Besides pure academic schools, there have been other schools in the religion, moral and social domains that have also come up and one thing common among all of them is their need for right infrastructure. This increase has been in the region of between 15-20% in most countries. In addition, the existing schools also have to put up with influx of fresh students who are keen on acquiring education and that is causing a lot of crowding within each classroom. On an average, the growth in the number of students joining private schools has gone up by about 20%. Considering that many educational institutions want to put into practice directives from the governments of respective countries about reducing the number of students in each class so that adequate attention can be provided to them by the teachers and management of the students is also not a hassle for the teachers, the only opt...