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Chinese Firms Claims It Can Build World's Tallest Tower in 90 Days

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tower-kills-everyone-in-part-ii dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Even since the current world's tallest builing — the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — was completed, there has been a constant battle to build the world's next tallest building. The current record holder stands tall at 828 meters and took five years to build, but a Chinese company called Broad Sustainable Building aims to smash that record by building the 838 meter Sky City tower, in Changsa, China in a mere 90 days. BSB plans to use prefab building techniques to construct the tower in record time."

15 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Just like their trains... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Absolutely nothing can go wrong....

    1. Re:Just like their trains... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Am I the only one feeling a bit uneasy about this thread? Some Chinese construction projects are underfunded and of poor quality, therefore all Chinese buildings are crap? Some Chinese products are rip-off of foreign products, therefore all Chinese tech is copied? All Chinamen talk funny therefore all Chinamen dumb?

      Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. In this specific case we simply don't know enough about it to come to any conclusion. Occasionally Boeing or Airbus aircraft crash due to shoddy constructing, faulty equipment (that they knew was faulty), improper maintenance due to the airline being cheap and so forth. In that case we look at the nature of the problem and decide if the entire fleet is at risk, and if not happily get on the next flight of an identical aircraft flying a near identical route. Blanket assumptions about all EU/US products do not follow.

    2. Re:Just like their trains... by SerpentMage · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You sir are incredibly insightful. I researched this company and this topic. In the local paper they described how this company managed to build a 15 floor building in 15 days! Yes 15 days!

      The reason why this company can do what it can is because it builds these buildings using a pre-fab approach. North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses. In Europe it is slowly trickling in, but nobody wants them to be built because they seriously undercut the housing lobby. Take for Ikea homes. Yes Ikea sells homes, using this method. They are cheaper than any other home. Look at this Ikea home for 86 K, which includes everything in the inside as well.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108775/Ikea-launches-80-000-flat-pack-DIY-house.html

      It is hard to beat with all appliances and furniture of 86K. Now is it the final dream? No not really since Ikea is just partnering with a prefab company. BUT imagine if the Chinese managed to put it all together like this company. Then the west has serious issues!!!

      --

      "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
      "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
    3. Re:Just like their trains... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hi, Mainland Chinese person here.

      I lived a decade of my life in China, and go back there every few years. The real problem is that human life in China is not valued. Nobody feels responsible if a building falls over. It's bad if it gets international attention, not that lives were destroyed. People cut corners, bribe officials, anything to maximize profit.

    4. Re:Just like their trains... by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Am I the only one feeling a bit uneasy about this thread? Some Chinese construction projects are underfunded and of poor quality, therefore all Chinese buildings are crap? Some Chinese products are rip-off of foreign products, therefore all Chinese tech is copied? All Chinamen talk funny therefore all Chinamen dumb?

      What concerns me is that an artificial deadline has been imposed for completing a very ambitious project. When a deadline is set, it creates, in many cases, a very strong tendency to meet the deadline, even if it means cutting corners. Combine that with a culture where face is very important and you have a potentially dangerous combination. Non of which is unique to China, universal for all of China; nor not prevalent in many other countries around the world.

      Or, as we used to put it when building industrial sites - "We offer good, fast, and cheap options. Pick the two you want."

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
    5. Re:Just like their trains... by bLanark · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The real problem is that human life in China is not valued.

      This is true, the company I am working with were looking at data centers in mainland China, and asking about the fire supression system, in particular how long people had to get out once the alarm goes off. The answer was "In the Western world, you value human life over data, here we value data over human life."

      --
      Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
    6. Re:Just like their trains... by catmistake · · Score: 5, Funny

      All Chinamen talk funny therefore all Chinamen dumb?

      What the fuck are you talking about? The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

      --
      The Admin and the Engineer
    7. Re:Just like their trains... by GreatBunzinni · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I happen to be in structural engineering, and I have to say that you clearly don't know what you are talking about. I'll tell you why.

      Nowadays, and for a couple of decades now, there isn't a single european contractor who does not rely on prefabrication. Concrete structures tend to make this a bit harder to pull, but their building cost is so much lower than steel structures that the extra time spent on a project easily offsets costs. Even then, there are quite a number of prefab structural elements and modules, such as pre-slabs and composite slabs with profile steel sheeting, that help out a lot. With steel structures, even with composite slabs, it's quite easy to put up high numbers of floors in a limited number of days. The only limit that affects this is how fast you can hoist the beam and column elements, and how fast your crew is able to set the necessary connections.

      I suspect that in the US it's even more widespread. There are companies which even put together factories to assemble entire houses in assembly lines, and steel construction is much more widespread than concrete.

      So, your comment on the use of prefab techniques is obviously bullshit.

      Then, regarding your conspiracy theory, it is once again bullshit. To start off, as any product on earth, housing prices aren't defined by construction costs, but only on what clients are willing to spend on them. Meanwhile, construction costs, with today's technology, basically depends only on what finishings the client wishes. As a demonstration, you claimed that 86k is such a great deal. Yet, that's the price Ikea asks for a tiny apartment with an area of about 70mÂ. This represents a unit cost of about 1228â/mÂ, and this without accounting for the price of the property and any licenses and services which are needed to build it. Knowing this, do you actually know what's the average unit cost for building a similar house on a property, including the price of the property itself? Between 500â/m and 900â/mÂ.

      In other words, your example costs at least twice as much to build than a regular house.

      So, at least take your tinfoil hat off once in a while. The world isn't set out to get you.

      --
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  2. kinda cheating by smash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you pre-fab everything on the ground then its not really "building", more like "assembling".

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    1. Re:kinda cheating by outsider007 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Back in my day we smelted our own ore. And we liked it!

      --
      If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
    2. Re:kinda cheating by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's because people who order a skyscraper to be built don't call those contracted to design and build it halfway through construction to tell them "Oh yeah, it needs to fly and also double as a ship and a subway station" (which is later clarified to "we need a helipad in the lobby" which itself is finally clarified three months after the deadline, what they meant was "we'd like to make sure there's a second entrance near the 14th street bus stop so employees don't have to walk around the building to get in". Of course, for this to be like software development after each of these change requests they would also demand that work immediately begin on converting the building to the new specs so that by the time it's finished it has wings sticking out from the 12th floor, the basement has a subway tunnel with a large propeller in it and the front desk is placed inside a large hangar).

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    3. Re:kinda cheating by Evtim · · Score: 5, Funny

      Three engineers were arguing about God.
      God is a mechanical engineer, says one (who is, of course, himself mechanical engineer). Just look at the muscles and bones. What symphony of precision, the seamless work of joints, bones, muscles, sinews. A beauty to behold!
      No, no, says the other, God is an electrical/electronics engineer. Just look at the nervous system – the myriad feedback and forward loops, the firing of the neurons in the brainenough said.
      Chaps, you are both wrong, says the third. God is a civil engineer. Only civil engineer would put a drainpipe in the middle of a recreational area

  3. Like the Empire State Building by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While it may have taken more than 90 days to build the Empire State Building, the same pre-fab techniques such as off-site fabrication and on-site assembly were used to build that monument to the American spirit.

    Everyone scoffs at the Chinese when they boast like this, but there really isn't any particular problem with what they are proposing. Given enough lead time and sufficient raw materials, they should be able to assemble a world-record building in the timeframe specified. Naturally, some leeway may be necessary to account for weather, but other than that, good luck to them.

  4. I work with Chinese companies a lot, and... by DeathToBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... they ALL say it'll be done in 90 days. Right up to 11:30 on the 89th day, when realistically there is still six years of work to do, they'll still insist it'll be done in the next 30 minutes.

    We have people fly half way around the world to work on projects. "Will you be ready for us?" we ask as we get on the plane. "Yes!" comes the resounding response. We arrive, discover the project is nowhere near ready, go home again, come back in anywhere from eight weeks to two years when it's actually ready and charge them a hefty chunk of cash for the inconvenience.

    Wildly unrealistic schedules and dogged insistence that they're sticking to them in the face of all the evidence is the modus operandi of Chinese construction.

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  5. I don't doubt that they can build a tower by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a structural engineer, I do not doubt at all that they are able, or anyone for that matter, to put together a prefab tower in 90 days. This is no big deal. For example, in bridge projects it's a terribly common thing to put together temporary structures assembled from tubular steel bars which are about 10-story tall, and there are pre-fabricated steel beams being marketed for this sort of temporary work which are about 20 or 24 meters tall.

    And the only reason that these temp structures aren't taller is because in bridge works after about 20 meters the valleys tend to be wide enough so that it tends to be more economical to use other building techniques, such as incremental launch.

    What I doubt is that this type of tower is economical or capable of handling the design loads for a specific region. After a certain scale, there are significant economical advantages to be had by optimizing structural elements, particular in steel structures, and "one size fits all" make it impossible to take advantage of this. Moreover, there isn't exactly a lot of demand for temporary skyscrappers. Even in cases where a catastrophy raises the need for temporary housing and infrastructure, you don't need a 1km-tall structure to sort things out.

    My main concern is quality assessment and safety. If you are going to build a extremelly specialized and optimized structure intended to house tens of thousands people, you simply cannot rush things or cut corners on safety checks. If some bolts aren't screwed adequately, a lot of people can die. A couple of months ago there was a report on a chinese bridge being inaugurated while its safety railings weren't even bolted to the structure, which has been pointed out by a chinese engineer working on the project. If this sort of rush job is done with such a large structure, we have a calamity waiting to happen.