Ordering ready-mixed concrete for a Sports City or Motor City build

Start below ground: blinding and the raft

The first truck on most plots here carries blinding, a lean mix laid 50 to 75 mm thick so the steel fixers have a clean, level base. Area times thickness gives the volume: a 30 by 20 m footprint at 75 mm is 45 m³, roughly four truckloads.

The raft or pile caps come next, on a substructure mix to the consultant's exposure class. A 360 m³ raft for a mid-rise block is 30 truckloads, so we plan it as a continuous pour with a 43 m or larger boom pump, a standby line agreed in advance and a start time set late in the evening during summer.

Slabs floor by floor

Once the frame rises, each floor slab becomes a repeat order on a superstructure mix. Give us the slab and beam volume from the drawings, the floor level and the pump position. Higher floors on a podium building may need the 57 m boom, and that has to be booked at the same time as the concrete, not on the morning of the pour.

Courts, parking and external works

Sports facilities bring large flat areas: courts, track surrounds, parking. These are open to sun and wind, so plastic shrinkage cracking is the main risk. Fibre-reinforced concrete helps, but curing compound or wet hessian applied straight after finishing does more. Screed for internal floors is ordered last, usually in smaller loads timed to the finishing crew.

What usually costs a pour here

Trucks arriving at a gate that nobody told about the delivery, a pump with no level standing area, and a slump chosen for a cool morning on a pour that slipped to midday. The plant in Al Quoz is about 9 km away in a straight line via Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road or Umm Suqeim Street, but peak traffic stretches that trip, so we set the retarder for the actual hour.

Slots for Dubai Sports City and Motor City are planned with the rest of the day's ready-mix concrete Dubai schedule.