b-panel

Detik Finance : 3 Facts About a Line of Toll Roads in Indonesia Turns Out to Be Built Using Foam

Admin — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 04:03:06 +0000

Jakarta – Foam turns out to be a material for building toll roads. In fact, the use of foam for toll road construction in Indonesia is no longer new and has been frequently applied.

The use of foam on toll roads is referred to as the geofoam method. This method is widely used as a solution to the problem of soft and easily sinking soils.

The geofoam method has been used in Sumatra and Java as well. Here are the full facts:

1. Used on the Trans Sumatra Toll Road
The geofoam method has been carried out on the Indralaya-Prabumulih toll road section. In Sumatra, geofoam is used to slow down the process of land subsidence and reduce the potential for land subsidence.

“Hopefully with the use of geofoam, the comfort and safety of toll road users will increase. Fun fact, the Indralaya – Prabumulih Toll Road cultivated by Hutama Karya also uses geofoam,” Hutama Karya wrote on his official Instagram account @hutamakarya quoted on Sunday (30/7/2023).

In detikcom’s notes, in the official statement of PT Hutama Karya Infrastructure (HKI) last March, it was explained that the use of geofoam was applied to the bridge embankment. The use of geofoam aims to replace the heap material behind the heavy manhole.

Geofoam is a geosynthetic material made from Expanded Polystyrene and Xtruded Polystyrene (XPS) polymers which have a lower specific gravity property than granular or soil materials.

“With the use of geofoam, it is expected to minimize the decline in oprit during road service. In addition, the advantages of geofoam are that it is easy to apply, easy to control quality, and not constrained by the weather,” said Director of Operations III HKI Selo Tjahjono in a statement, Friday (3/3 /2023).

2. The Cisumdawu Toll Road also uses foam
Not only in Sumatra, the construction of toll roads using foam was also carried out on the Cileunyi-Sumedang-Dawuan (Cisumdawu) Toll Road. The construction of the Cisumdawu Toll Road applies geofoam EPS technology as a substitute for landfills.

This technology is applied to the construction of section 5A in Cipamekar village, Sumedang. It was explained that there were parts of the soil that were unstable and watery, so that it could not be handled with regular fills or construction. The use of EPS geofoam technology is expected to reduce the risk of landslides.

“The Cisumdawu Toll Road is not only one of the most unique toll roads which is famous for its twin tunnels, you know, Friends. The Cisumdawu Toll Road also has another uniqueness, namely applying special and sophisticated technology during its construction. This technology is geofoam EPS which was applied to the construction of Section 5A in Cipamekar Village. , Kec. Conggeang, Kab. Sumedang,” wrote the Ministry of PUPR’s Instagram account, Saturday (10/6/2023).

The geofoam technology used at the Cisumdawu Toll Road is expanded polystyrene in the form of high density polystyrene in the form of light weight blocks and is commonly applied abroad, especially to handle unstable soil layers.

3. Advantages of Geofoam
Geofoam can be used for heavy construction purposes, is durable and has a very long service life, is not oxidized by air, water or other natural elements.

With a very light weight, Geofoam EPS is able to encourage efficiency in the use of equipment, labor in the field, and is easy to shape and install. The process of installing EPS beams can also continue without depending on weather conditions.

Meanwhile, Hutama Karya said geofoam had advantages over other materials because it was easy to apply, resistant to weather changes, and easy to control.

EPS (“Styrofoam”) Recycling Program at PT Beton Elemenindo Putra

Admin — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 00:00:10 +0000

To recycle especially difficult materials or non-biodegradable waste, is very important to restore youthfulness of the Earth. Awareness to recycle not only implemented by the community, but also by some companies and factories. One example of a company that has been engaged in operation and production which is more responsible for preserving the earth is PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra, located in Batujajar, Bandung regency. This company, which produces b-panel^® and b-deck^®, an earthquake-resistant, energy-efficient building system, has engaged in the recycling process at its plant systematically.

One of the basic ingredients of this plant is EPS (expanded polystyrene). EPS or commonly known as Styrofoam, has been long regarded as a source of problematic waste, because it does not rot or decompose, so it tends to pile up on garbage dump sites. The irony is, that if EPS is used in building material as thermal insulation, the energy savings are significant, and because the EPS is not used in a “single-use” fashion (as in the case of decorating and wrapping / packaging), the environmental impacts will be much less – dwellings and buildings are designed to last for many years or even generations, so the non-biodegradable nature of EPS is compatible with the usage. The factory recycles EPS thoroughly and systematically, so that the raw material for EPS is used by as much as possible, and production waste is reduced, and even eliminated.

The above diagram is process flow of PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra’s factory recycling process. The factory produces two types of EPS. First is the construction –grade EPS, which has flame-retarding property (commonly called EPS-FR) used as raw material for b-panel^® The second is “regular” EPS for decoration materials and packaging, which is commonly called EPS-RG. It is made with similar raw materials, except that EPS-RG is not fire retardant. From raw materials (EPS beads), EPS produced by passing the process of expansion and blocking. From blocking to the production of b-panel^® and b-deck^®, EPS-FR then processed in accordance with specified standards, and then is cut to sizes and shapes to the project’s specifications (Modular cutting list).

This process generates waste pieces of EPS-FR. EPS-FR chunks which condition meets the appropriate standards, are then crushed and combined again with a new (“virgin”) EPS-FR to make the next blocks of EPS-FR, which is then processed into the next batches of b-panel^® and b-deck^®

For remaining pieces of EPS – FR which do not meet our standard, are not thrown away. The plant has an EPS melting facility as well. EPS waste is melted in a specially designed furnace, and then cast into hard polystyrene in the form of chips and ingots. Polystyrene chips and ingots are raw material for many everyday items, such as mobile phone casings, computer casing, etc.

The EPS recycling is not only for own post-production EPS waste alone. The truck fleets of PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra pick up, without charge, styrofoam waste from companies and shops in various parts of Bandung and its surroundings, and take them to the facility. As a result, not only the factory production process b-panel^® produces very little waste (less than 0.3% in weight of production), the plant’s operation will also help reduce the buildup of waste Styrofoam in the city of Bandung and its surroundings.

PT Beton Elemenindo Putra also works together with Bangkit Bersama Cooperative, which collects Styrofoam waste from all the Bandung’s waterways, which are naturally due to the flow of the local river systems (Cikapundung, Cisangkuy, Cibeureum, etc), float to the main river Citarum, ending up in the tributary of Saguling lake directly behind our factory. The collected styrofoam waste is then sorted and washed for routine delivery to the factory, to be processed into our many products. This synergy also extends to PT Indonesia Power, which operates the Saguling Hydroelectric dam, by cleaning up the pervasive waste of EPS Styrofoam and not clogging the water around the dam, the operation of the hydro turbine is assured.

The cooperative runs a meticulously systematic operations to process EPS waste. After collection from the river (Greater Bandung generates up to 300 kg per day of Styrofoam waste!), the EPS waste is then sorted and cleaned, then dried in the sun before they are transported to PT Beton Elemenindo Putra

In addition to implementing a systematic process of recycling, PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra also run other aspects of environmentally friendly production as well. For example: The factory utilizes a boiler that uses palm kernel shell) so that greenhouse gas emission is minimized. This is to ensure that this factory is truly environmentally-friendly as a whole, from the products to the manufacturing process itself. Especially in Indonesia’s building material manufacturing sector, PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra is a clear proponent of environmentally-conscious businesses in Indonesia.

Source: Properti.biz Feb 2010, Techno Konstruksi Magazine edition 24 tahun 2010

Referensi Artikel: koran “Properti.biz” Febuari 2010 [ PDF ]

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b-foam® Ultralight Façade – Reducing Structural Loads of Building and Improving Earthquake Safety

Admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 03:20:57 +0000

Todays’ avant-garde exterior building designs present challenges to architects and developers alike. Aside from increased costs, the additional weight of these exterior architectural design elements increases the structural reinforcement needs for the building. Moreover, in the earthquake-prone areas, architectural façade elements can be deadly falling debris if they get detached during the quake.

Ra Apartement – Jakarta

UIN – Cibiru

Hotel Neo Gajahmada – Pontianak

Hotel Venus Mangga Dua – Pontianak

So why these elements has to be made with heavy, solid concrete? They are not load bearing, and thus there is no real reasons for making them as such (typical good quality precast element is made of at least 300 MPa concrete). Through their constant innovation pursuits, PT BE Putra develops b-foam^® Ultra-Light (UL) architectural façades.

As architectural facades, they fill function perfectly: These UL architectural facades have long service life, are weather-resistant, can withstand small impacts (from flying bird and bats, for examples), and are visually distinguishable from conventional solid precast concrete façades. One big bonus is that these UL architectural façade weighs approximately 1/50, or 2%, of precast concrete façade! This can be a very significant reduction in building total weight, which will benefits multiple areas of the project: reduced foundation requirements, smaller columns and beams, and improved earthquake performance. Not to mention simpler installation, lower costs compared to solid concrete precast elements, and if used to clad significant surface area of the exterior, acts as an effective thermal insulation to reduce A/C consumption of the building.

The key to this greatly reduced mass is that b-foam^® UL façade is made with b-foam^® Fire-Retardant (FR) EPS foam, which specific mass is less than 1/100 of that of concrete. The foam core is then cased with proprietary fiber-reinforced cementitious layer, then finished with skim coat to make it look exactly like precast concrete elements.

In one of the recent projects where b-foam^® UL Façade was employed in combination of b-façade Neo®, TBS Linera, a 16-story service apartment in Jakarta, close to 400 tons of weight was reduced. Earlier option was to only employ b-façade Neo^®, which is an EPS foam core precast façade (produced by PT BE Perkasa, another division of Beton Works), as a means to reduce building weight as well as thermal cladding (b-Façade Neo^® uses b-foam Neo^® carbon-Graphite EPS, which has even better R-Value than the regular b-foam^® EPS insulation). This would already have reduced the weight of the building by 260 tons. The usage of b-foam^® UL architectural façade further reduced the building weight of approximately 140 tons.

Although the building structures – foundations, columns and beams, have been designed and decided before the client learned about b-foam^® UL Architectural façade, TBS Linera will still benefit from greatly increased earthquake performance, as well as improved OTTV (Overall Thermal Transmission Value) – a good indication of its long term electrical consumption efficiency (A/C is by far the Largest component of electricity consumption in most buildings in the tropics)

An earlier example of successful installation of b-foam^® UL facades was at the Universitas Islam Nusantara (UIN) Campus in Cibiru, East Bandung. The UL facades were installed at six of the new buildings, to form the Middle Eastern influenced architectural gates. Previously, the method of doing something similar to these architectural touches, is by casting perimeter beams of desired shapes, then filling the remaining space with unreinforced bricks. Not only this method takes a long time, this method is potentially dangerous during earthquake, as loose bricks can fall into people. b-foam^® UL façade is also lighter than GRC, aiding further ease of transportation and installation.

The b-foam^® UL façade installation at UIN Campus has also withstand the test of weather: about a year since project completion, a tornado passed through the complex, ripping the roof tiles and steel frame in the process. However, the b-foam^® UL façade remains perfectly intact during this high wind occurrence.

For intricately detailed ultralight façade elements, PT BE Putra is pleased to partner with PT Indocosta in a joint manufacturing alliance, another ultralight building element pioneer in Indonesia, well equipped with state-of the art equipment to do fine profiled products.

Medina Apartement – Karawaci

Hotel Grand Tebu – Bandung

Wings Hotel (Aston Lake Resort Sentul) – Bogor

www.b-foam.com/facade

Floating Structures: a better, more environmentally responsible practice for developer in building on water vs land reclamation

Admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:13:05 +0000

Kahayan Floating River Cafe – Palangkaraya

Floating Water Treatment Platform PT ATB, Batam

Istora Terapung Jatiluhur – Purwakarta

The heated debate around Benoa Bay (Teluk Benoa) in Bali has been ongoing for many months, in which a lot of efforts and cost have been incurred on both sides of the fence. Both sides have compelling reasons for their stance. The developers see Benoa Bay as very strategic to extend Bali Island’s tourism industry growth, due to its very close proximity to the airport, Nusa Dua, area, the sea, and Denpasar itself. Those opposed to it cite environmental issues – that the area’s mangrove forest will be destroyed, that aquatic life and the water current pattern will forever be altered. They are right – the moment a body of water is reclaimed, i.ie, buried with soil and sand, the aquatic biota of the area ends.

So is there a viable compromise to this situation? Making the development floating over water is possibly one of them. b-foam^® floating structure solution is EPS foam based platform, which offer very long and maintenance-free service life (warranty is 30 years for buoyancy capacity), exceptional safety factor (virtually unsinkable because there is no hollow air cavity inside the pontoon module), and high load capacity. b-foam^® floating structures has been successfully employed to build many floating facilities at the popular Lembang Floating Market, a 2 story floating restaurant on Kahayan River, Palangkaraya (Central Borneo), and transport floating platform to carry solid concrete tetrapods (1.2 tons each).

Back to addressing the environmental issue vs reclamation, a smaller scale case study has been proven successful: at Lembang Floating Market, part of the Umar Pond (Situ Umar) was originally planned to be reclaimed for dining area. However, since this is an old lake with lots of sedimentation, reclaiming the pond might take lots of soil to bury the pond body. Cost aside, reclaiming the pond would mean certain termination of aquatic life there, both for plants and animals. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the soil fill will not settle down in the near future, and this will add to long term repair and maintenance cost of the facility. 4 platforms made of b-foam^® floating structures are constructed for this purpose, and as the result, sufficient dining area are achieved, with less cost and time required to reclaim the body of water, with reduced impact to the aquatic biota.

With climate change and uncertainty of tide pattern in the coming years, floating construction provides better assurance – the platform will follow the prevailing water surface, and no worry of extra cost for repairing the reclaimed land due to land subduction common in reclamation projects.

Construction efficiency is another forte of b-foam^® floating structures: they come in precut prefabricated modules, with protective casing already installed (Optional is Marine-Grade Sulphate-resistant casing), these modules are then assembled together to form the platform over water, and finally, concrete mix is cast over it after appropriate steel reinforcement has been installed. All of these processes happened in situ, over water. The finished cast floating platform then can be easily towed to the desired final location where the construction of the floating facility is completed.

Dancing Stage Illustration, Sentul

Floating Bridge Illustration, Cilacap

Aside from its own engineering team, b-foam^® team has always have access to experience outside technical consultant for the floating platform designs. To cater a much large scale and technically challenging floating projects, in 2014, PT BE Putra form technical partnership with Netherland-based Flexbase NV, a global leader in EPS-based floating structures.
http://www.b-panel.com/cooperation-pt-beton-elemenindo-putra-flexbase-netherlands-large-scale-floating-structures-development/

www.b-foam.com/floating

Geofoam-Grade® EPS geofoam

Admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 02:45:26 +0000

b-foam Geofoam-Grade^® (GG), is a specialized EPS foam blocks used as lightweight rigid fill in geotechnical applications. Soft soil (Such as peat soil) condition of significant depth poses a difficult problem for road builder. No preloading and pre compression would permanently solve the problem, and piling would mean much higher cost. Filler soil would add significant extra weight on top of the soft soil and thus soil settlement would almost surely to be expected. By replacing filler soil with b-foam^® GG blocks, which specific weight ranged between 1-2% of the soil weight, settlement is greatly reduced (The opposite problem, which is uplift in the region of shallow water table, can be mitigated by carefully designing overburden on top of b-foam^® GG blocks)

Raised Floor Peninggian lantai kantor NPCT 1 Tj Priok, Proyek Wika – Jakarta

Tribun Bandung Alliance Intercultural School (BAIS), Kota Baru Parahyangan – Bandung

Another challenging situation in infrastructure building is the necessity of building a massive retaining wall when constructing a road on a cliff. The retaining wall is necessary to withstand the lateral load of filler soil. Again, b-foam^® GG blocks would provide an elegant solution. Not only the vertical load is significantly reduced, but as importantly, the lateral load is virtually eliminated, as EPS geofoam blocks are rigid, and their Poisson’s ratio (Ratio of how much a material expand if loaded on a perpendicular axis) is very low.

b-foam^® GG EPS blocks are produced in strict adherence to either one of the two global standard of EPS Geofoam: ASTM 6817 (EPS 12, 15, 19, 22, and 29) and Japanese Industry Standard (JIS), with compressive strength at 1% strain being the most important parameter – a well-accepted guidelines by EPS geofoam worldwide. Other technical parameters, such as compressive strength at 5% and 10% strain, flexural strength, and minimum density, are also strictly adhered as well. PT BE Putra R&D and Quality Control department has invested in an in-house compressive strength measuring equipment, as well as access to third party testing facilities and a comprehensive testing lab at PT BE Perkasa, PT BE Putra’s sister company within Beton Works.

Lightweight bridge abutment – Palimanan

Due to its well documented successful applications worldwide, not only in pioneering countries such as Norway, Japan, and the US, but have also been used extensively in the neighboring Malaysia for their many toll road projects. b-foam^® GG blocks have been gaining wider acceptance for infrastructure projects in Indonesia, started with retaining wall filler for Citra Green Dago in North Bandung. b-foam^® GG blocks are used for lightweight fill application for two geothermal projects in West Java: at Takenaka Dobuku Patuha to fill the thermal mass pool dugout, and at Star Energy Wayang Windu, where their consultant (AECOM) prescribed EPS Geofoam as soil load deflector above an underground concrete piping system.

Takenaka Dobuku Patuha

Star Energy Wayang Windu

Another b-foam^® GG application is for overground lightweight fill for existing structure, for example, increasing the height of floor deck and creating a sitting bench area in a cinema or stadion, where in both cases, the existing structure cannot withstand the additional load if the means of increasing the floor height or creating the sitting bench are done through conventional concrete casting.

Example of lightweight raised floor: 4^th floor pool deck at Golden Tulip Hotel, Pontianak

Example of lightweight bench Area: Sports Jabar Arena, Arcamanik, East Bandung

b-foam^® GG as Raised Floor at AEON Mall – Serpong

b-foam^® GG as Retaining Wall at Budi Asih Residence

www.b-foam.com/geofoam

b-panel Mix : Ensuring Highest-Quality Result for Your b-panel Projects While Controlling Cost

Admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 07:16:42 +0000

The quality of plaster mix has always been very important in ensuring satisfactory and efficient b-panel^® installation in any projects. Improper cement mix ratio, coupled with low quality sand, leads to insufficient structural integrity of the reinforced plaster in which b-panel^® relies for its monolithic strength. At best, this incurs less than acceptable finish, due to numerous shrinkage cracks on the wall surface. The supply of good quality sand is often cannot be guaranteed. As sand characteristics in the quarry vary depending on weather/rainfall, the sand from exactly the same location can be of different quality at different time of the project duration.

Secondly, by manually mixing the plaster on site, the quantity of purchased raw material (cement and sand) are difficult to control. At times, the sand arriving on truck is not the right quantity as ordered. This leads to project cost overruns, as well as uneven quality of plastering mentioned above.

Recognizing these issues, PT BE Putra with the support of its sister company PT BE Perkasa, developed a set of pre-bagged plaster product, under the brand b-panel Mix^®. This product comes in convenient 50 Kg bags, each consist of select Indocement PCC cement (or Lafarge’s Andalas PCC cement for projects around North Sumatra), processed quality silica sand of certain granularity size and clay content, and plaster additive to ensure good adhesion and resistance to shrinkage cracks. The application is very convenient, just open the bag, put all the ingredients together while adding water, and a mortar mix suitable for b-panel^® plastering is ready to be applied.

By specifying b-panel Mix^® to a project, an accurate costing can be calculated, since the dosage and coverage rate for each b-panel Mix^® type has been prescribed, and thus reducing the probability of project cost overrun, as well as material loss/theft.

The market reception of b-panel mix^® has been very positive. Thousands of b-panel Mix^® bags have been delivered to multiple projects to date, indicating that both project owners and contractors like the idea of more project cost and finishing quality control.

b-panel Mix^® is produced in 3 types: M150 for non-structural partition 20mm plastering, M225 for structural 30mm plastering, and B225 for casting concrete columns and beams, as well as topping for b-deck^® floor and roof panels.

Urgent Call to Builders: Get Rid of All the Bricks

Admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 02:54:19 +0000

Do you remember the story of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty? Knowing that the your Princess Aurora had been cursed to get stung by the needle on a spinning wheel, her royal parents ordered all the spinning wheel in the country to be burned, but they forgot one at the attic in the castle’s tower. And so, with the spell of the evil queen, Princess Aurora was led upstairs to use the spinning wheel, and there she got stung by the needle, and fell into the coma planned by the evil queen.

In our homes, we always have these cursed spinning wheel around, deadly time bombs that will readily harm the residents of the home during severe earthquake. They are the bricks. Mostly loose, unsupported and unreinforced, and merely rely on the plaster to keep them together. It amazing to think that in 2015, we human still resort to non-reinforced brick masonry, even in the most earthquake-prone regions, and even in the upscale development, where both the income level and the sophistication of the residence should be looking for a more advanced, safer alternative.

What about lightweight bricks? Lightweight masonry, so long as they are not reinforced, would be just as dangerous. Although lighter than concrete or conventional red bricks, these large sized lightweight bricks falling down from a story worth of height, can easily maim and kill building occupants.

By employing b-panel^® (as well as similar Structural Insulated Panels/SIPs), the concern of falling brick debris during earthquake is completely solved, as there is no loose bricks in the structure of the building. All wall surface is reinforced with densely spaced steel wire matrix, which makes the wall in effect a structural shear wall (and a thermally and acoustically insulated one at that). In a b-panel^® building, the walls are one extremely rigid, monolithic structural unit. Even in the most severe earthquake, the failure characteristics of b-panel^® wall is not catastrophic. The plaster will cracks and loosen, but not in a big, heavy chunks that can be lethal if hitting humans as in the case of bricks.

But old habits die hard. Even in recent b-panel^® projects, it was found that some contractor still use bricks to cover areas that was not covered by b-panel^® (mostly due to estimation error), such as triangular area under the roof ridge. (“Ampig” in Indonesian). This is the lone yarn machine in the Sleeping Beauty story. The b-panel^® wall will stay safely intact during earthquake, but the home occupant might still get hurt by the sudden falling bricks from beyond the ceiling. There is no Prince Charming to give the wake up kiss to the fallen victims of bricks. Another example is loose bricks used for mosque architectural details – it is ironic if a place of worship become a dangerous place during natural disaster instead of a place of shelter it was intended to be.

The practice of using unsupported masonry, especially for public service facilities, such as schools, hospitals/clinics, place of worships, government buildings, and communication shelters, must be eradicated. If this is still done because of cultural and behavior inertia, more effort to educate the market needs to be done. However, it is deeply unethical, if the architect, owner, or contractor still build this way even if the potential danger of unsupported masonry is already known.

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b-panel® at Asia-Pacific Green Building Conference 2014

Admin — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 03:21:42 +0000

PT BE Putra has always been in the forefront of environmentally-responsible business practices in Indonesia, as well as trying to be one of the shapers of green building material manufacturing in the region. Although still fairly small in business size (Under 100 employees, this was the reason it won Best SME at Sustainable Business Awards Indonesia 2013), but it has been consistently pulling well above its weight, relying on 100% biofuel, pushing near-zero waste operations, and even refusing to accept projects associated with socially and environmentally damaging industries, such as coal mining and tobacco.

As such, Green Building Council Indonesia (GBCI) invited PT Beton to be one of the featured speakers at the 2014 Asia-Pacific Green Building Conference, organized at Pullman Hotel Podomoro City Jakarta in May of 2014. During the first day afternoon speaking slot, Don Kamarga, Managing Director of PT BE Putra, shared with the audience, which included many representatives from overseas chapter of Green Building Council, the challenges and motivations of pushing hard and staying true on environmentally sustainable practices, in spite of skepticism resulted from the rampant greenwash practice – merely using “Green” as a commoditized marketing jargon.

The takeaways that PT BE Putra wished to share during the event were: that businesses do not have to grow big first to do the right things, as these actions are not the typical CSR merely for public relation purpose. Secondly, that if from a smaller size a business can be environmentally responsible, it is even easier to stay that way when it becomes bigger and stronger, and at the end, a positive brand equity will be established naturally, not through image crafting by strategic branding consultant and extensive marketing campaign.

The b-panel^® team who staffed the 2-day event listened and learned a great deal about sustainable building practice from the many experts presented there. As a bonus, the team was able to take a team picture with Ibu Risma, the mayor of Surabaya, after she shared her experience with the audience during the morning session. PT BE Putra wish to express gratitude to Ibu Naning Adiwoso, president of GBCI, for including PT BE Putra in this important regional sustainability event.

b-panel Campus Seminar: Educating Young Generation to Support Sustainable Building Practices

Admin — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 02:37:43 +0000

Many of us have not had the concern to environment in development. By ‘environment’, we only thought of waste, litters, and environment contamination. But nowadays concern to environmental issues has expanded into designing and constructing a building.

Building construction with awareness to environment, in practice, is often considered against economical growth, since the cost for sustainable building is not cheap. In fact, sustainble building has a lot of positive impacts, for it contributes in mending microclimate and thus held global warming from getting worse, although usually a bit more expensive initially, in long term, the project will save substantial operational cost from energy savings.

b-panel^®, along with Beton Works (a federation of concrete-based building material producer, in which b-panel^® is one of them) continue to support a national seminar series with concern to sustainable building that is held in several universities in Indonesia. We are hoping to educate young generation in Indonesia, mainly the university students, about the importance of sustainable building.

The seminars were held in Universitas Bandar Lampung, Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta, Universitas Sumatra Utara, and Universitas Bina Nusantara (Binus) Jakarta. The seminars explain the implementation of b-panel^® in sustainable bulding, along with other environmentally-friendly products from Beton Works.

We no longer need to install walls by stacking the pieces of bricks (not to mention that they only function as partition walls); we can now install walls rapidly, with benefits of thermal and acoustic insulation included. In the future, these benefits will give long term profitability; such is the excellence of sustainable building.

Sustainable building is a concept that fulfill today’s need without ruining our successor’s ability to fulfill their needs. The main concern of eco-friendly building is to make it sustainable, to build and consume not more than necessary.

Sustainable building provides innovative and creative aspects in managing natural resources, in order to maintain its supply for the future. Preparation for future energy is our responsibility. So, sustainable building is a revolutionary idea that must be supported by everyone. This is a continuous movement which aspires to the creation of eco-friendly and energy efficient building, starting from conception, excecution, and selection of eco-friendly building materials. b-panel^® adopts Green Building concept which emphasizes on balance between short term gains versus long term risks, with a consideration for the health and prosperity of future generations

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Little Things PT Beton Elemenindo Putra Does to Further Lessen Environmental Impact

Admin — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 02:05:54 +0000

PT Beton Elemenindo Putra has ticked all the key marks when it comes to operational sustainability of its production facility. Due to their comprehensive efforts in ensuring environmental responsibility, the company has won two back-to-back prestigious environmental awards: the Regional (ASEAN) Merit Award at The Singapore Environmental Achievement Award in 2012, and the Sustainable Business Award Indonesia for the best SME category in 2013. Their factory is one of the very few manufacturing sites in Indonesia, which boiler power does not rely on coal or other fossil fuels, as well as one that has achieved close to zero waste in their operation.

However, what also counts are the little actions that the company promotes in its daily operation. For example, due to the construction of a new factory on what used to be paddy field next to it, reduction of rain water seepage to the soil, and therefore reduction of ground water availability for the community around the factory, became a concern. Thus, the company constructed an array of biopori wells along the perimeter of its outer wall, as well as a ground water absorption polder tank, so that rain water not collected by the factory roof water collector, goes to the ground soil. This increases ground water availability for the surrounding community, and reduce surface erosion, not to mention potential flooding in the area during heavy downpour.

Another example is the downsizing of the firm’s vehicle fleet. The staff operational vehicles, which used to be 2000cc cars, are now smaller, more efficient 1000-1300 cc vehicles with similar passenger capacities. The management’s car is now a 1.5 liter compact crossover with efficient CVT transmission, downsized from a 3 liter, 6-cylinder large sedan. The most significant fuel efficiency gain is from the purchase of the new trucks fleet. Since most of PT. Beton Elemenindo Putra’s product lines comprise of ultralight weight EPS foam, instead of 4000cc and 7600cc diesel trucks used previously, the new fleet comprises of 1400cc and 2700cc diesel trucks, modified for very little compromise in cargo capacity, while delivering much higher fuel economy. The 1400cc truck, for example, monitored at over 10 km/liter to date.

The company also runs a carpooling program, in which many of the staffs are using for their daily commute to work. Aside from lowering fuel cost of the company fleet, these actions concretely embrace one of b-panel^®’s product objectives, which is energy efficiency.

There are a few more energy-efficiency measures being implemented and to be implemented at the company in the near future. In 2016, the boiler was retrofitted with extensive thermal jacket, to reduce the biofuel consumption further. For 2017, solar PV for all office lightings which double as centralized UPS system is planned. The quest for PT Beton Elemenindo Putra to stay as one of the best practice cases for environmentally responsible operation continues.

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