HYDERABAD: The Telangana government's mammoth and prestigious Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS) is all set to beat Dubai's world record in construction this month. Recently, it has completed 7,139 cubic metres of concrete work in a single day and stood number one in the country in any construction activity. Now, the state's irrigation department aims to create a world record by beating the Dubai's record of 21,580 cubic metres work in a span of 72 hours.
The Guinness World Record for massive construction work is being held by a commercial-cum-residential building in Dubai which set it in May last year. The building created the world record for the 'largest continuous concrete pour in the world'. A concrete volume of 21,580 cubic metres was recorded for a residential-cum-commercial building in Jebel Ali. The earlier record holder was also a Dubai entity. In 2016, in Al Barsha South 19,793 cubic metres of concrete was poured in 42 hours.
"Massive concrete works are going on at KLIS sites and the work will soon create a new world record," said Kaleshwaram chief engineer B Hari Ram. The L&T company was executing works in 40 to 50 countries. The L&T stated that the kind of massive construction work that is going on at Kaleshwaram had never been done by the company in any other country, according to irrigation minister T Harish Rao. "Huge concrete works are going on at 14 or 15 sites for the Kaleshwaram project. Each site looks like a separate project. We will rewrite the world record in the construction sector and beat Dubai," Hari Ram said and hoped that the record would be created this month itself.
For building the Kaleshwaram project, around 2 lakh cement bags were used daily, a record in the country. Two lakh cement bags per day were never used for any construction work in any project, officials said.
As the summer is very hot and the mercury rising to 46 degrees Celsius, the contracting agencies are providing buttermilk thrice and ORS packet once daily to the labourers who were engaged in the concrete work. Around 40,000 labourers are engaged in Kaleshwaram works in three shifts of 8 hours each every day.
PROJECT TECHNICAL DETAILS
Length of gravity canals - 1,531 km
Length of tunnels - 203 km
Length of pressure lines - 98 km
Lifts - 20
Pump houses - 19
Power required - 4,627.24 MW
Reservoirs being built - 20
Storage capacity of reservoirs - 142 tmcft