BHUBANESWAR: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has shown the way by building a three-storey residential accommodation for its employees at Jakhapura railway station in flat four months by using pre-fabricated materials.
Built at a cost of `2.27 crore, the building has steel structure and expanded poly styrene wall panelling. In normal course of time, construction of such a building would have taken at least a year and half.The ECoR sources said, the environment-friendly project ensured that not a single tree is felled. Besides, there is also provision of rainwater harvesting. This building has structure without conventional system of construction and fire proof. Architectural elevation has been given by plastering the G+2 storey building. With 33 isolated footings as foundation apart from columns and slabs, rooms in the building are tiled and have flush doors.
The building will benefit the railway staff working in Jakhapura as they are booked everyday to operate from the local station. At present all the staff reside at Jajpur-Keonjhar Road which is 15 km from Jakhapura.The residential accommodation is expected to save daily transportation time, improve efficiency of staff as well as trains.
General Manager of ECoR Umesh Singh, who inspected the building and appreciated efforts of engineers of Khurda Road division in constructing the structure, indicated that more such quarters will be built in near future. While the residential building has emerged as an engineering model, the ECoR plans to use the model for building such structures in remote locations as it will save transportation cost of building materials and disruption by weather.“The ECoR will also be happy to share the building model with other public sector agencies,” said a senior officer.