Building work

Formwork from 203 Doka is playing a key role in constructing the airport’s buildings. At times as many as 80 cranes will be in use. Two-thirds of the formwork for the first construction phase are supplied by Austrian experts for formwork solutions, Doka. On this build the Doka engineers are combining in particular Timber formwork beams H20 eco and H20 top and load-bearing towers, plus Framed formwork Framax Xlife and Frami Xlife and Large-area formwork Top 50. The formwork systems from Doka are in use in many areas, including the runways, terminals, multilevel car parking facilities and hotels, and the wastewater treatment plant.

The load-bearing tower frames are steel, eminently suitable for high clearances and high loads. On the Istanbul airport build, these circumstances apply for the big downstand beams, which are 12m above ground level and on which the precast slab is laid. Because they are so strong and because of the wide frame span, moreover, the load-bearing towers are very safe. They also help speed up progress overall on the build, because vertical stacking is easy and assembly is a no-tools operation.

In all, 30,000 load-bearing tower frames and 100,000 running metres of Timber formwork beams H20 eco and H20 top are in use on this project. Large as the numbers are, they represent the optimised formwork solution on a construction project of this magnitude. Because the Doka load-bearing towers are designed for materials-saving use: the frames are oversized, so, all in all, fewer frames are needed to prop the structure.