Thought you commercial contractors would appreciate this formwork with bamboo sticks on a commercial job in Guyana

I've seen skycrapers going up in Hong Kong with mostly bamboo scaffolding several tens of stories tall.

It's good stuff, widely used for all sorts of temporary purposes in construction where it's cheap & available.

Dana;

with 1.3 billion people, there is no lack for cheap labor, it does not pay to use faster steel scaffold, especially when there is no OSHA

Don't think that the bamboo scaffold used by experienced erectors in the far east is unsafe or slow.  It is amazing to see firsthand.

In Europe and the far east, fixed scaffolding is used much more than in the USA.  In Italy, the traditional way to do a multi story building has been to erect the structure, fully scaffold it and then do the facade and finishes from the top down.

Brick vs drywall, concrete cast in situ single family home vs stick, etc.  Traditions and customs die hard around the world.

Bruce

Posted By cmkavala on 17 Feb 2010 10:07 PM
Dana;

with 1.3 billion people, there is no lack for cheap labor, it does not pay to use faster steel scaffold, especially when there is no OSHA

At the time Hong Kong was still under UK control, and labor far more expensive than just a few miles up the Pearl River delta, (which was in turn far more expensive than in the north of China.) Hong Kong is more like a first-world Asian city than a 3rd world economy, and access to H.K. by the hordes of cheap labor from the hinterlands is still tightly controlled by the government.  Although official numbers are all over the place (and highly suspect), independent sources using purchasing power parity methods place per-capita income of Hong Kong residents currently right in there with that in Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and slightly ahead of the U.K. & Germany (those other "cheap labor" countries.)  Yet bamboo scaffolding is still in common use in Hong Kong, readily verifiable by a google-images search.

During roughly the same period I also saw bamboo scaffolding being used in modern cities in the steel manufacturing countries of  Japan & Korea (although none so impressive as that on Hong Kong skyscrapers.)

Dana1;

Hong Kong per capita income is not representative of China which is about 1100 or about 40% lower than Haiti, yes bamboo is used thru out asia, Indonesia, South America & Africa.  But is commonplace because the labor intesive work to assemble is far less than the faster & safer steel scaffold.
If I was working on a bamboo scafold hi- rise I would tie a safety rope around my neck to break the fall in case I slipped off :)