Scaffolding System for Construction of Elevated Water Towers

There will be four elevated water towers in Tainan Science-based Industrial Park (TSIP) in southern Taiwan, as this project is totally completed. During the construction of one of the four elevated water towers, it was found that the cost of the scaffolding system could be as high as one fifth of the total construction cost, as was unreasonably high. An alternative scaffolding system was developed and is reported in this paper, and the new system is found to be more economical and safer, and the construction time employing the new system is shorter. A software toolkit developed for automatic structural analysis and design for such a scaffolding system is also presented.