There are two ways to carry the load under slab formwork: shoring towers built one at a time, or table formwork craned in one piece. Both carry the same load; the difference shows up in time.
Shoring towers
Towers assembled from modular scaffold components. With multi-directional systems like Cublock, the same material erects both as a shoring tower and as access scaffolding.
Its advantage is flexibility. If the floor plan changes from level to level, if columns shift, if ceiling heights differ, the tower is built to suit. No crane needed: components are carried by hand.
Its cost is repetition. Build, strike, move, build again on every floor. Where the plan repeats, that labour is paid over and over.
Table formwork
The formwork and its support are combined into a single "table". When a floor is finished the table is not dismantled; it is craned up whole to the next level.
Its advantage is speed. Assembly happens once. On later floors the work is lifting the table and setting it down.
Its cost is crane dependency. A table does not move without a crane. If the crane is busy, the formwork crew waits. The table is also a fixed size; if the plan changes between floors, it will not fit.
In our table system the H-frame sizes are 110, 150 and 180 cm, working with shoring tower and U-head components.
Which, when
| Shoring towers | Table formwork | |
|---|---|---|
| Floor plan | Variable | Repetitive |
| Crane | Not needed | Essential |
| First assembly | Fast | Slow |
| Later floors | Rebuilt each time | Lift and place |
| Tight / complex areas | Suitable | Difficult |
Roughly: the more floors and the more the plan repeats, the more tables win. On a low-rise building, or one where every floor differs, a table wastes its assembly effort.
The ground floor trap
The point missed most often: ground floor ceiling height is usually greater than the floors above. A table or tower sized for the upper levels will not reach on the ground floor. Take-off has to treat it separately.
Mixing them is normal
On most projects both are used: tables on the repetitive typical floors, towers on the ground floor and around the core. That is not inconsistency, it is correct allocation.
Send us your floor plans and we will work out which section is covered with less labour by which system.