ABSTRACT
This chapter should attract considerable attention and the dogmatic reader will search for numbers to use and specify. If this is the reader’s philosophy the author suggests that this chapter should be given a miss because technology, ‘alchemy’ and ‘know-how’ all play important roles in production, and the intention of this part of the book is to indicate where the target-range is and what the boundary conditions are. Concrete production, in situ or precast, is not a case of working to maximum and/ or minimum limits in any respect; it is a case of working within a range of ideas where there is a maximum and a minimum for each variable at one’s disposal. The ‘know-how’ is knowing where these limits are and the ‘alchemy’ the kitchen routine of ringing the correct changes to get the materials to produce what one wants from the plant one has.
