Mumbai, Jul 2 (IANS): The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has initiated ‘core test’ (strength) for all the concrete road works taken up in Mumbai covering 324 kms, to ensure good quality, an official said here on Tuesday.

While 29.37 kms of roads have been concretised in the first phase, the BMC carried out the trial ‘core test’ at two locations in Mumbai on July 1, and now all upcoming roads or those which have been completed shall undergo the strength tests.

For this, a circular sample section of the cement-concrete roads at Manjrekarwadi Marg in Andheri and Dixit Marg in Vile Parle was cut using a machine and sent to the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) for testing its strength and ensuring that the works are done in a technically-correct manner.

For this, the IIT-B’s experts from the Civil Engineering Department guided the civic engineers to ensure technically correct and high quality works at a workshop.

Present at the testing were BMC Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani, Additional Municipal Commissioner Abhijit Bangar and other senior officials.

The officials said that the samples from different areas of the city will be sent to the IIT-B and government laboratories for testing to maintain the desired quality levels and prevent potholes, cracks or other damage to the cement-concrete roads with heavy flow of vehicular traffic.

The materials used for the road works were tested on various criteria like ratio, durability, homogeneity, load-bearing, etc, to weed out poor quality work and make sure that only the best quality of roads are constructed in the country’s commercial capital.

This would also convey a message to the road contractors that inferior works will not be tolerated, causing inconvenience to the public at large.

Meanwhile, the BMC has initiated the tendering process for the second phase of cement-concrete roads for Mumbai, said the official.