Visit to Raincoat Roofing Systems

This morning I visited a roofing company who supply profiled zinc roofs to most of Ghana, parts of Burkina Faso and are in the process of arranging supply to Togo and Côte d’Ivoire.

The tour of the factory gave me an idea about the construction solutions emerging from within West Africa and gave me an insight into some ambitiously designed local projects that could be tackled with Ghanean-made materials.
I noticed a degree o improvisation to challenge the commonly accepted building techniques. the 4-stores factory office is built from shipping containers which make construction process faster and less labour intensive (by requiring less concrete) which is the common material in West Africa for buildings of that size. Secondly, the Raincoat team has their own truss design office to enable clients having simple masonry buildings with different shapes of rooves , supported by steel trusses. The standardised cold rolled profiles making up the trusses are also produced here at the Raincoat factory. This roof construction technique removes the need to use concrete frame, concrete ring or ridge beams, a labour intensive way to build I observed in Nigeria. (Example)
Below: factory building set in an industrial area in a north-west part of Accra, shots inside and outside

Below: zinc rolls imported from Vietnam