Ready Mix or Manual Mix?

It's been a month since we started the house construction. This week, we worked on making the scaffoldings and frames for the beam. There were initially 8 workers on site, but since there are a lot of work to be done for the structure, 2 more carpenters were added, so they're 10 now.

Last week, before the beams were started, there were some miscommunication as to how the cement will be implemented. Apparently, there is a more advanced way of applying cement called the ready mix cement. This type of cement is manufactured in a factory or batching plant, according to a set recipe, and then delivered to a worksite, by truck mounted transit mixers. The primary advantage of using this type is its precise mixture because it's made a computerized machine at the cement factory. I've heard of the many advantages of using this and eversince wanted to use it for the slab. It will definitely make our life easier if we use it, and it's said to be just marginally pricier than by doing it the manual way. Anyway, the half part of the 15 columns are done and the scaffoldings for the beams are done as well. There were confusion as to how the cement will be used for what part. Engineer doesn't want the columns to have ready mix cement because this cement dries up very fast and it's possible for the mixture to have 'holes' in it while applying. These holes causes weak points in the structure and therefore very much avoided during construction. Since I just get this information from email, I thought that he doesn't want to use ready mix cement at all. Since the workers are getting paid on a daily basis, there is a tendency for them to slow down the work pace just to make the work time longer, and then they get paid more. So, I didn't give up on persisting them that I want to use ready mix cement, because I want the job to be done fast. I was getting stressed on all the confusion, and I eventually called Engineer via long distance just to understand the whole scenario and finally got it. Nothing beats a phone call, even if instant messaging and email are available. It just makes things easier to understand when you actually hear straight from the source. Whew!

So, the conclusion of all this thing is ready mix cement for the slab, manually mixed cement for the columns and beams.