Blasting in Highly Occupied Location-Practice to Implementation

Excavation close to sensitive areas is a growing trend to accommodate the construction requirements in civil engineering projects. Use of appropriate equipment, adopting innovative and integrated technologies in drilling and blasting have led to successful hard rock excavation in these situations. Project planning, systematic rock strata classification, selection of excavation methods, selection of drilling parameters, choice of suitable explosive, compliance to safety and environmental norms and cost optimization are the means for timely execution of excavation projects. The application of this approach is demonstrated in this paper for the excavation of large rock quantity of rock by blasting and appropriate means at a thermal project in eastern India.