Jaipur, Sep 9 - The city-based firm N.M. Roof Designers (NMRD) Ltd has figured in the Guinness Book of World Records for designing and constructing a 'satsang hall' (prayer hall) in Jaipur, which has a reinforced concrete cement (RCC) flat roof with a single span of 119 feet.

'If Dubai has Burj Al Hotel - the world's tallest tower - India now has Govind Devji's Satsang Hall in Jaipur, the world's widest concrete building,' said Deepak Sogani, CEO of NMRD Ltd, the structural consultants and contractors for this project, at a press conference here Wednesday.

The building is owned by the Govind Devji Temple Trust. The trust awarded the project to the Rajasthan State Road Development Corporation (RSRDC), which in turn roped in Deepak Sogani and NMRD for structural designing and construction of the hall. The architectural services were provided by architect Rajeev Khanna of Delhi.

'It is a great moment of pride for NMRD, RSRDC, state of Rajasthan as well as for India to figure in the Guinness World Records for this architectural wonder,' Sogani added.

The total cost of building this structure was Rs.30 million (Rs.3 crore).

The hall is adjacent to the Govind Devji Temple, the personal temple of the royal family of Jaipur. The hall is situated in the City Palace complex - the residence of the maharaja - in the old walled city.

The Govind Devji Temple Trust wanted a satsang hall that could seat 5,000 devotees at any given time. The primary requirement of the trust was that the hall should not have any pillars in between.

Given the large width of the hall and the requirement of constructing a flat, usable roof, the only structure that could work was a grid slab. A grid or waffle slab is an RCC roof constructed employing a criss-cross square grid of deep ribs.

The entire grid roof of 36 metres x 38 metres is resting on four peripheral beams. The outer beams, in turn, rest on eight columns on the outer periphery, four at the corners and four in the middle of each side.