Slab Casting, Super Structure and How a Construction-Linked Plan Really Works

Formwork goes up at the level of the new floor, held on props from the level below, so a temporary deck runs across the whole footprint. Reinforcement steel is laid and tied over that deck, and conduits and sleeves for services are set in place. Then concrete is placed, compacted so no voids remain, and finished to level. The slab is left to gain strength, and once it can carry itself and the load above, the props and formwork are struck and moved up a storey.

That is a slab casting: the concrete floor plate of one level, poured on one day, the same sequence on every reinforced concrete tower. On the payment plan printed for ACE Arte, that single day is worth 20 percent of the base price. Twice.

This piece is about how construction-linked plans work in general, read through one real printed example. Nothing here is a criticism of ACE Arte's plan. The 20X5 is a conventional plan, and conventional plans have a shape that rewards a buyer who understands it.

Why a payment plan can lean on a slab

Because the event is unmistakable. A slab is not a status update. It is either poured or it is not, and anyone standing on the road with a phone camera can tell which. The interval between successive slabs depends on the formwork system, the crew and the weather, and no payment plan fixes it, so do not read a slab milestone as a date in disguise.

Two things to pin down before you release money against one of these lines. First, which tower. A project with several towers casts slabs at different times, and your instalment should follow your tower rather than the fastest one on site. Second, what the floor is counted from. Numbering conventions differ, and whether a tenth-floor slab is the tenth suspended slab above ground or the tenth level in a scheme that includes stilt or podium levels is a question with a clear answer that should be in writing, not in a conversation.

What are the six lines of ACE Arte's 20X5 plan?

Six lines, five blocks of twenty percent, the first block split in two. Cumulative shares are ours, worked from the printed percentages.

Transcribed from ACE's price list W.E.F. 21-08-2026, read by our desk 3 September 2026. Percentages apply to the base sale price. PLC, GST and other charges are named on the list as extra with no rupee figure printed against them; stamp duty and registration are borne by the buyer. The plan is the developer's and can be revised. The schedule that binds you is Schedule C of your Agreement for Sale.

That last sentence is not a formality. Clause 1.4 of the model Agreement for Sale prescribed under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018 reads: "The Allottee(s) shall make the payment as per the payment plan set out in Schedule C ('Payment Plan')." A price list circulates. Schedule C is executed and registered. Read them side by side before you sign, and if a line differs, the one in Schedule C is the one that will be enforced.

Why does 20 percent fall due before the first slab?

This is the part buyers miss, and it is visible in the table above if you read the cumulative column rather than the share column. By the time line 3 becomes possible, the first fifth of the base price has already moved. Line 1 is your booking decision. Line 2 is a 30-day calendar clock that starts running from the booking and does not wait for anything to be poured.

A fifth of the base price, then, moving before the ground-floor slab of your tower exists. ACE's film publishes "Starting From ₹3.27 CRORE*" for the smallest home, so the order of magnitude of that first month is not hard to picture on the 3 BHK. What we will not put on a web page is a dated instalment table totalling what you personally owe by which week. The honest version of that table needs your configuration, your tower, your floor and the heads the price list names as extra without pricing, and a generic one manages to be wrong in both directions at once: too low to budget against, high enough to talk someone out of a purchase that suited them.

Nothing about this is unusual. Almost every construction-linked plan front-loads the first tranche this way, because the developer needs working capital at the point where the least is built. The reason to name it is that it changes what you should be doing in month one. This is the money most exposed to a mis-routed payment, so the beneficiary name and the collection account matter more here than at any later line. We set the routing out in what your money is actually doing at EOI and booking stage, and step by step on the EOI process page.

It also puts a date-shaped question in front of you. Section 13(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 provides that "A promoter shall not accept a sum more than ten per cent of the cost of the apartment, plot, or building as the case may be, as an advance payment or an application fee, from a person without first entering into a written agreement for sale with such person and register the said agreement for sale, under any law for the time being in force". Ten per cent is the statutory boundary between pre-agreement money and post-agreement money. In a plan whose second line falls at 30 days, the useful question to put to the desk is simply: on what date will the Agreement for Sale be executed and registered, relative to that 30-day line? Ask it early, in writing, and the sequencing takes care of itself.

What does "completion of super structure" mean?

The frame is finished. Every column, beam, slab, shear wall and staircase from the foundation to the topmost level is cast, and the tower stands at full height. In site language the building has topped out.

What it does not mean is that the building is nearly ready. After the super structure comes blockwork, plaster, screeds and flooring, doors and windows, lift installation and commissioning, plumbing and sanitary fit-out, electrical work, facade, external development, and the room-by-room finishes ACE lists on the specifications page: the imported or Italian marble in the living and dining, the laminated wooden flooring in the bedrooms, the false ceilings, the modular kitchen cabinets and stone counter. That is a long stretch of work, and by the time it begins, 80 percent of the base price has been paid.

Again, general rather than particular: this is the standard shape of a construction-linked plan across the market, not a feature of this one. The consequence for you is a simple sequencing habit. A buyer has the least bargaining room once most of the money has already gone, so anything you want confirmed about the specification, or about the charge heads at closing, is worth getting in writing while the frame is still going up.

Why are these milestones and not dates?

Because the plan is built to follow progress. A date can arrive with an empty site. A slab cannot exist and not exist. Trigger the money on the event and the payment always corresponds to something real.

The model Agreement for Sale makes the conditionality explicit in its Mode of Payment clause: "Subject to the terms of the Agreement and the Promoter abiding by the construction milestones, the Allottee shall make all payments, on written demand by the Promoter, within the stipulated time as mentioned in the Payment Plan [Schedule C] through A/c Payee cheque/demand draft/bankers cheque or online payment (as applicable) in favour of ______ payable at ______." Two mechanics in one sentence. Payment follows a written demand, so you should never be paying against a phone call. And the obligation is expressed as subject to the promoter abiding by the construction milestones, which is why asking which tower and which stage a demand refers to is a normal question rather than an awkward one.

The trade you accept is timing. A fast build brings your outflows forward; a slower one defers them. Neither is written into the plan as a number of months, so if your funding depends on a schedule, plan around the event sequence rather than around an assumed year. The register separately records ACE Arte as registered on 28.07.2026 under UPRERAPRJ528653/07/2026, and the register is where declared timelines live; check it yourself at up-rera.in rather than taking a timeline from any marketing page, ours included. What we hold on the record is on the ACE Arte facts page.

One more thing runs in both directions here. Clause 1.11 of the model agreement records the booking amount as part payment towards the Total Price and provides that if the allottee delays in payment, interest is payable at the rate prescribed in the rules. Section 19(6) of the Act makes an allottee responsible for making payments in the manner and within the time specified in the agreement for sale, and Section 19(7) makes the allottee liable for interest on delay. The same model form sets the rate for a refund owed to an allottee at the marginal cost of lending rate on a State Bank of India home loan plus one percent. One rate, applied both ways. Knowing the number before you sign is more useful than discovering it in a demand letter.

What does the offer of possession set running?

More than the last instalment. The plan's own wording on line 6 is "20% plus other charges", so this is the point where the charge heads the price list names as extra turn into amounts on a bill.

Around that same letter, several clocks start. Clause 7.2 of the model Agreement for Sale provides that the promoter, upon obtaining the completion or occupancy certificate from the competent authority, "shall offer in writing the possession of the [Apartment/Plot], to the Allottee in terms of this Agreement to be taken within two months from the date of issue of completion certificate/occupancy certificate (as applicable)". Section 19(10) of the Act puts the same duty on the buyer: "Every allottee shall take physical possession of the apartment, plot or building as the case may be, within a period of two months of the occupancy certificate issued for the said apartment, plot or building, as the case may be". Clause 7.3 of the model form then provides for holding charges where an allottee does not take possession in time, calculated per month per square foot of carpet area.

Read together, that is why 20 percent lands here rather than earlier. Offer of possession is the moment the home becomes legally handoverable, and from that moment a two-month window runs during which the balance has to be settled, the other charges paid, registration completed and the keys taken. It is a compressed period and it is entirely predictable, which means it is the easiest one to prepare for.

What Schedule C has to settle before you sign it

Five things, and not one of them is exotic. Each is an ordinary question that an ordinary desk answers without blinking. Each becomes expensive only because nobody wrote the answer down.

Which tower and which unit the plan attaches to. Slab milestones fire per tower, and a site with several towers has several ground-floor slabs. A demand that names a milestone without naming the tower is not yet a demand you can check.

How the tenth floor is counted. Numbering conventions differ. Whether the tenth-floor slab is the tenth suspended slab above ground, or the tenth level in a scheme that counts a stilt or a podium, can move a twenty percent call by months in either direction. There is a correct answer for your tower, and it belongs on paper rather than in a conversation.

That every demand arrives in writing, naming the milestone reached. The Mode of Payment clause already contemplates a written demand. Making it explicit is what turns an event-linked plan into something you can audit instead of something you are told about.

The itemised heads inside other charges. They fall due at line 6 alongside the final twenty percent, inside a two-month window, and the price list prints them as extra with no figure against them. That window is the worst possible moment to learn what they contain.

The interest rate, stated once and running both ways. The model form sets a rate for an allottee who is late on an instalment and the same rate for a refund owed to an allottee. One number, two directions, and it is easier to read before you sign than inside a demand letter.

Sequencing is the part that gets lost. All five are cheap to obtain while the frame is still going up, and expensive to chase once eighty percent of the base price has moved, because by then you are holding very little. The wording that produces a usable answer is specific to your tower, your floor and the Schedule C you will actually sign, which makes it a drafting job rather than a copying one.

Written 4 September 2026 by our desk, an authorised channel partner. We are not ACE Infracity Developers and this is not their official website. You book in your own name with the developer and every payment goes to the developer's designated account. Statutory text on this page is quoted from the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 and the model Agreement for Sale under the UP Real Estate (Regulation and Development) (Agreement for Sale/Lease) Rules, 2018, both as published at up-rera.in and read on 4 September 2026. It is a reading aid, not legal advice.