An Open Letter

Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman,Hon’ble Minister of Finance,Ministry of Finance,Government of India  Hon’ble Finance MinisterNirmala Sitharaman, The construction industry employs 35 million people, which is more than the population of Australia or Malaysia, and contributes 8 per cent of India’s GDP. Unlike manufacturing, this sector takes months to mobilise the 4Ms – men, materials, machines and money […]

Why our cities are sinking!

And how we can save them. At some places, we are dangerously close to breaking point; at others, we are skirting disaster. According to reports, the Karnataka Government was contemplating a ban on the construction of new apartments in Bengaluru to resolve water scarcity. The deputy chief minister revealed that there was a gap between […]

Time to hit the right button!

Roads and highways are not the flavour of the season! Yes, you read correctly. They are not. The growth magnet now has moved to water supply, irrigation, affordable housing and railways too. EPC projects are increasingly finding favour over HAM projects. A huge consolidation exercise is under way as the Insolvency & Banking Code (IBC) […]

PROJECT INDIA

Elections are back but so is the smog and the end of the year. Some collateral benefits or features of elections include rapid decision-making, rapid project execution, timely payments, brisk purchase of materials and equipment due to release of liquidity, increase in cash transactions and so on. While construction of the Ram Mandir will be […]

The toasts of construction

The construction industry could not have asked for a more integrated play than the one witnessed at the INDIA CONSTRUCTION FESTIVAL (ICF) on October 24-25 in New Delhi. Needless to say, the CEOs of construction companies are a hard-working lot and getting them to come together needs more precision than a BIM programme can offer! Vinayak Deshpande, Managing […]

The Pacesetters

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari is a man in a hurry. Recently, he announced the Rs 1-trillion Mumbai-Delhi Expressway, which will connect India’s two most backward districts, Mewat (Haryana) and Dahod (Gujarat). With this, the travel time will reduce from the current 24 hours to 12 hours. The first tender for the project worth Rs 440 […]

Quality over quantity

Oil, the single biggest factor that helped the government manage the fiscal deficit, has climbed from its advantageous position to well over $75. Even as GST is gaining stability, the E-way bill has caused feathers to be ruffled again. Not only are small companies having to contend with compliance changes a bit too often, there […]

The sustainability challenge

Indian architecture has been decorated with its crown jewel BV Doshi being honoured with the Pritzker Prize, making him the first Indian ever to have received this honour. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner and writer, and a pioneer of what is now called modern architecture. In […]

Building Smart

According to McKinsey, construction holds the dubious honour of having the lowest productivity gains of any industry. The reasons attributed to this include continued use of labour instead of technology; lack of consolidation; and the fact that builders are still averse to using technology even though architects increasingly espouse it. Technology is becoming key: The […]