In June we made three strong discoveries. One, Mumbai’s Redevelopment: A phenomenon that will unravel over two decades and live through two to three real-estate cycles. Two, technology in construction: It is here and how! And the third: Maharashtra’s infrastructure vision: It will only accelerate over the next six months as we near the election battle for the richest municipality in the world. The first two are, in a real sense, discoveries, as they have unravelled from a trickle to a healthy gush. While Dharavi redevelopment (covered in detail in our issue dated May 2025 with an interview of SVR Srinivas, CEO, Dharavi Redevelopment Project) will be a mega redevelopment project with nearly 300 acre of development, the Kamathipura 35-acre redevelopment has now been tendered. And then there are nearly 3,000-plus proposals in terms of stand-alone buildings and cluster redevelopment.

Mumbai constitutes nearly 50 per cent of the real-estate market share and its contours are being redrawn with the Coastal Road, Navi Mumbai International Airport, Virar-Alibaug Corridor, Versova- Virar Sealink, Thane tunnel, the tunnel on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, metro-rail lines, and much more. While this may stretch the real-estate cycle as long as inflation–and therefore interest rate–stays at easy levels, the city will build a strong appetite to consume building material, building products and technologies. (read our report pg 93 in this issue).

Technologies are increasingly being prescribed and mandated. MoRTH is already running pilots of ‘Automated & Intelligent Machine-Aided Construction’, wherein interventions that can digitise construction data and be used for digital twin applications save time and reduce waste, improve rideability, provide real-time documentation, enhance longevity, maintain time and improve quality, such as providing a smooth, levelled and uniformly compacted surface.

In the Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway pilot project, MoRTH advised the use of a GPS-aided motor grader, intelligent compactor and stringless paver. The prescribed guidelines are aiming to improve grading and compaction processes where there are compromises on quality and non-adherence to specifications. It is a matter of time before contractors who do not keep pace with the required specifications of provisions of technology which make tracing the journey of design to execution transparent will be excluded.

Precast and prefab are growing rapidly as is volumetric construction, where prebuilt rooms, hostel accommodation, classrooms, etc, can simply be placed into a building structure like the insertion of a drawer in a large cabinet. In future, developers could replace the ‘drawers’ with another prebuilt structure depending on change in requirements. Designers can now weave designs with the advent and ease of 3D printing. Metro-rail construction projects have been using 5D BIM models for accuracy and timeliness and are able to save operations and maintenance costs over the next two decades. At the Dwarka Expressway, NHAI is testing an advanced traffic management system (ATMS), which is also equipped with a video incident detection and enforcement system (VIDES) that helps capture a video and photo of the vehicle along with the speed and time at which it passed the toll checkpoint. Further, the system can also grab vehicle numbers due to its automatic number plate recognition cameras. These initiatives can go far in curbing traffic violations.

Mumbai is to host its much-delayed elections towards the end of the year and the ruling Fadnavis Government is racing against time to complete its projects and restore the city to acceleration as several bridges have been under repairs and metro rail still remains under construction while the clock is also ticking on the Navi Mumbai International Airport. MMRDA, MSRDC, PWD, Mumbai Metro and MSIDC are expeditiously executing all pending projects.

The infrastructure sector got a booster shot as RBI relaxed its proposed norms and would now require lenders to set aside 1 per cent of the value of loans for under-construction infrastructure projects to cover potential losses, against its previous provisioning which was to escalate up to 5 per cent, thereby making more funds available for disbursement.

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