Labour scarcity is spurring innovative uses of precast

14 Feb 2022 CW Team

Precast providers are coming up with a slew of innovative applications.

Highways and roads

In highway projects involving flyovers, bridges, overbridges, underpasses and overpasses, many RCC structures are being done in precast, including segmental box girders or U-girders, piers and pier caps in the case of RRTS and MRTS projects, says Debashish Roy, CEO, Vollert India. “Underpasses or subways that are more like underground tunnels are being done in precast, which was not the situation a few years back. A precast concrete structure for underpasses can be an open-end box section, portal frame segments or separate wall and roof units.”

Highway developers use high-end machinery to speedily and smoothly build roads but they struggle to develop small structures for amenities like kiosks, toilets and administrative blocks, which every contractor has to complete prior to the final handover, adds Ronak Dhoot, Founder & CEO, BLOKS Precast. To tide over this challenge, BLOKS Precast can build all the amenity structures for road projects in precast. The company has done so for a road project being implemented by GR Infra in Andhra Pradesh.

“We have also supplied U-drains to road developers, which they find convenient because the components are ready to be installed as soon as you have excavated the area,” he adds. “We are also looking at supplying components for the periphery walls of highway projects.”

Buildings and parks

There is also huge demand for precast nowadays for…

Click here to read more on...

Real Estate

05 Dec 2025

RBI Rate Cut Boosts Confidence Across Housing Market

Industry Context and Market DynamicsThe real estate industry has welcomed the RBI’s rate cut as a timely boost to affordability and demand. With home prices having risen steadily across major markets, even a marginal reduction in interest rates meaningfully strengthens purchasing power, especially for first-time and mid-income buyers.Ashish Jerath, President – Sales & Marketing, Smartworld Developers, observes:“The RBI’s 25-basis-point cut, bringing the repo rate down to 5.25%, is a timely boost for the real estate sector. Lower interest rates reduce borrowing costs, enabling homeb..

BMC Resumes Rs 170 Billion Road Works, Targets 80 per cent By Jan 2026

Following the withdrawal of the southwest monsoon in October, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has restarted work on 645 roads—covering 297.49 kilometres—under its large-scale concretisation programme. Data shows that more than 60 per cent of the resumed works are located in the western suburbs. Officials said the civic body aims to complete concretisation on 80 per cent of the roads where fresh work has begun by January 2026. Launched in 2022, the Rs 170 billion project seeks to concretise 700 kilometres of roads across Mumbai. All civil works were halted during the monsoon ..

India Pushes Digital Shift In Urban Land Mapping

The Department of Land Resources (DoLR) under the Ministry of Rural Development has convened a National Symposium on NAKSHA – the National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations – to advance India’s transition to modern, technology-driven land mapping. Speaking at the inaugural session, Secretary Manoj Joshi underscored the urgent need to move revenue departments away from outdated, tape-based methods and rough hand-drawn sketches. He stressed that adopting latitude–longitude-based digital mapping and GIS-linked registration systems is essential for economic stabi..