RAMAKRISHNAN P writes on a brighter future ahead for the Indian construction industry.
In spite of the present economic crisis and various disruptions in the last few years due to Demonetisation, RERA and GST, serious consolidation is happening in the industry so that it can take up challenges in future. Indian construction companies always delivered its products at a much competitive construction cost compared to the rest of the world. Our engineers are capable of delivering solutions at a much greater efficiency at competitive prices.
Gearing up for challenges
Converting visions of the
government, such as Housing for
All, PMAY and large infrastructure
projects, will create huge demands
in the Indian construction industry
in the years to come. A lot of
avenues are also opening up in
co-working, co-housing, industrial
parks, logistics park with cold
storage facilities, among others.
But, at the same time, a big question to be answered is: Whether Indian construction Industry is geared to take up that challenge. One major challenge is delay of project completion, project cost overrun, and its consequences to the profitability of the companies. The only solution to this problem is exploring opportunities of new-age technologies such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Big data, Blockchain, etc. At the same time, the government has also taken up various initiatives like the Smart Cities mission, Digital India, Global Housing Technology challenge, India Chain, to actively promote digitalisation and ICT-embedded integrated infrastructure solutions.
Affordable housing is going to be one of the big drivers in the near future and a lot of private companies have taken much more initiatives in world-class infrastructure in that segment.
One such example is Lodha’s initiative of Palava – an integrated smart city in the outskirts of Mumbai, a first-of-its-kind in the Indian real estate history by a private player. Already 100,000 people are living happily, and another 6,000-7,000 homes are expected to be added YoY.
Tech way forward
Globally, technology is taking
an active part broadly in two
areas: Construction Technologies
– CONTECH; and Property
Technologies – PROPTECH. As
the consumer is more and more
demanding, PROPTECH is already
making in-roads in the Indian real
estate industry. A few examples
are VR/IR in sales and marketing,
Blockchain in managing and
creating client data, smart building
technologies for managing the
services efficiently, digitalisation
through mobile or business
platforms to generate enquires,
and post possession activities
like client management, facility
management, among others.
Having said that, CONTECH is a real concern, as only a few are making an attempt to use technologies to improve efficiency, productivity, wastage control, etc. Take for instance: As a typical residential building is mostly repetitive in nature, if we go for multiple buildings in the affordable segment, the detailed use of technologies will improve productivity, reduction in cost, and increase in profitability.
BIM can be extensively used in pre-construction to arrive at an optimum level of usage of materials, construction sequence, clash detection in services, so that surprises can be avoided at the time of construction.
At the time of construction, Lean management, real-time monitoring of progress and resolving issues in real-time will avoid delay in projects. Snagging or de-snagging using some digital tools will not only improve the process and collection of rich data, but will allow correcting mistakes in the pre-construction or construction stage.
Although there is a concern in usage of CONTECH now, I am confident the young generation who is interested in using technologies, will change the construction industry in the future.
About the author: Ramakrishnan P, COO, Lodha Developers, is a seasoned project management professional with more than 30 years of experience in construction, real estate, power projects, facility and community management
