MMRDA: Engineering Mumbai’s Underground Future

31 Jan 2026 CW Team

Somewhere beneath Mumbai’s restless surface, a second city is being built into existence.
In the late afternoon, as the day leaned towards evening, Dr Sanjay Mukherjee, Metropolitan Commissioner (MMRDA), led us into a realm that very few ever enter—the active heart of one of Mumbai’s most ambitious underground road projects. While the city surges forward in familiar chaos above the ground, another Mumbai is taking shape below: quietly, methodically, irrevocably. The metal lift doors close. The cage begins to descend—smooth, steady, controlled, a faint hum underfoot. An anticipation amongst the Construction World team, that something extraordinary lies ahead.
The doors open. A colossal, 2,400 tonne, tunnel boring machine commands the space! With a cutterhead diameter of 12.19 metre and a total length of 82 metre, the slurry shield TBM is engineered to navigate Mumbai’s challenging coastal geology and high-water ingress zones with precision and safety..

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Building Material

31 Jan 2026

Steel: Shielded or Strengthened?

Going forward, domestic steel mills are targeting capacity expansion of nearly 40 per cent through till FY31, adding 80-85 mt, translating into an investment pipeline of $ 45-50 billion. So, Jhunjhunwala points out that continuing the safeguard duty will be vital to prevent a surge in imports and protect domestic prices from external shocks. While in FY26, the industry operating profit per tonne is expected to hold at around $ 108, similar to last year, the industry’s earnings must meaningfully improve from hereon to sustain large-scale investments. Else, domestic mills could..

Metro Moves: From Expansion to System Integration

India’s metro rail programme has entered a new phase—one where the focus is no longer only on adding kilometres, but on building integrated, reliable and financially sustainable urban transit systems. With more than 1,000 km of metro lines already operational and daily ridership exceeding 10 million, the challenge now lies in execution quality, underground risk management, multimodal integration, viable funding structures, and large-scale digital adoption. These themes framed deliber..

Turning environmental challenges into recoverable value streams.

The lack of scalable, scientific solutions capable of handling legacy waste and complex urban waste streams led to the establishment of Blue Planet Environmental Solutions. In conversation with CW, Prashant Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, shares the company’s journey from a startup to a city-scale environmental infrastructure player, detailing large municipal projects, decades-old legacy waste remediation, land recovery outcomes and its expanding circular economy footprint.How has the visio..