How did you successfully manage your business in the Covid times? What were the key drivers for your growth? 

Having a total employee strength of around 17000 people onboard, and huge fleet of equipment had always compelled us to keep the business moving. Government’s effort and support for on-time delivery of projects with various relaxations and schemes during Covid time kept us motivated and gave confidence. Prior appropriate planning of work considering the logistics constraints helped us deliver all resources at the scheduled delivery time. Our continuous effort to work in sync with business associated helping them overcome their challenges also played a major role in accelerating the entire web of logistics chain. 

Setting up special task force at sites with Covid and quantrine cell, and a central monitoring team to support team and their families with all medical facilities kept our resources intact at site which further kept the sites progressing. 

Using IoT and remote monitoring platforms installed on equipment and worksites kept us updated on live progress monitoring and helped us take corrective measures and actions based on business requirements. 

How do you evaluate the recovery in the construction and infrastructure market so far? 

Owing to the governments focus and ambitious plans with huge investments, the infrastructure sector recovery has been quite sustained. As this sector being one of the key focus areas of government, the participation on bids has increased to manifolds creating huge competition amongst the bidders at times leading to unviable bid by few companies which might lead to noncompletion or delivery of projects with low quality work. However, it has helped all ancillary business like equipments vendors, consultants, steel, cement and other construction material supplies overcome the bad phase and transform back to normal business. Infrastructure sector has created sea of employment opportunities on core and ancillary business and bringing liquidity in the market. 

What are the significant factors impacting the productivity in your sector? 

The major materials prices like steel, cement, bitumen, HSD etc., used in high volumes in industry have hiked ranging from 50 percent to 100 percent which is very badly impacting the companies cash flows and leading to unviable business circumstances. Companies are bleeding due such huge hike on major materials prices and also at times industry is facing a demand supply imbalance. Due to increase in HSD price the domestic logistics cost have gone up drastically and also the international logistics cost/shipping cost has gone up by three to five times, further impacting the cost of imports and also scarcity on vessels and containers have delayed the delivery timelines which is impacting projects on all aspects. 

What kind of policy/regulations/investments support is required for the market revival? 

The policies and regulations must be regularly reviewed by the concerned authorities considering the constant and frequent changes in the market conditions need regulars review from concerned authorities considering frequently changing market scenarios and market dynamics. Few pricing parameters have severely impacted as domestic players have taken advantage on increased international pricing parity and demand, and supply gaps imbalance created in market. Opportunist need to be appropriately penalised creating norms which clearly indicates the violations set by government. Also, bidding criteria needs revision needs to be reviewed where bidders with good track records, bids only with financial feasibility may be entertained, qualifications criteria’s to be set based on reasons for failure which create a bench mark and help all bidders align to laid policies etc. 

Can technology and digitisation be a key factor in driving your sector’s growth? 

With regards to our construction activities at sites, even prior to the pandemic we have been active in remote monitoring of the construction activities to track the project progress. Due to the pandemic catalyst we can foresee strong growth in the use of AR/VR technologies over the next 5 to 10 years. For project monitoring and project progress we use the drone cameras to give us real time report on the project activities and ensuring that the projects are always completed on time. 

There are some inherent limitations in adopting new AR/VR technologies such as the lack of budget, upper management’s lack of understanding of these technologies and design teams lack of knowledge. Due to the lower profit margins on construction projects, one major limiting factor that prevents the industry from adopting AR/VR technologies is the lack of availability of cost/ benefit analysis. Owners and companies are not willing to invest their money without knowing the true costs and benefits (i.e., time and cost savings). Therefore, there is a need for empirical studies that assess the true costs of implementing these technologies and reduction in costs and time from design to operation and maintenance phases. 

However, with recent advancements in mobile augmented reality and machine learning, it is expected that AR head-mounted displays provide a better assistant to project teams during the construction phase (e.g. real-time safety feedback, progress monitoring) or facility managers during the operation phase (e.g., sensor data visualisation, energy simulations) in comparison to VR tools. 

How do you assess the growth prospects for the next 5 years in the construction and infrastructure sector? 

Political stability in our country and states with focus on infra sector development might be one of the key factors. The infrastructure sector has become the biggest focus area for the Government of India. India plans to spend US$ 1.4 trillion on infrastructure during 2019-23 to have a sustainable development of the country. The Government has suggested investment of `5,000,000 crore (US$ 750 billion) for railways infrastructure between 2018- 2030. Governments focus on international bench marks on commuters riding experience on highways with all facilities on way side amenities with help him be focused on his deliverables and business commitments creating a value chain in entire business cycle.