Satyanarayana N. Kalidindi

Indian Institute of Technology Madras | IIT Madras · Department of Civil Engineering

" Case Study: Long Term Governance Challenges in PPPs - The Case of the Tirupur Water Supply Project" Mr. Sameer Kapoor, the newly appointed Managing Director of the New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Limited (NTADCL) looked around his centrally located, well furnished, spacious office. Mr. Kapoor belonged to the prestigious Indian Administra...

The construction industry has long been recognized as a stressful industry, due to its complexity and management of a large number of stakeholders. Occupational stress causes a negative impact on both the work and personal life of professionals. Previous studies have established that occupational stress of construction professionals is strongly ass...

Work sequencing, work planning, and effective communication among the stakeholders improves delivery of complex projects such as airport construction. The present study adopts Last Planner System (LPS) in an airport construction project for process and productivity improvements. To identify and quantify the productivity and other process improvemen...

The chapter talks about the challenges & way forward in developing capacity among Indian construction workforce in the context of handling megaprojects such as High-Speed Rail.

The adversarial effects of construction and demolition (C&D) waste on the environment are on the increase. While materials such as metals, wood, glass and plastics are segregated and diverted for reuse/recycling, C&D debris consisting of concrete, bricks and tiles are landfilled in most of the countries. LCA studies have indicated a clear preferenc...

Construction and demolition (C&D) activities generate a large amount of waste throughout their life cycle. Demolition of buildings is on the rise owing to rapid urbanization and dynamic demands. Disposal of C&D waste leads to faster depletion of available landfill space. The environmental performance of C&D waste management needs to be analysed fro...

Conservation and restoration of built heritage sites are difficult projects to manage, due to high uncertainty and complex landscape of governance, which is apparent from the frequent cases of cost overruns and delays in such projects. Though budget for conservation of built heritage is generally less compared to new construction projects, due to t...

The degree of sophistication required for governing a project depends on its complexity and scale. Although most heritage conservation projects have smaller budgets than new construction, the high uncertainty and complexities, necessitate robust project management framework. A well-defined project delivery framework is a key success factor for heri...

The nature of construction work processes allow crews and workers to follow their own practices in how they plan, organise and coordinate work. However, there is little research into the nature of crew work practices. This paper aims to unveil the influence of onsite crew work practices on productivity. An exploratory case study investigated work p...

Purpose Utility relocation issues are unfortunately frequent and recurring problems in several countries’ highway projects. Very few studies have addressed the utility relocation issues in highway projects. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, this paper explores how the utility relocation issues are managed in highway projects. Second, t...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify factors affecting performance of heritage conservation projects in terms of project management parameters of time, cost, and quality. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory study was conducted in India, wherein 41 conservation professionals were interviewed. The method adopted for the study was...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a case, with live examples from a construction industry development initiative in India, for developing a proactive construction clients charter; and a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs), as basic tools for facilitating the expectations of this special issue in “securing clients’ organisati...

A large amount of construction and demolition waste is being generated owing to rapid urbanisation in Indian cities. A reliable estimate of construction and demolition waste generation is essential to create awareness about this stream of solid waste among the government bodies in India. However, the required data to estimate construction and demol...

Labour sub-contracting is an important labour-use strategy in the construction industry. In the Indian construction industry, about 85-90% of the workers are engaged through labour sub-contractors. However, there have been no major research studies conducted to understand the labour sub-contracting issues in the Indian construction industry. The pr...

The Indian construction industry faces increasing challenges amidst serious performance shortfalls. Confronting similar issues in past decades, other countries such as the UK, USA, and Singapore commissioned high-powered studies and set up industry development bodies to address their own priorities. Initiatives in other countries are briefly review...

The Indian construction sector contributes about 10% to nation’s GDP and employs approximately 35 million people. The construction projects in India are facing key challenges such as time and cost overruns, low-productivity and lack of skilled labor. The major portion of the industry’s workforce consists of transient or migrant workers. Studies in...

Due to the virtue of infrastructure projects being socio-centric, the impact of these projects on the community is highly significant. While the stakeholders’ consultation and communication at the planning phase is relatively more stringent among the developed economies, the rapid urbanization and unprecedented pace of infrastructure development in...

Purpose – Relocation of utilities is a major source of delay in Indian infrastructure projects. This delay is particularly critical in road and bridge construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to identify the various factors and also the interrelationships between the factors which influence the delays in the relocation of utilities. Des...

Housing crisis is one of the major issues the world is facing today. Worldwide, about 330 million households in urban areas are at substandard levels. In developing countries, about 200 million households are located in slum areas. By 2025, at least 1.6 billion citizens in the world are expected to be lacking adequate housing. India, a developing c...

The challenge of working effectively with multicultural teams will continue to grow in importance. Students graduating from engineering and construction management programs need to be functional in this global environment. To address this need, this paper discusses a successful partnership among several international universities to develop a const...

Labor productivity is regarded as one of the most influencing factors that affects the performance of any construction project. In most countries, experience and literature have revealed that labor cost comprises 30 to 50% of the total cost of a project. Lean Construction practices have developed over the last few decades in many countries, bringin...

India is facing a huge housing demand of more than 60 million housing units. The cast in-situ construction technology cannot meet this huge demand at the fast pace required. Some of the developed countries have successfully met similar housing demands by adopting the Precast/Prefabricated Concrete (PPC) construction technology. The PPC technology c...

Public–private partnership (PPP) concessions for transportation infrastructure, especially road projects, have a high degree of risk exposure and complex nature of risk profile. This chapter studies the evolution of contractual allocation of critical risks for PPP road projects, in different generations of concession agreements (CA), for national a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze involvement of external agencies for supplementing competencies in Indian urban public private partnership (PPP) projects. There are two key aspects which need investigation before making a decision to involve external agencies in urban PPP projects: reasons for involvement of external agencies and...

Purpose – The weak competencies in urban local bodies (ULBs) for implementing public private partnership (PPP) projects are recognized as a major hurdle in uptake of the PPP model in India. Competency‐based management provides a systematic solution for addressing the competency gap in ULBs, which comprises four components: competency identification...

Weak competencies in urban local bodies (ULBs) for implementing public private partnership (PPP) projects has been recognized as a major hurdle in uptake of PPP model in India. In this context, a questionnaire survey was conducted to evaluate perception of urban PPP experts and ULB representatives on three aspects related to competency development,...

In India, the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for project implementation has been gaining prominence as municipalities attempt to meet a growing demand for infrastructure services. However, weak competencies within urban local bodies (ULBs) present one of the primary bottlenecks to implementing PPPs in the delivery of urban services. In this...

The M w 6.9 event near the Nepal-Sikkim border on 18 September 2011 (18:10 local time) (re)emphasised many lessons on technical, techno-legal and techno-financial systems related to development of built-environment in the region. Major observations include: lack of technical support in landslide potential assessment of hill slopes; traditional cons...

With the growth in Indian economy, major infrastructure development initiatives have been undertaken by the Governments at the central, state and local body levels. Transportation infrastructure projects recently undertaken in India have experienced large cost and time overruns. The development, construction and operation of the infrastructure faci...

Several teams from India investigated the effects of the Sikkim earthquake between September 25th and November 10th, 2011. This report is based on observations of the following contributors...

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) coordination agencies are often used to assist government agencies in structuring PPP arrangements. Very few studies have compared the performance of various coordination agencies to understand the characteristics that define an effective coordination agency. The authors study three coordination agencies that were i...

The 18 September 2011 earthquake offered major lessons on the systems related to development of built environment: (1) Landslide potential of hill slopes in the region not studied formally in the recent years; (2) Traditional constructions being abandoned formally; (3) Buddhist heritage structures in great danger; many lost during this earthquake;...

International construction projects provide opportunities for developing countries to advance in the global economy and for international construction and design firms to increase their profit and market share. Despite the attractive opportunities that international construction offers, international contractors are faced with many challenges and d...

The construction industry has a major role in the development of the Indian economy. This industry consumes 40 to 50% of the national five-year plan outlay and contributes 20% of gross domestic product. Medium to large construction projects take over a year for completion and the cost of materials and labour often increase, which leads to major pro...

Recent governmental programs in India envisage the delivery of urban services in partnership with the private sector through public private partnerships (PPP). As per the Indian constitution, urban local bodies (ULBs) are primarily responsible for the provision of infrastructural services in urban areas. While these urban local bodies are competent...

"Case Study - Creating the Alandur Sewerage System: Project Structuring and Risk Management" Mr. B. Subramaniam, the Mayor of the municipality of Alandur was a relieved man. His dream of providing a sewerage system to the entire town of Alandur was on the verge of becoming a reality. The municipality was about to sign a contract with a consortium...

Public-private partnership (PPP) road projects are highly leveraged capital-intensive projects. Lenders, which provide the major portion of financing in the form of debt instruments, undertake loan approval processes to examine the various aspects of the projects that could influence the debt servicing capability while making credit decisions. In v...

India has one of the largest road networks in the world, aggregating around 3.3 km. Historically, the budgetary resources from the governments have been the major source of financing for infrastructure such as road projects in India. These investments have resulted in an increase in the length of the road network from 0.4 million km in 1950–51 to...

Development of infrastructure projects with private engagement through PPP has become one of the commonly adopted procurement strategies in developed and developing countries. All over the world where PPP procurement has been used in one form or another, the way in which it is carried out has become an important issue. Yet, there is no standard met...

The quality of urban engineering services such as water supply and sanitation have gradually deteriorated across India in contrast to the increasing contribution of these areas to the country's GDP. The service delivery departments of the urban local bodies (ULBs) are responsible for providing municipal services to urban residents. These department...

Purpose Public private partnerships (PPP) projects are characterised by highly leveraged capital structure. Lenders who provide the major portion of financing in the form of debt are more concerned with the downside risks and the measures to mitigate the risks. Lenders, thus, look into the risk factors and mitigating measures that could influence t...

India has one of the largest road networks in the world, aggregating around 3.3 km. Historically, the budgetary resources from the governments have been the major source of financing for infrastructure such as road projects in India. These investments have resulted in an increase in the length of the road network from 0.4 million km in 1950-51 to 3...

The Indian construction industry is characterised by challenges such as low productivity, lack of skilled labour, time and cost overruns etc. These are associated with considerable waste present in the construction sites. An important step towards elimination of waste, is to understand and measure the amount of waste actually present in Indian cons...

IntroductionEvolution of the BOT Framework in the Indian Road SectorRisk Assessment in Indian BOT RoadsRisk AllocationConclusions References

The systematic aggregation of information is crucial in decision making. If the information is derived from various sources, then the information fusion problem can be transformed into a multi-criteria decision making model. The information fusion problem, thus, is reduced to (a) determining the structure of the hierarchy to be used; (b) computing...

The Government of India has been promoting involvement of private entrepreneurs in development of road projects with a focus on overcoming the limitations of the traditional public procurement system. Participation of private entrepreneurs through Public–Private Partnership (PPP) route brings in additional capital and imparts techno-managerial effi...

Over the years, many private sector participation (PSP) models have been evolved for infrastructure procurement and the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model is one of the most common approaches used for the same. Private infrastructure projects under BOT arrangement have a complex risk profile and to a considerable extent, the success of any BOT proj...

Knowledge Management' (KM) is a promising business management concept that is gaining wide acceptance and is being implemented in various sectors to achieve improved level of performance and competence. Project management competence is one of the most significant criteria upon which the project performance is dependent on. Further, effective projec...

Conventional tools like CPM/PERT can plan the workflow sequences for a project. In order to meet the growing demand for completing the projects quickly, one has to manage the information flow. Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) is a powerful tool for modelling information flow and planning alternate sequences. An implementation procedure for modelli...

Knowledge Management (KM) is a concept that is gaining wide acceptance and is being implemented in various industries as an enabler of better decision-making. KM can be defined as the management of knowledge-related activities involving knowledge-workers in an organization to achieve the specified organizational goals and objectives. KM concepts ca...

Despite massive investment opportunities and the establishment of a framework for private sector participation in highway infrastructure development programmes in India, private investment (including foreign direct investment) in this sector is not up to the expected level. A high degree of risk exposure, disagreement on many risk issues among majo...

Most Indian construction contracts while specifying the role and responsibilities of parties in the contracts, also specify certain extraordinary powers to a particular person whose decisions are final and binding to both the parties. These decisions are administrative in nature and they are neither open to arbitration nor to any court of law. They...

Privatized infrastructure development is becoming increasingly common in India as a means for providing infrastructure services without directly impacting the sovereign finance. This paper focuses on some of the key issues related to the management of privatized infrastructure development in India such as various developmental and operational risks...

To address quality problems and associated costs, the construction industry must pursue and implement innovative quality management organization and techniques. The need for quality management in the construction industry is discussed in the initial sections. Customer satisfaction and continuous improvement, which are the fundamental goals of total...

To address quality problems and their associated costs, the construction industry must pursue and implement innovative quality-management organizations and techniques. This paper presents the findings of a research project conducted to identify attributes of effective quality-management systems in the construction industry. The objectives were met...

This paper utilizes a fuzzy set arithmetic, called fuzzy weighted average (FWA), to evaluate a group of bid tenders (or proposals). Three major criteria and several subcriteria were adopted in the bid proposal evaluation. A rating in terms of natural language was assigned to each criterion, which was then represented by a fuzzy set. The FWA operati...