Civil Construction

Civil construction is creation of various infrastructure like roads, highways, railways, buildings, water reservoirs, power plants, seaports, airports, bridges, sewer systems, tunnels, dams etc. In infrastructure development, civil construction comes immediately after design & land acquisition. It also involved with the maintenance of such infrastructure. Truly the world around us is shaped by civil construction, so it is not only building different infrastructure.

Major activities of civil construction

In planning, creation and maintenance of various infrastructures, it performs different tasks, major amongst them are:

1. Studying, evaluating and investigating the land /sites suitable for the possible creation of the infrastructure,

2. Liaising with governments, clients and other statutory bodies for land acquisition for the infrastructure,

3. Creating infrastructure plans, designs, approvals by the Government and other statutory authorities at the state & centre,

4. Creating cost estimates, budget and terms & conditions of contracts

5. Tendering and hire one suitable contractor for infrastructure project execution,

6. Award of contract and supervising and monitoring the construction activities of the infrastructure to ensure it matches the plan, design, specifications & schedule,

7. Adhering to the guidelines created by the government, local or statutory bodies and clients during construction and maintenance of an infrastructure.

Recent infrastructure boom in India

Undoubtedly India is to see a much better infrastructure creation in the next 5-10 years than in the past decade despite many problems and challenges abound. One area of the economy where there has been a burst of activity is infrastructure and this is due to conducive government policies. The government released the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), a detailed sector-by-sector study and compilation of infrastructure projects up to FY 25. The release of the report and the headline number of investments of Rs 102 lakh crore generated a lot of excitement. An erroneous impression was created in some quarters that these are all new investments and that more than Rs 100 lakh crore was going to be spent on new projects in the next five years. According to government of India, that’s clearly not the case as about 42% of the projects in the NIP are under implementation, which means civil construction work is already going on, another 19% is under a development stage i.e. construction work is about to start soon, while a big 31% is still in the conceptual stage.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline is a good, comprehensive and transparent document of intent and progress of infrastructure development in India, whereas in reality there have been many development in terms of policies and implementation. To list a few of them are:

1. Privatisation of many airports, at least six are already completed, construction of two green field airport at Delhi & Mumbai are about to commence.

2. Big changes in city gas distribution already initiated to distribute compressed natural gas to automobile owners and piped gas to households in a majority of cities in India.

3. Construction of Mumbai-Nagpur super expressway is going in full swing.

4. Indian Railways’ plan to allow private train operators on nearly 150 routes are at various stages of development. Also construction activities are in full blast for improvement of different tracks since last one and half year.

5. Civil construction work for water supply to thousands of villages across the country under Jal Jeevan Mission project already commenced.

Role of Civil construction in infrastructure development

Civil construction plays a lead role in any infrastructure development activity. Civil construction continues as a focal point right from studying, investigating land & its acquisition, preparation of project plan & construction drawing & project schedule, till construction and completion of an infrastructure. Civil construction takes care of completion of project as per time and budget. High cost and low productivity related issues are being addressed by civil construction. Outdated procedures for reports and communication, unexpected weather conditions, inconsistent or lack of an internet connection and disjointed teams working from multiple locations are primarily responsible for construction progress reporting. In reality, when field workers don’t have accurate communication and access to timely feedback from engineers and designers, the entire project is doomed to underperform or fail. Thus establishment of modern communication equipment for seamless communication and reporting, construction & productivity software, deployment of automated and efficient construction equipment are also ensured by civil construction in infrastructure project.