New-age technologies key to faster infra development, amid economic gloom

Infrastructure is critical to a nation’s growth. The better the infrastructure, the higher the gross domestic product (GDP) growth of a country. For India to become a USD 5-trillion economy by 2024-25, enabling infrastructure is a crucial part of the process.

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The leaders of the country have targeted investments worth Rs 1.6-lakh crores in infrastructure, in the next five years, according to the Finance Ministry, earlier this year. These estimates were announced before the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the country. Realistically, these estimates may have to be revised. Nevertheless, the need to invest in infrastructure now, has a critical second purpose – to re-ignite the economy and the growth engine in the country.

Apart from such a huge investment, the country has to plug the gaps in the implementation of big infrastructure projects, which are, on many occasions, marred by cost overruns and massive delays. According to a report by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 355 infrastructure projects, each worth Rs 150 crores or more, have shown cost overruns of more than Rs 3.88 lakh crores, owing to project delays and other reasons. A country of more than 1.3 billion people can ill-afford such delays, when faster economic growth is the only option to pull people out of poverty, apart from employing its young workforce.

Also read our in-depth article on Coronavirus impact on real estate.

How emerging technologies can change the infra landscape

Technological intervention can help in overcoming such delays, with timely implementation of critical infra projects in railways, the road sector, airports and ports, among others. Projects of national importance, such as metro rail projects in various cities, dedicated freight corridors, expansion of airports in tier-2 cities and the Bullet Train project, can be expedited and executed with a predictable flow and speed, with the augmentation of integrated project controls through emerging technologies such as data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, etc.

Digitising project data

The monsoon season often results in deteriorating condition of roads, leading to many non-fatal and fatal accidents. Road conditions are far inferior in rural areas of the country, as compared to urban regions. The common man would have witnessed stretches of roads being repaired every year, wondering about the waste involved here. Without getting into a debate on the various root causes of the waste, it is clear that time delays and efficient usage of materials and manpower can definitely be improved with today’s available technologies and the country’s goal of being digitally empowered. For example, simply digitising project controls and enabling field personnel to mark progress with photos, would be a start. Digitising work inspection along with photos, could be a second step. Plugging all of this into a schedule and providing dashboards, can provide forward visibility into project completion. Integrating material and labour requirements to the schedule can help to optimise the procurement for contractors and also help in the monitoring of other issues like right usage of materials, productivity of labour onsite, etc.

Data analytics and machine learning/ artificial intelligence

Usually, big road contractors employ many subcontractors to execute different parts of the project. A collaborative digitised system that connects all of these stakeholders with a dashboard, can help to coordinate the work of subcontractors, resulting in strict maintenance of timelines. With the volume of data collected on all of these similar projects, application of data analytics and ML on this, can then be used to predict project completion in the short term and maintenance issues in the long term, based on the traffic plying on the system, etc.

Similarly, in heavy construction and more complex infrastructure projects such as building of a new bridge, port, berth or airport, creating a common data environment for all the project stakeholders to collaboratively share information, on a platform that digitally inter-connects the various stakeholders and data silos to predict project KPIs, can lead to massive savings of time and cost. Such a digitally-enabled, integrated project control platform that uses analytics, AI and ML to inter-connect various potential misalignments between engineering, procurement and construction, can very well streamline project work, avoiding delays and cost overruns.

Use of drones and geo-tagging

Use of drones to collect the progress monitoring information and connecting them to digital models for analysis, is another check on quality that is possible with today’s availability of technologies. The same data can be used in the operations and maintenance phase, similar to the roads example above.

Geo-tagging is another popular technology, which has the potential to change the infra landscape in the country. In geo-tagging, geographical identification like latitude and longitude is tagged to a location through satellite imagery. Currently, various government agencies are using this technique, to ascertain the development of infra projects across the country. To facilitate this, the central government is working with ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), which uses a software platform, ‘Bhuvan’ that enables users to get a 2D or 3D representation of the surface of the earth.

(The writer is the CEO and co-founder, Nadhi Information Technologies.)

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