Thursday, November 29, 2007

shortage of architects in India

via mint

challenges before construction industry

Construction in India is growing at about 30% a year; architects joining the industry by just about 10% .

There are 86 architecture schools in the country, from where 3,000-4,500 architects graduate every year. This is barely sufficient to meet the demand. What’s alarming, accordingto a survey conducted by E2e Business Solutions,a people management company,is that architectural firms in India are having a hard time stemming attrition. The survey estimated an attrition level of close to 50% in firms at the entry level, especially over the last three year.

Builders cashing in on three years of galloping real estate values are creating developments that have moved beyond stand-alone commercial blocks and residences—they
are converting vast swathes of land into townships.And that’s set off a race for
architects and fattened pay packets.and even with a doubling of salaries almost every
year, there just aren’t enough specialists going around.

“The growing pains of Indian architectural and consultancy firms are not new, as they have been experienced in many markets around the world in similar boom cycles. Our advice to the India construction world is not to be fooled by the hype and build for the long term,” said Jeffrey M. West, director, project management services,DTZ India.The rush for talent is so acute that firms are getting in architects from overseas—from locations ranging from nearby Singapore to far-off North America, if they can afford it.

We have tied up with Hok, a leading architect company in the US. This has helped create newer designs, in terms of space management in our forthcoming SEZ (special economic zone) venture in Chennai,”says S.S. Asokan, executive director, Shriram Properties Ltd.Others have joined the fray.Unitech Ltd, the country’s second largest real estate developer by market capitalization,behind DLF Ltd, has just assigned one of India’s most expensive commercial buildings that will come up in Mumbai.The complex will be designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Llp.,

Irfan Razack, chairman and managing director, Prestige Group, explains, “The challenge lies in trying to retain good talent. This may not be difficult for leading names, but smaller ones are busy training newcomers and this is an
ongoing process.
”As a result, smaller firms are facing a problem. Projects are getting delayed as they try to juggle training architects and hiring new ones almost as soon as the trained ones leave for bigger and better offers

.“Leading construction companies are even willing to pay Rs4 lakh per month to hold on to skilled professionals,” explains Subrata Kumar Ghosh, chief architect, Ansal Housing and Construction Ltd.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

EnviroMODE

check out the products














extract from news release


Thinking outside the box is something EnviroGLAS Products principal Tim Whaley does well. Nicknamed “Scrappy” by the Dallas Business Journal, the Texas entrepreneur was granted a U.S. patent in 2003 for developing the ‘method of making a terrazzo surface from recycled glass.’ The idea for combining the multi-colored crystals with epoxy resin to create recycled glass terrazzo came to him after he saw a news story in July 2002 about Plano, Texas’s overabundance of crushed recycled glass.

Two years and several awards later (including the Recycling Alliance of Texas’s 2003 “Closing the Loop Program” award and the Texas Environmental Excellence Award for small business in 2005) Whaley is at it again. This time it was the City of Dallas who asked him if he could do anything with a bunch of old toilets and commodes. The juices started flowing and soon EnviroMODE™ was born.

This brand new terrazzo surface is made from recycled tubs, sinks and toilets.


Recycled Toilets Find a Home

Green building consultant

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Increase in Cement Production by Increasing Dry Fly Ash Addition

Company details

Dalmia Cement (B) Ltd started cement production
operations in 1939 at Dalmiapuram.Then, the capacity of this Polysius plant was 250 TPD clinker production. Presently the total capacity is 4600 TPD of clinker production, due to continuous up gradation. How ever, still the old machinery of
1939 plant is in operation continuously.Dalmia cement manufactures a variety of cement Ordinary Portland cement (OPC), Portland Pozzolona Cement (PPC),OilWell Cement, Rapid Healing Cement etc.

Project Details

Fly ash is being used as a pozzolonic material for producing Portland Pozzolona Cement (PPC). This helps in material(Limestone, Clinker & Coke) conservation.
Previously out of the total fly ash addition, only 15% was dry fly ash. In the remaining wet flyash, the moisture content was as high as 25%. The higher moisture content has resulted in reduction of mill output.

In order to remove the moisture and increase the mill output the total heat requirement is about 14Mkcal/hr, out of which 11Mkcal is provided from the cooler vent and the remaining heat which is about 3Mkcal is provided by burning fuel.
The percentage dry fly ash addition was limited by the dry fly ash handling system.

Action taken

The plant team debated & brainstormed various aspects to identify and increase the utilization of fly ash.Various options including installing a new silo and a new fly ash handling system was one of the main aspects considered. How ever this scheme involved major capital investment & posed several layout related issues.The unit, how ever had some old raw meal silos which were a part of the earlier plant configuration. This silo did not have any role in the modernized unit & hence the plant team decided to use this idle capacity available for storing fly ash.
Using the pneumatic conveying system the dry fly ash from silo is transported to intermediate hopper. From the hopper the dry fly ash is fed to the mill feed chute in a controlled manner.
This resulted in increasing the dry fly ash addition from 15 to
40%, resulting in both electrical and thermal energy savings.

Results of the project

1.Electrical power savings of about 3,60,000 kWh,equivalent to a monetary saving of Rs 1.5 million
2.Coal saving of about 793 tons, amounting to about Rs 2.84 million
3.Total saving of Rs 4.34 million per annum
4.Reduction in fugitive emissions.

via Green business center

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth















Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur.

Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

How Design Management Helps Companies

Everything designed, be it a product, identity, interface, architecture or communication, has one thing in common—it has to be managed.

Design management is the way to enhance collaboration and synergy between “design” and “business”.

In the UK, companies that are “effective users of design” outperformed the stock market by 200% over the last decade. —British Design Council, Design Index

Design management is the art and science of empowering design, for social, economic
and environmental benefit.


To use design effectively, companies apply design management methods and processes which include:

> Research and observation
> Envision future scenarios
> Innovation planning
> Create design strategy
> Build corporate reputation
> Visualization and modeling
> Design infrastructure
> Design organizations
> Design sourcing
> Financial resources
> Design process
> Creativity management

Incollaboration with DesignSingapore Council,DMI-theDesignManagement Institute ,will
host an exceptional conference on November28-29,2007 in Singapore.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Venture capital investment in clean technologies companies

Chennai metro rail project

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Government today announced that it would implement the metro rail project, envisaged to ease traffic congestion in the metropolis, at an estimated cost of Rs 9,757 crore.

Of the total 46.5 km stretch, about 20 km would be underground and the remaining line would be elevated, the release said.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Keys to Marketing Green Building

By Jerry Yudelson,, P.E., MBA, LEED AP, Yudelson Assocs., Tucson, Ariz. -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 5/1/2007

Engineering firms are beginning to realize that the green building revolution is here to stay and that they should join in. In 2006, LEED-registered projects increased 50% over the previous year, and LEED-certified projects increased nearly 70%, which suggests that more firms are accumulating green building expertise with each passing year. My own projection of green building growth points to a cumulative total of 24,000 LEED-NC registered projects by the end of 2012—a six-fold increase in just six years.

The keys
There is no single competitive response to the growing green building market that is right for every design firm, because much has to do with the 4 Cs—the clarity of the company's strategic vision, the firm's capability to execute its vision, the capital available for marketing and sustainability initiatives and the character of the principals—their willingness to “walk the talk” of green engineering. Nevertheless, a conscious choice among strategies, and a clear focus on one dominant approach, is vastly preferable to having none or just improving responses to opportunities. This series describes seven good ideas for developing a marketing strategy.


The seven keys to marketing green building are a combination of two familiar principles of marketing, as shown in the STP formula (p. 30): Segment your market, target key segments and position your company, and then, use the building blocks of competitive strategy—differentiation, cost and focus—to achieve success


The whole arcticle can be found here

Thursday, November 1, 2007

construction boom in India and Middle east

Extract from - Knowledge@wharton

"The turnover of all construction companies in India last year was around $15 billion. This year it may rise to $20 billion. But a total of $50 billion is [slated] to be spent on construction every year in India, which requires a capability of 2.5 times the sector's size."

India's planned infrastructure outlay over the next five years has been revised upward by various government authorities, from $150 billion to almost $475 billion. The country currently spends around $21 billion a year on infrastructure, compared to China's $150 billion.

Consider the various construction firms:

1. Punj Lloyd, one of the country's largest engineering, procurement and Construction (EPC) companies, earned 72% more income for the quarter ended June 2007, at Rs1, 4179.5 million ($359.43 million). Yet, its order backlog rose to Rs 152,250 million ($3,859.32 million).
2. Larsen & Toubro, one of Asia's largest vertically integrated engineering and construction companies, announced that gross sales rose 47% in the quarter ended September 2007 to Rs 55.74 billion ($1.41 billion), and yet its order backlog rose to a record Rs 400 billion ($10.14 billion).
3. At Wartsila India, which had an order book of one times sales in 2003, the backlogs have risen to almost three times that amount.
4. Patel Engineering, which expects to close the current year with sales of Rs 16,000 million ($405.58 million) has an order book of Rs 54,000 million ($1.37 billion).


Rupen Patel, managing director of Patel Engineering, says that alone, the planned roll-out of highways by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) over the course of the next 10 years exceeds the total turnover of all construction companies in India today.

"Construction companies have never seen such a boom in India. Even if [they all] did only road projects and left all work on building airports and power plants aside, NHAI still has more work to offer than firms can take.”


Almost every Indian company -- big or small -- that has some expertise in
Construction finds itself flooded with orders that are nearly three to four times its annual sales. The size and pace of orders could threaten the development of the country's already creaking and short-supplied infrastructure. "Execution is the biggest issue in India today, especially on time and within budget," says Pratyush Kumar, president and chief executive officer of GE Infrastructure, India.

Foreign firms might view the huge gap between the sector's existing capabilities and those required as an opportunity to make their mark in India. Indeed, the infrastructure spending boom in India has benefited a bevy of overseas companies, such as Dongfang Electric Corporation in China and Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Company in Korea, who are filling orders for turbines used to generate power. A number of leading global construction companies, such as Australia's Leighton Holdings and Italian-Thai Development Public Company, have also entered India.

CHALLENGES :-

1. Skilled-labor Shortage

It's difficult to fathom the words "talent shortage" in a country of a billion people that's getting younger over time. But speak to any infrastructure builder, and you hear anecdotes about shortages of trained fitters, welders, masons and plumbers. "Whether we will get the people necessary to support the growth
is the real challenge. Both engineering and blue-collared skilled workers are in short supply. Fitters and welders are not available in the numbers you want. The industry also needs mechanical engineers who have worked in capital goods industries and would like to pursue a career [in that sector] rather than Switch into software," says Allen Antao, vice president, process equipment, at Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company.

2. Equipment shortage

At the lower end of the skills chain, companies are responding to labor shortages by automating parts of the production process, which makes them less susceptible to shortages of vocational staff. As a result of this, and partly in response to customer demand for faster build-outs, construction companies that once relied on an army of cheap labor now employ a variety of equipment, from low-end concrete mixers to goods elevators and tipper trucks for transporting materials, tower cranes, tunnel-boring machines, robotic drills and hydraulic excavators.

Patel, for instance, has spent Rs 600 million to Rs 800 million ($ 20.28 million) so far to build an equipment bank, while IVRCL estimates it has invested between Rs 2,500 million to Rs 2,750 million ($69.71 million) in equipment so far.

The boom in building activity in Asia and the Middle East has not only increased demand for such building equipment but also resulted in a rise in lease rentals and forced many companies to own equipment. This has made the operations of such companies far more capital intensive.


While funds can be raised, companies have also been rethinking their work methods and the building materials they use. Many companies now employ ready-mix concrete rather than prepare a cement and sand mixture on site. This helps speed up production since ready-made cement can be poured faster and in a uniform consistency to lay out foundations and pillars. Companies have also started employing prefabricated materials -- like brick wall sections or Siporex blocks for ceilings -- to help speed things up while using less manual labor. "India may soon move to [another] stage of mechanization, where developers use completely knock-down assembly components to build projects."
In one of my regular visits to the atelier A+D blog ,i was amused to find an article written by Michelle Linden in a online magazine called art signal .Hope to see more of your ideas!