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Transforming the Urban Landscape

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The Real Estate industry has witnessed explosive growth over the past few

years. From churning out signal free expressways out of patchy highways to

building 'green' offices and intelligent homes that are high on the use of

technology, to postulating yet another kind of outsourcing-facility management;

this industry has seen it all. Being a late adopter of IT, they've done a

commendable catching up

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We're all intimidated and awestruck at the same time by the sheer size and

variety of commercial complexes and residential condominiums being built

nowadays. The magnanimity and quantity of real estate projects is a pointer to

the rising economic wealth of a nation. So, it doesn't come as a surprise that,

synonymous with the economic boom of this decade, we see a sudden spurt in

construction activity across the country. A lot of innovative commercial office

complexes, multi-leaved expressways, high-rise condominiums, ports, multi-level

automated parking lots and airports are seeing the light of the day.

Both technologies and human capital play a big role in ensuring that we see a

lot of innovation. Right from the stage a concept is mooted, to the actual

simulation of the model, to carrying out the construction of individual

components, to maintenance, repairs and interior décor; technologies play a

vital role. In fact, were it not for the availability of all algorithms and 3D

modeling software, a single bridge would take up to eight years to complete!

However, even with so much money being pumped into this sector, and looking

at how IT drives it, you'll be surprised that even 0.5-0.8% of the total

investment for IT equipment and implementation, is considered good enough. The

meagre investment in IT is partially understandable as bulk of the capital goes

into raw material procurement, labor costs and operations management that

require co-ordination amongst people spread across remote locations, uninhabited

and difficult terrains, and areas with minimal communications infrastructure.

Moreover, bulk of the time and resources are spent on projects that span over

quite a few years. Similarly, as these projects involve a massive amount of raw

material, spiraling costs of the projects are what the management is constantly

looking to control. However, with increasing investments and a more demanding

customer, things are set to change for the better. ASSOCHAM projects that the

real estate industry will grow at a whopping 30% in the next 10 years,

attracting an FDI of over USD 30 billion. Riding on such massive investments,

the domestic real estate sector that currently stands at 14 billion dollars is

expected to spiral to 102 billion dollars during the same period.

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IT@Hiranandani

Group

What role has IT played at Hiranandanis?



As far as Hiranandani is concerned it has been a two-way traffic. We

have provided good IT backup infrastructure place in various locations,

especially in Powai and Thane wherein we have provided a lot of space in

terms of highest level of quality of infrastructure for the IT industry.

Secondly, we have provided a lot of backup connectivity with the sites in

terms of large bandwidth and communications. On the other side IT's role at

Hiranandani's has been to greatly improve the intercommunication amongst

various departments and making project management easier.

Niranjan Hiranandani



Managing Director

Real estate is dominated by middlemen. How

can IT be used to create transparency between the customer and the

developer?



Customers can directly communicate to us through the our website. Also

in the real estate business, once a transaction has taken place, customers

interact with the developer directly on post-sale issues.

How can IT be used to alleviate problems

faced in the real estate business?



Increasingly, as we put projects across the country and the world, we

have to see that there is instantaneous information flow amongst project

sites, architects, designers, various departments of the company and the

developer. Also, redressal of customer grievances, reducing paperwork and

decreasing the time for clinching a deal are priorities.

IT/ITES industry has been in the forefront of consuming space in metros and

many of the second-tier cities. And with the disposable incomes of the suave,

urban executives increasing, aided in no insignificant terms by the availability

of affordable home loans, the demand for world-class luxury apartments has seen

an upward spiral. No longer are customers content only with the basic amenities

such as power backup, 24 hr water supply, round-the-clock security and the

availability of household services; they want value for money.

Move

Over Highways, it's the Age of Expressways
The state-of-the-art Delhi-Gurgaon

Expressway has nine flyovers, four underpasses and 2 foot-over bridges on a

27.7 kilometer stretch. DS Constructions commenced work in January 2003 and

the project envisaged conversion of the Delhi-Gurgaon Section of NH-8 into

an access controlled 6/8-lane highway with service lanes across certain

sections. Of course a lot of 3-D modeling software have been used for

designing the beams and the columns and other structures in this colossal

project, but the technologically intensive 32 lane toll plaza at the Delhi-Gurgaon

border is the one to make headlines.


The 32-lane toll plaza on

the Delhi-Gurgaon border is the second biggest in Asia and among the 5

largest in the world

IT knowledge and the will to implement

advanced solutions in the Construction industry is amongst the lowest for

any industry. In fact going by the current figures, most companies spend

only around 0.5-1% of the total capital on IT. This makes the job of an IT

head even more thankless. The biggest challenge vice president-IT, CR

Narayanan faced on joining was the lack of coherence amongst legacy systems.

This was aggravated by the lack of enthusiasm amongst employees in adopting

new technologies. As he rightly quips, 'Not long time back the only thing in

IT people knew was Tally, the accounts package.'

The stakes were right there in front of him.

One option was to integrate all the existing systems and bring them to a

level so that they would be usable across the organization or go for a

standard application. The company decided to implement SAP, as experience

suggested this to be the most successful ERP package in similar industries.

The entire implementation was over within a period of five months. As of

now, they've implemented the core modules that can be easily integrated in

future with SCM or CRM apps as when the business scales up.

C R Narayanan Vice

President - IT, D S Constructions

Although the company has a rich experience in

infrastructure development across India-expressways, ports, parking lots,

SEZs, etc; they find tolling to be a different baby altogether. As Narayanan

points out, 'The Delhi-Gurgaon expressway is very busy with more than five

hundred thousand vehicles using this expressway and over one hundred and

twenty thousand vehicles paying toll. Not that the company wasn't smart

enough to introduce the right technologies from the start, such as RFID

based 'Smart tags.' These small devices are meant to be stuck on to a

vehicle's windscreen and are instantly recognized from a distance of 20 mtrs

from the toll gate. At about 10 mtrs, the handshake takes place, ie the

system checks for available balance, verifies the authenticity of the

vehicle using the tag and so on. In case of fraud, the tag is invalidated

and the next time the vehicle tries to cross the plaza the boom bar at the

toll gate won't let the vehicle to pass through. Kapsch, the worldwide

leader in tolling systems, has provided the entire tolling infrastructure.

The system has been so designed as to record three shots of each vehicle

passing through the toll plazas. High-res cameras have been placed at

vantage points at each toll gate to record images of the driver, vehicle's

number plate and a whole body shot of the vehicle. The efficacy of the

system can be gauged from the fact that even though a vehicle might be

traveling at 80 kmph, the image rendering software can take pretty accurate

images. When asked about future projects by the company, Narayanan talked

about the ongoing automated car parking at KG Marg, Delhi as the next unique

development. The parking lot would have the capacity to handle 1600 cars

with only two operators, and even those could be dispensed with. It's

estimated to take around 24 months to complete.

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So, we see innovations in the form of automated power management with

emphasis on 'green' principles; automation in interior décor; remote management

of the essential aspects of building operations such as power control,

air-conditioning, servicing of equipment, security and so on. In addition to

commercial buildings and residential apartments, the same trend can be seen in

the construction of expressways. No longer are these condemned to be stretches

of unpredictable potholes or inadequate lighting or for that matter bumpy rides.

Round-the-clock illumination, innumerable signboards, state-of-the-art

technology in building roads and flyovers, and the latest in tolling systems,

all this promises to leap frog India to superpower status in 2020.

Remote facility management



We've seen outsourcing of manufacturing processes, software development,

BPOs and call centers. This has now been further extended to outsourcing of

legal processes, financial transaction processing and publishing and media. So

what's the next step? Outsourcing the management of high-end services related to

commercial and residential complexes. A lot of companies have entered this

segment and in the latter part of this article we've presented a case study on

one of those-Ngenox. They're managing the power management, air conditioning,

equipment repair and maintenance, and the routine facility services such as

accounts and administration, through custom-built software from their facility

in Gurgaon. Such kind of remote management has its own set of benefits. For one,

the management of the commercial or residential complex offloads a part of its

responsibility to an outside vendor, who may have an expertise in facility

management.



This way companies can focus on their core competency rather than spending time
attending to periodic control of equipment and attending to user queries. Remote

facility management is slowly but surely becoming a rave as managements of large

buildings prefer handing over this monotonous yet extremely critical task to

specialists. The latter on their part have developed the necessary

infrastructure to keep a continuous eye on their client's facility.

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Homes have just become smarter



Most of the times the term 'smart home' is confused with homes that are high

on electronic gadget usage or the ones that employ renewable energy resources

such as solar heaters or light panels and deploy water conservation techniques

such as rain water harvesting, allow more of natural light and employ

biodegradation of wastes. What is not known to the majority are the security and

power conservation potential of these homes. Information and communication

technologies have ensured round-the-clock access to information, while at

office, home or on the move. We work on our notebooks and PDAs, navigate our way

through GPS devices, access Internet on our mobile through GPRS, however, have

we ever thought of sparing some time from our hectic schedules to 'see' what's

happening in our safe havens-our homes, behind our backs? Yes, this is what

smart homes should allow. For roughly Rs 3.5 lakh for a basic 2-3 bedroom

apartment to upwards of Rs 25 lakhs for premium properties, you can get access

to technology that was unthinkable even five years back! You can have smart

cards that provide access to your home and even better, authenticate you before

you insert the key to open your door. And if someone tries to force through the

door, the system would send an emergency alert SMS on your mobile. Once you've

entered the premises, an intelligent system (based on your set preferences and

the time of the day) would control the amount and the intensity of light to be

switched on and in the rooms that you are most likely to frequent. Similarly,

electronic sensors could control the air-conditioning of the home based on the

number of family members present at a point in time. On your way back home you

could even configure the system to switch on the air conditioning and the geyser

or boiler to provide you with optimum cooling the moment you enter the house and

adequately warm water to have a nice, relaxing bath. And it's not as if there

won't be a system in place to alert you on any malfunction in the electrical

equipment. A fault at any stage, be it a short-circuit, leakage of current, gas,

etc could be picked up by electronic sensors and an emergency alarm raised in

the neighborhood, thus enabling a fix before the situation goes out of hand. The

owner too would immediately receive an SMS alert over his mobile device.



Remote Facility Management@Ngenox
A joint venture company of

Vipul Ltd and Laing O' Rourke plc, UK, Ngenox specializes in high-end

facility management of large commercial complexes in the UK

You've heard of business processes outsourcing

in manufacturing, publishing, banking and finance and legal processes. But

the kind of outsourcing we're going to talk about here is probably unheard

of-facility management. These days we see a lot of emphasis on employing

green technologies to save on power and reduce carbon footprints. This

essentially means deploying a lot of modern equipment for air-conditioning,

lighting, heating, communications, water purification, etc. Along with this

comes the additionally responsibility of service and maintenance of all

these equipment. The traditional building services & facility management

department in a complex might be good at house keeping, janitorial, pantry,

plumbing and electric repairs but they don't have the expertise to handle

such equipment. This is where companies like Ngenox step in. Based out of

Gurgaon, the company's Remote Facility Management (RFM) solutions entail

online management and advisory support for building services from a central

command center. Such a solution guarantees reduction in facility operations

costs and anytime, anywhere monitoring by a team of experts.

On Nergy dashboard you get

real time alerts on the status of different equipment and their service

requests

The equipment on the client site contains

electronic sensors that gather information on critical parameters across the

complete electro-mechanical infrastructure setup and send it via a secure

tunnel on the Internet to the company's facility in Gurgaon. This

information is fed into customized software to analyze the status of

equipment in the facility, energy consumption patterns, optimize energy

usage across the entire complex and carry out preventive maintenance.

Additional business benefits can be derived by looking at indicators to

improve asset life cycle cost and availability of resources to support

business needs of the enterprise and compliance to health and safety

standards, now and in the future.

The company's energy analyzer software, Nergy,

fetches data from real time archived database of various parameters for

analysis and presents reports on energy consumption patterns and the

performance of various electro-mechanical equipment across a facility. It's

built on Microsoft technologies and has a customized dashboard to provide a

one shot glance of all the critical parameters to the user. Moreover, you

get real time alerts the moment something goes amiss. The various features

of this software include: Energy auditing through various forms; Real time

customizable Energy Dash-Board; Single window environment; Segmentation of

energy information at a glance; Energy analysis and benchmarking; and Remote

diagnostics and updates.

On the Ecofice dashboard,

you can find statistics on greenhouse gas emissions from a particular

facility

For managing the routine facility operations

such as finance and accounts, administration, helpdesk facility, material

management and storage, etc, Ngenox has developed Facility Maax, a Computer

Aided Facility Management (CAFM) software. It is a user-friendly management

tool that helps you to manage & operate tactical & strategic aspects of

complex facility management functions. Similar to Nergy, this software too

has a customizable dashboard where all the important facility management

modules can be placed upfront for prompt redressal of service requests. The

key modules included in the software and their functionalities are:

Contract Module: SLAs, Contact

details, details of OEMs and service providers and other critical

information pertaining to all contracts are stored in this module.

Helpdesk Module : Generation of

service requests, work orders and job cards along with associated hazards

and safety instructions are taken care of.

Asset Module: The details of all

assets, equipment, preventive maintenance schedules and asset tracking are

achieved using this module.

Human Resource Module : Details of

employees like name and contact details along with their specialization and

skill levels are stored in this module. Routing of service requests based on

the same is done from here.

Finance Module : Facility related

budgeting, creation of invoices and recording of costs under various heads

is achieved through this module.

Reducing carbon emissions during construction

and subsequently during the operation and maintenance of a facility has not

only become mandatory through law but is also a part of the construction

industry's social responsibility and as an added incentive goes a long way

in saving on power and money. The company's third facility management

solution, Ecofice, is a carbon footprint monitoring software which allows

building owners and facility managers to analyse and predict Green House

Gases (GHG) emission impact from buildings and large facilities. It utilizes

data captured through user definable, web formats and real time information

through an online monitoring system for calculation of GHG. This would

indicate GHG emissions during construction and building operation services.

The inbuilt intelligence of the software can identify any deviation from

defined parameter values and alert the users of anomalies.

Ngenox currently manages buildings in the UK

and has plans to expand its services to the US, UAE and APAC region. The

centre and its business processes are ISO-9000, ISO-14000 and ISO-27000

certified by BSI, UK.

The same technology could be used to keep a continuous vigil over one's

premises to prevent any unauthorized access to premises and the security of

valuables inside. Nowadays you have plenty of video cameras, door phones,

intruder alarms available, through which you could monitor the entry and exit of

people across your premises. You have a lot of IP based cameras available that

can send images of people trying to enter the premises to your computer screens

and mobile devices via the Internet. You might as well block access to your

place by simply sending an SMS to the security system or even configure the time

slots when you're away, so that nobody can break open into your home. Such kind

of a security setup has a particularly important application for the security of

senior citizens and children. For example, you could place IP based surveillance

cameras at strategic locations in your house and keep a constant eye on their

activities. We could continue endlessly on how more and more technology can be

used in homes and offices but the core message is that technologies are changing

the way we live in our homes and the extent to which we can ensure its security.

Right now these technologies are being implemented in posh office complexes and

luxury apartments. However, with broadband connectivity available outside

metros, and with technologies getting cheaper and an increasing awareness

amongst the masses, time is not far when we'll see such solutions percolating

down to budget residential complexes.

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The communications conundrum



When we quizzed IT heads of some large construction companies on the

critical problems they face while implementing technology, the lack of

communication infrastructure in remote locations came out as the common grouse.

The real estate story is moving beyond metros to tier-2 & 3 cities where there

is plenty of space and at affordable prices. Even within these cities, bulk of

the action is on outskirts, where connectivity options are limited. Even worse

is the case with companies involved in the construction of expressways, SEZs,

ports and so on. GSM based mobile networks are virtually non-existent and unless

there is a semblance of habitation, telecom service providers are not willing to

lay extensive networks. DS Constructions has setup its own WAN at remote sites.

They use the RailTel network, taking bandwidth from the nearest railway

stations. The communications between the mast at the remote office and the

railway station takes place over radio links. The setup is a bit costly but

sturdy and worth using at such places.

Hindustan Construction Company too faces similar problems. But their

connectivity solutions depend on facilities available at a remote site. If

available, they use terrestrial options such as point to point lease-lines (VPN)

amongst different locations. However, if terrestrial options are completely

unavailable they go in for VSAT and radio frequency communication. In fact, at

some sites VSAT is used even for audio connectivity. Gammon India has a

centralized structure for data transfer and communications. Information from

remote sites as well as the head office is stored on the central server in the

datacenter, which is located in Mumbai. The company has deployed SiTE, an

integrated suite of business applications that provide end-to-end coverage of

the specific needs of engineering and construction companies. As 80 per cent of

its project sites are in remote areas, Gammon uses lease lines from the head

office to the service provider and from there they use VSAT for connectivity to

remote sites.

Taking on the Seas
Hindustan Construction

Company's ambitious project, the Bandra-Worli Sealink, has witnessed usage

of state-of-the-art technology



Hindustan Construction Company is an eighty-year-old company with a current

portfolio consists of 6 Hydel Project contracts, 4 Nuclear Project

contracts, 20 Transportation Project contracts and 4 Water Supply and

Irrigation Project contracts amongst many others. The company's CIO, Satish

Pendse attributes a large extent of HCC's success to IT. Right from

centralization of data to connectivity and remote-site monitoring.

Bandra-Worli Sealink is the

first bridge in the open sea, linking Bandra and other western suburbs

with Worli and downtown Mumbai

Innovation being a verb at HCC, the company

has initiated a new way of communicating with its employees both in the HO

as well as remote sites through “Digital Notice boards”, which were

implemented in March 2007. These notice boards are controlled from the HO.

Information about projects, messages from

Chairman, happenings in construction industry are put in audio-visual format

on these notice boards. HCC has data communication infrastructure which has

been created for SAP, email, Internet etc. The same infrastructure is also

leveraged for digital boards. The network, which remains less utilized at

night, is used to program news then. The news can be customized according to

various locations. For eg, in road sector projects the people involved would

be interested to know about updates in other road projects. It is controlled

through one PC at HO from where news is disseminated to other locations.

Its mammoth project Bandra-Worli Sealink (BWSL)

has witnessed use of breakthrough technology throughout including the much

talked about Asian Hercules. It is the first bridge in the open sea, linking

Bandra and other western suburbs with Worli and downtown Mumbai. Equipment

worth Rs. 170 crore has been utilized in this project. The main area of work

is in the sea. Both manpower and material needs to be supplied frequently

from land to sea where work is happening at different points. All the

transportation is facilitated through barges.

These 12 to 15 barges keep on supplying

material at various points on need basis. These barges are either at Bandra

end or Worli end. If the barges take longer time then the entire cycle time

gets affected. Inside the sea the work starts when the barges supply the

material to the specific point. If they do not follow proper path or get

delayed by an hour the work also gets delayed. To solve this issue, HCC

deployed imported GPS & GPRS based tracking devices on 5 of the barges. The

device keeps tracking GPS co-ordinates as to their positions alongwith time

and date. This information is updated on the intranet wherein it is mapped

on a Google type of map. It helps in knowing the exact status of a barge. If

at all, there is demand for a barge at any of the supply locations then the

central point can see which is the nearest barge and communicate to them to

go to the needed place thereby reducing the time. If some barge is stuck at

some point of time, then another could be sent. “Literal movement is visible

through these devices, as movement being critical to the overall cycle

timing. HCC started using it about a month back and after successful trial

has decided to deploy it in all barges”, states Mr. Pendse.

Another technology over which created much

hype was Asian Hercules, a crane to lift launching truss, which is used to

put blocks on the pillars, had been deployed. There are only eight such

cranes in the world. The company hired the crane from a Singapore-based

firm, Keppel and Smit, at the rate of approximately Rs. 12 crore for two

months. Apart from this, IP cameras were also deployed at BWSL site for

remote-site monitoring. Using Wi-Fi they were connected to project manager's

cabin and also to the head office using lease lines. Remote site monitoring

using IP cameras would also be implemented in other two projects.

How did you

centralize information to share it amongst various departments?



To centralize information and use it among various departments, HCC

deployed the SAP ERP solution in 2006. It is located at the central

server in head office, from where all sites and departments access

information. For document sharing, HCC uses a document management

system, again provided by SAP. It is currently being used for selected

departments and will later be extended to other departments. Document

sharing amongst project sites and the head office, and the document

repository is done through it.



How are HCC's remote sites connected to the main office?




HCC's remote sites are located in places like Kargil, Baramullah and
Assam. None of these sites provide quality connectivity options. The

company prefers terrestrial connectivity which is point to point

lease-lines (VPN) and then gives preference to VSAT and radio

communication. At some sites VSAT is used even for audio connectivity.

Do you outsource IT to handle any of

your projects?



In this era of outsourcing, HCC outsources a part of its IT

activities, which are held lowly in the IT value chain. Also, activities

which are strategically not important from IT perspective are

outsourced. Hardware management, facilities management and coding is

also outsourced. Core parts like systems architecture and functional

business process mapping are not outsourced.



Satish Pendse



CIO

Adeesh Sharma and Jasmine Desai

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