Last month, China opened the world’s longest cross-sea bridge. The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and links China’s eastern port city of Qingdao to the island of Huangdao.
As part of a major privatisation drive, India is all set to give away a record 7,300 kms of road building contracts worth around US $ 12 billion. This will make developers more interested in taking on projects. Further foreign investors will also be eager to invest. These factors would mean an increase in investment in the road sector by 40 per cent next year. Additionally, it will also allow the country to meet the target of building 20 kms by 2014, boosting the country’s economic growth.
Infrastructure construction and development company HCC, in a joint venture with Alstom is awarded a prestigious contract worth Rs. 1843 crore from THDC India (THDCIL) to construct Tehri Pumped Storage Plant in Tehri, Uttarakhand.
Integrated infrastructure enterprise Lanco Infratech’s (LITL) EPC division bagged its first international EPC order in Iraq for AKAZ Power Plant of capacity 2 x 125 MW in Al‐Anbar Province.
Punj Lloyd Group, a diversified global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) conglomerate, bags an EPC Nuclear Power contract from NPCIL worth Rs. 678 crore for critical nuclear piping work at four Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) of 700 MWe (Mega Watt electric) each.
Due to acute shortage of labour and owing to the rise in raw material prices, real estate developers are setting up prefabrication plants to increase the pace of construction and reduce project costs.
“New ways of creating complex geometry design that can transform an architect’s visionary ideas into a reality”, highlights Chris Macey, the group managing director at Wintech Group of Companies
The introduction of the EU-Exhaust Emission Regulation Stage III B poses a challenge for the construction machinery manufacturers. The expense is enormous. A great deal of investment and development capacity is necessary. For the buyers that means higher prices, in some cases greater efficiency on the building site. VDMA sees tighter regulation as ‘counter-productive’.
“Today Green buildings in India are being designed at an incremental cost of 6-8 per cent. Though the initial investment is slightly higher, the benefits experienced by these types of buildings are tremendous with substantial reduction in operational costs”, explains Md. Obaidullah, practicing architect and visiting faculty at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
“Creation of dense informal settlements within the city, impractical low cost housing at the exurbs or high-rising verticals are nothing but a manifestation of inevitable immigration of people from rural to urban areas. Thus, the time is right for Indian real estate to upscale itself for the coming decade in order to meet the challenges posed by this rapid urbanisation”
- Anuj Puri, Chairman & Country Head, Jones Lang LaSalle India
