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India has been building highways and expressways in record pace—faster than ever before and will be open for travelers soon! Construction Week online Magazine spoke with Manoj Kumar, Member (projects)-National Highways Authority of India (NHAI); ZA Sultani, GM (tech), NHAI; Arvind Patel, MD, Patel Infrastructure; and Vinay Shah, Sr VP-Patel Infrastructure, about the world record, also the upskilling, required to build state-of-the-art infrastructure. They focused the Delhi-Vadodara-Mumbai expressway project, along with other memorable ones under construction.
In February 2021, India set the first-of-its-kind world record a constructed single lane stretch of 25.54 km (15.87 miles) in 18 hours. Around the same time, NHAI and Patel Infrastructure created another world record for laying the highest quantity of concrete on a four-lane highway in 24 hours. The feat made it to the India Book of Records and Golden Book of World Records. This was followed by another record In March/April when contractors constructed a 2.5 km (1.5-mi) 4-lane concrete road within 24 hours. Another mention of the Guinness Book of World Records—records that don’t come easily.
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India’s massive economic growth over the last decade, recent pandemic excepted, has triggered a huge upswing in vehicle ownership. At the same time, the Indian Government has been managing a massive increase in road construction, boosting the country’s network. Building new road links has been crucial to cutting the country’s chronic urban congestion and also improving transport between the major cities and industrial centers, further assisting the Indian economy. As projects have gotten more ambitious, contractors have been stretching themselves to keep up with the government’s demands for world-class highways and expressways.
Delhi-Vadodara Expressway under construction
Delhi-Vadodara Expressway
The Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway in the State of Gujarat in the west of India is being built with 8 lanes—4 lanes in each direction—and will improve transport to and from the city of Mumbai, one of India’s most important economic centers for trade and industry. It will form part of the route connecting the capital of Delhi with Mumbai. With multiple projects under construction in various parts of the country, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) and NHAI have have had to search wide to find the right contractors who have the apt skills and the necessary equipment to produce such record concrete pavements. In the last couple of years, technology and innovation have played a key role in delivering an excellent product.
Manoj Kumar said, “Our achievements today did not happen overnight. It took years for us to get our systems to sync and thankfully, that time is now. Be it supply, design, or the execution capability, our people are doing much to be sought after. But few even realize that they have crossed the set milestone and have achieved new benchmarks.”
Arvind Patel is pleased their dream of producing a prestigious project like the Delhi-Vadodara expressway has come true. In his words, “Long ago, I had seen the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and had always wanted to execute a project on such a scale. We met all the stringent parameters that NHAI laid down for the contractor, and have not failed them in any way.”
The company has remained in good stead due to its policy of buying equipment rather than relying on rental ones. With more than 1300 equipments of various kinds, the company is well-equipped to take on projects of any kind, and has had scores of vehicles and equipment of every possible size at the site.
The engineering firm and the contractor decided to build the stretch using pavement quality concrete (PQC). A high percentage of large transport trucks expected to use the route, so PQC surfacing could cope well due to:
• Heavy traffic load
• Comparatively high ambient daytime temperatures in daytime
• Long working life
• Low maintenance requirements
• No risk of rutting
Explaining the technicalities of the project, Vinay Shah said, “We secured two adjacent packages of 63km (39 miles) of 8-lane expressway in 2018. Then, we procured one the largest paver—18.75 m (20.5 yards) wide PQC paver—to lay entire width of one side expressway in a single pass … the world’s largest PQC paver! However, in order to achieve the world record, we had to have several calculations and work backwards to understand whether our equipment had the wherewithal to create history. This involved checking on the batching plants production, the paver’s capability, the required manpower, etc.”
Ramesh Palagiri, MD & CEO, Wirtgen India, said, “The record was established with Wirtgen’s flagship paver, the SP 1600 Slipform Paver—which is the world’s largest concrete paver that has been in operation in India for 20 years. [It has been instrumental in] building several highways and projects like the Yamuna expressway, the Eastern Peripheral expressway and, more recently, the Samruddhi expressway.”
Speaking about the numerous equipment from his company used in the project, Deepak Shetty, CEO and MD-JCB India, said, “We are delighted to be a part of this record-breaking achievement with our “Made-in-India” machines. It is satisfying to us to know that our excavators, telehandlers, wheeled loaders, gensets, and backhoe loaders were used extensively in this project. Today, JCB machines are connected digitally through Livelink—our advanced Telematics technology that enables customers to monitor the performance of their equipment at all times.”
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
NHAI has allowed the concessionaires to use new technologies in highway and expressway construction. Kumar said, “Under EPC and PPP, they are welcome to bring in their durable technology. Of course, there is scope for innovation and optimization in structures and their designs. We are working with the concessionaires to make this happen.”
PACE OF CONSTRUCTION
Trucks on hand at plant to transport the concrete to site
The government was highly ambitious as far as infrastructure development is concerned. However, plans to set the record in 2020 were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For the target to be reached, several key factors had to planned:
• Ensuring sufficient concrete production capabilities
• Planning for 75% of maximum capacity from the 6 batching plants producing PQC would be sufficient
• 20-hour supply period
• Plants running realistic 75% of output able to produce the PQC needed
• Materials supplies to the production facilities, then to the construction site
In early April, Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister-MoRTH said that the pace of highways construction has reached a record 37km (23 miles) per day in 2020-21. Accelerated road construction was the only solution. At the chosen site, the construction workers prepared the bed for the section up to DLC level well in advance to allow the laying of PQC for the record attempt. Meanwhile, discussions were also held with technical teams from the equipment suppliers; and planning was carried out by Patel Infrastructure’s procurement team to ensure that the necessary raw materials including cement, fly ash, dowel bars and tie bars were readily prepared.
Shah said, “Accelerated only implies that all activities continue parallelly on projects. Hence, for this project, we have deployed separate concrete batching plants for structure work and DLC, and two huge concrete batching plants. In order to quicken the pace, we have gone in for precast box culverts instead of cast-in-situ at site to reduce construction time. We have also raised our profile by 300 mm (11.8 inches) to accommodate the underpasses and approach routes. Then there’s elimination of manual work so as to quicken the pace of construction.”
LAND ACQUISITION
It is common knowledge that land acquisition has been the biggest hurdle in the construction of roads and highways. Over the last few years, MoRTH and NHAI have developed a scheme that allowed them to:
—Offer the landowners a fair price
—Pay them online
—Greatly improved transparency
—Allowed them to quickly acquire land
PLANNING
The Authority had to acquire 15,000 hectares (37,065.8 acres) of land for the Delhi-Mumbai expressway alone. Kumar said, “We have acquired about 90% of the land across the 5 states where the expressway passes. In any project, planning at the outset is what matters. Be it in terms of technology, transferring of revenue records, matching the engineering designs, or procurement, they need to be ironed out early on as they have led to delays in the past. It is probably the reason we are confident about delivering this expressway within 4 years of the planning stage.”
EARLY, FIRM DECISIONS
One of the reasons why NHAI has been successful with completing projects on time is its process of strong early decisions. ZA Sultani said, “We do not deviate from DPRs that have been approved. Any issue that arises after that is resolved in a time-bound manner.”
Patel agreed and said that working with the Authority is now very easy. “Earlier, there was much bureaucracy, getting approvals was a painstaking process, but today they function very fast, so it’s not surprising that there are so many projects happening everywhere across the country.”
SUPERIOR QUALITY
The Authority has left no stone unturned to ensure quality across its processes—from checking the quality of materials to the site—it has also appointed a third-party agency to double check. Kumar says, “The pre-cast elements we have introduced is our way of assured quality. A factory environment offers accuracy and this means the goods arriving at the site have already been approved. For that matter, so superior is the quality that we have outsourced one drain to a Japanese company who are executing it at their factory before installing it at site.”
OTHERS TO JOIN IN
NHAI has an extensive program for building expressways and Greenfield corridors. It is committed to deliver several of them by 2025. The total length of expressways is 7800 km (4,846.7 miles) and we have already awarded 3100 km (1,926.25 miles). Significant ones where land has been acquired and work has begun:
• Chennai-Bangalore expressway
• Delhi-Amritsar-Katra
• Ahemdabad-Dholera
• Bhatinda to Jamnagar (1200km)
• Raipur to Visakhapatnam (400km) … Access-controlled roads (non-expressways)
Also working on the Delhi-Mumbai expressway, Sanjay Londhe, Director & CEO (projects)–Ashoka Buildcon, said, “We have and are working on other expressway projects:
• Using pond ash for constructing highways
• Records have been broken
• Executed 13,000 tons of 3km (1.85 miles) of 3-lane highway in one day
• Broken several records over the years:
—Launching segmental bridge construction
• Adopting piling on highways”
Pertaining to building concrete roads, Nalin Gupta, MD, JKumar Infraprojects, said “The recent advancements in the concrete paving technology have led to better transportation facilities. There is a disadvantage of concrete pavements, which is high initial cost, however they are more durable in the long run. Concrete pavements are generally used in almost all the developed countries. It is very important to find ways and techniques so that we can do concrete paving more effectively and efficiently. Some of the new modern techniques which are currently being used are: Laser screed technology; slip form pavement; and vacuum dewatering pavement technology.”
For the New Construction online Magazine article, please go to: www.constructionweekonline.in/business/17550-expressions-of-progress
For the World Highways online Magazine article titled “, please go to: www.worldhighways.com/wh4/wh10/feature/indias-new-expressway-link
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Since 2006, the India Book of Records has been the undisputed curator and the custodian of Indian Records Stepping into the 15th year of its publication, it is the only book of records, which has been published consistently over these years with an illustrious team of Chief Editors from record books of seven nations (Vietnam, Malaysia, USA, Nepal, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Thailand) as its board members. The people of India Book of Records adhere to the policy of Inclusiveness – All is One.