EGIS IndiaINTERVIEWS

Mr. Sandeep Gulati MD Egis India

“The Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana that we are working on for Madhya Pradesh again presents a set of very unique challenges – wherein we are working on geotagging locations to working out best ways to get people loans. The scope of work is extremely wide and therefore extremely important for us to coordinate and meet timelines”

 

 

 

Brief our readers about Egis India.

Egis is a global engineering company present in over 100 countries and a global turnover of over a billion euros.  In India, we are present for nearly 25 years. Over the years, we have been privileged to be associated with some very important infrastructure projects in the country. Currently, we are working on 8 metro projects, 3 airports, 2 smart cities, port, AMRUT, PMAY, Chhatrapati Shivaji Memorial to name a few. We were a part of the recently completed Statue of Unity and Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EP1) as well. In India, we are offering end to end engineering, designing and project management solutions across infrastructure sectors. We are present in all the major cities in the country and have a team of around 2500 people.

What are the major issues faced by an EPC Companies in any infrastructure Projects?

We are not an EPC company but we work on Engineering & project management part of the business. In the last few years, infrastructure is seen as an integral part of economic growth and therefore a lot of bottlenecks in decision making that slowed down projects are being cleared. The government and the allied bodies are consciously working towards reducing delays by trying to eradicate the problems commonly faced earlier. So I don’t think there are any major issues faced by the sector now. Once the problems of Land Allocation and continuous/ steady funding are permanently tackled, I think the industry will grow faster and projects will have higher probability of completion on time.

Which are your landmark projects? Brief us with the challenges faced in executing those projects?

For me, every project we work on is a landmark project. However, if I need to analyze projects in terms of complexity and the challenges presented, I would like to list a few which have been extremely challenging and yet highly engaging to work on…
Chhatrapati Shivaji Memorial is one of the very unique projects we are working on. We are creating an island in the middle of the Arabian Sea and on top of it we are building the statue and a memorial. This is supposedly will be the tallest statue in the world on completion.
The second project that comes to my mind is the Mumbai Metroline 3. Here most of the metro is underground and the ground is marshy. It is extremely challenging for us to develop this without damaging the existing structures overhead.
The Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana that we are working on for Madhya Pradesh again presents a set of very unique challenges – wherein we are working on geotagging locations to working out best ways to get people loans. The scope of work is extremely wide and therefore extremely important for us to coordinate and meet timelines
We are working on the Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) where we are working on strengthening around 1000 dams in the country.
However, all our projects which comprise of 8 metro rail, 3 airports, 2 smart cities, plethora of roads and highway projects all have very unique and interesting stories which makes our role as project management and consultants extremely interesting and rewarding.
What is your expectation from the Government?

The government needs to offer 4S for the success of projects. First S is Stability. The government needs to ensure that the projects are given a stable environment for decision making and funds. The second S is Simplify. The processes and systems at the government’s end needs to be simplified and streamlined to minimize the process. The third S is Sustainability. This is to ensure that the decision making takes into consideration the sustainability factor. The projects need to be viable for a long duration of time by taking into consideration the long term view rather than quick fix. And last but not the least is Support. The government needs to see us as their partner in progress so that we can benefit from the strength of each other and together arrive at solutions which can be path breaking and cost effective.

Role of your company in support of the “Green Revolution?

Egis is a green building specialist. Our green building projects include:
Airports (Lucknow, Pune, Trichy), Urban Development (Global City Haryana, Raghunath Industrial Park), Railway Stations (Surat MMTH Gujarat, Udhana Railway Station, DMRC Phase 4) and Green Building (ASFB3, ASFB1, Thapar University Library Building, Introcean Commercial Interiors)
So as you can see, we are consciously trying to introduce the concept of maximum utilization of resources through optimal designs in almost every sector that we are working on. I am confident that over a period of time, we would be contributing quite substantially towards the green revolution and developing sustainable projects.