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Transforming the Urban Landscape
Saturday, April 05, 2008
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
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.
| IT@Hiranandani
Group |
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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.
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| 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. |
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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