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Metro underground stretch - delayed by 6 months
Written By s_yajaman - 16 September, 2009
Bangalore Namma Metro Media Reports BMRC underground Transportation public transport Metro Rail Phase1
Read this today.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/25489/metro-underground-work-behind-schedule.html
The commencement of work pertaining to the underground stretch of the ‘Namma Metro’ project is six and a half months behind schedule, said N Sivasailam, managing director of Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters at a felicitation function organised to celebrate Engineers Day here, the BMRCL chief said, civil engineers with expertise in cutting edge technology is not forthcoming, due to which work on the underground stretch that was to have begun six-and-a-half months ago is delayed.
“Engineers will have to be sourced from abroad. We do not have the necessary manpower in India equipped with the nature of technology required for this,” Sivasailam added
So we find this out through a function?? And if this function had not happened how would we (the public) have known. And we are still to believe that the full network will be ready by Dec 2012?
Says something about the project management on this extremely critical project. Some of these things can be caught early on.
Srivathsa
COMMENTS
sri,
can you comment on how to go about using this project to develop local expertise on this. one would think that when the first metros were built even the west did not have experienced engineers. how did they learn? how do we develop local expertise so that future expansions and innovations become possible?
idontspam - 16 September, 2009 - 16:12
Let me venture an answer, We should go with the idea of contracting project managers from outside the country for the initial phase and supplement with our engineers to do most of the other work. Operators and workers can be trained. Supervisors can be from outside. I am surprised we have found out so late, wasnt this identified as a project risk from very early on?
blrsri - 16 September, 2009 - 17:29
Tunneling using TBM's have been recently been done extensively in DMRC
http://www.delhimetrorail.com/commuters/whats_new.html
The above link has detailed reports on tunneling and DMRC in general.
We just need to follow them..
MTG is the group which is involved in tunneling..
more details on wiki here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Tunneling_Group
We will need a similar team in BMRCL too..asap..AND its not totally true that we dont have expertise at all in India..namma kivili huaa illa!
s_yajaman - 16 September, 2009 - 17:54
Let me give you another example. There is this wonderful underpass coming up on 15th cross JP Nagar aka ORR. This was supposed to have been finished in Mar 2009 (started May 2008). Come Aug 2009 it looks somewhere 40-50% done. The engineer says that public needs to have patience!! Apparently the contractor had to be changed, there was a problem with BWSSB and then land acquisition.
There is such a thing as pre-work, which BBMP seems loath to do. BWSSB pipes don't crawl about. House compound walls don't magically increase. Each of these issues could have been foreseen and taken care off before wholesale digging started. But before anything else, they dug, blocked off roads, etc. Poor project management,
Coming to BMRCL - given that we are not pioneers in this field, the biggest bottleneck would not have been technology but the availability of skilled people.
a. Project Management skills - very important. How does one plan the work, coordinate the work, budgeting, tracking spending, etc. No rocket science. The current issue is more a prokect management issue than one of TBM
b. TBM operators. I think you don't find these too easily.
Can think of a few more - train drivers, depot managers (we will need these soon), station managers
Hire them 6-9 months before their part work starts. Yes it seems an extra cost. But compare that with 6 months of delay and the loss on that.
Send them to DMRC as underlings to get trained (theory and OJT) and qualified. You need to have the finished product by the time our work starts.
Last but not least, I personally think that IAS officers are not the best choice for these sort of projects. Yes, they are very intelligent, etc etc. but somehow the mindset still seems far from result and deadline oriented. It is almost as though 6-9 months delay is par for course.
Look at how BIAL executed the airport project.
Does this make sense?
Sri
Training of engineers on at IIT-Delhi for namma metro
vinod_shankar - 16 September, 2009 - 17:51
From the job posting on DMRC site... engineers are being trained for BMRC at IIT-Delhi. I saw this job posting some months ago.
vinod
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