Paper No.
668
Urgent need to introduce innovative and sweeping
changes in the construction of bridges in India
for accelerated progress
R.K. Jaigopal1
1. INTRODUCTION
General public of the country desires completion
of projects atleast in par with developing countries.
Many instances can be seen where 2 km length of
bridges have taken more than 6-7 years to complete.
Speed of construction is key to completion of
project much ahead of its projected completion.
All sub-components of project implementation
need to be further dissected down, so that, every
sub-divided part needs to be assessed for its early
completion. Whenever public funds are involved
like in bridge construction, the present trend of
extended completion periods due to any reason
put forth cannot be accepted by general public.
It will go totally against public opinion, in case it
is called for. All owner agencies from urban local
bodies to state governments to union government
are prescribing the period of completion on a
standard formats like 18 months, 24 months etc
without actually working out the time period
required to complete the project. Often time period
is prescribed in routine manner needing many
extensions of time limits. The networking of roads
in the country is expanding rapidly with addition
of Sagarmala connectivity’s to ports, expressways,
dedicated freight corridors in railways, converting
state highways to national highways to name a
few. Country cannot afford to cope up with present
progress in the current pace of construction of
projects specially the bridges. Atleast for the
sake of comparison of projects, when we see
our neighbouring countries, specially east Asian
countries the pace of construction is faster by more
1
Managing Director, Concrete Structural Forensic Consultant, Bangaluru, E-mail: csfc@rediffmail.com
Journal of the indian Roads Congress, July - September, 2017 71
than 100 times and quality of construction much
better in their countries.
As the pace of construction activity has increased,
various systems associated with the construction
activity need to be further sharp focused for
achieving better results. All the proposed and
to be introduced activities are already available
in the country like required technical codes are
available for project implementation, trained
personnel to carry out such jobs are available,
machineries required are also available. There is
no component of work needing import, as such
all equipment available within the country, even
SPMTS i.e. Self Propelled Modular Transporters,
which are hydraulically driven and can carry
one full bridge span of 25 m to 35 m weighing
600 MT to 1000 MT is being manufactured near
Delhi under ‘Make in India Programme’. When all
such advanced modern equipments, systems are
available, the old tendering system, geotechnical
investigation methods, foundation execution
methods, foundation testing methods, transport
of completed precise bridge components need
urgent and immediate modernisation with respect
to present days requirements for ultra high speed
completion of projects.
With Indian Roads Congress taking giant steps
in modernising codes in par with best in the
world, availability of state of the art construction
equipment, highly experienced Engineers at
disposal for implementation of the projects, it has
become imperative for the authorities to streamline
the construction procedures from old, time