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Vol. V | Issue 58 | October 2021
W W W. M E T R O R A I L N E W S . I N
M ME ET TR RO RAIL NEWS O RAIL NEWS ISSN 2582-2330 / Vol. V / Issue 58 / Monthly / October 2021
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With Deep Focus On Metro,Railway, HSR, PRTS & Allied Industries
Narendra Shah Managing Editor
Traffic congestion and parking difficulties, longer periods of commuting, public transport inadequacy, difficulty for non-motorized transport, loss of public space, high infrastructure maintenance cost, environmental impacts and energy consumptions, accidents and safety are some of the major challenges of urban transport system today.
Although these issues continue to be the major concern of people dwelling in cities, it is imperative to mention that cities and towns play a vital role in promoting economic growth and prosperity, especially in a developing country like India. In spite of the fact that less than one-third of the country's population lives in towns and cities in India, these areas generate more than two-thirds of the nation's income and account for 90% of government revenues.
It is also important to highlight that the country is urbanising. The urban population in India is growing at an average rate of around 3% per year. Though, the average rate of growth of the urban population is not expected to change significantly during the next ten years or so, assuming a decadal increase of around 32%, India's urban population is expected to increase from 377 million in 2011 to 500 million by 2021.
In terms of percentage of total population, the urban population has gone
up from 17% in 1951 to 31.8% in 2011 and is expected to increase up to around 35% by the end of the year 2021. In coming years, as India would become more and more urbanized, urban areas will play a critical role in sustaining high rates of economic growth. But, it should not be forgotten that economic growth momentum can be sustained if and only if cities function efficiently, its resources are optimally utilized to maximize the cities' contribution to national income.
The effectiveness of transport systems in cities today is one of the important indicators of efficiency of cities which is all about the efficacy with which people and goods are moved throughout the city. A poor transport systems stifle economic growth and development, and the net effect may be a loss of competitiveness in both domestic as well as international markets. Although Indian cities have lower vehicle ownership rate, number of vehicles per capita, than their counterparts in developed countries, it suffers from worse congestion, delay, pollution, and accidents than cities in the industrialized world. This truly is an alarming figure for the government and policymakers thriving hard to make a future centric transport system in the country effectively addressing these issues.
It gives me pleasure to introduce you October issue of the magazine, focusing on some of the core topics discussed above. Future & importance of MRTS, white paper on RRTS, Ridership in metros will give you insightful thoughts about smart transport system being developed in the country.
I hope you all keep yourself safe and protected.
I wish you a happy reading.
Narendra Shah
Managing Editor Metro Rail News (A Symbroj Media Publication) E-mail: editor@metrorailnews.in
Index
EDITOR'S NOTE
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
COVER STORY
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Mr. Rama Raju
Founder & CEO Envision Enterprise Solution
PROJECT OF THE MONTH
FEATURED COMPANY
CASE STUDY
FEATURED STORY
NEW DEVELOPMENT
ARTICLE
APPOINMENT
TENDER AWARDED
JOBS
EVENTS
LIVE TENDERS
16
Changing the Way People Commute : Regional Rapid Rail
Transport: Global Scenario - Need of alternative mode of transportation
Transport in modern era has become an important subject and is at the heart of global financial and development institutions as one of the ways to fight poverty and boost shared prosperity. With the right policies and resources, transport has the power to propel economies forward, help take on climate change, and connect people to essential services like health care or education. The COVID-19 crisis for e.g has underscored the importance of transport. Over the last one or two years, the sector has been instrumental in taking essential workers to their jobs, keeping the economy afloat, and kick starting global vaccines distribution. But the current situation has also exposed the vulnerabilities of the transport industry, with operators around the world facing severe disruptions and massive revenue losses.
As the world emerges from the pandemic, rethinking mobility is now a priority to enhance countries’ resilience and create the conditions for a greener, more inclusive recovery.
Reducing the climate impact of transport is among the most urgent priorities. The sector contributes 23% of global energyrelated greenhouse gas emissions—a figure that could reach over 30% within the next decade under a business-as-usual scenario. Ambitious solutions are needed to lower the carbon footprint of existing and new transport systems. The most significant opportunities to move the sector toward climate sustainability include shifting policies and investments in the design of public transport networks, vehicle efficiency, demand management, regional development, and land use.
Road safety is another critical challenge the transport sector must address. Road crashes claim over 1.35 million lives every year, 93% of them in developing countries. An additional 50 million road users are seriously injured annually. Road fatalities and injuries reduce the GDP of low and middle-income countries by an estimated 1% to 5%. Halving traffic fatalities could add 22% to selected countries’ per capita GDP over two decades. Sustainable transport also means inclusive transport, and the sector has a long way to go when it comes to promoting equitable access. Around the world, one billion people still live more than 2km away from an all-weather road. One in six women in the world do not look for jobs out of fear of harassment in transit. Expanding sustainable transport options, especially in lowincome or vulnerable communities, will be a powerful way for countries to bolster human development and social inclusion. In rural Morocco, the enrollment of girls in primary school increased from 17% to 54% when their access to roads improved. In Lima, an additional 100,000 jobs will be available to people living in the poorest districts thanks to the introduction of a new metro line.
In addition to human development outcomes, transport investment brings considerable economic returns. A transition to sustainable mobility could deliver savings of US$70 trillion by 2050, when considering full transport costs, including vehicles, fuel, operational expenses, and losses due to congestion. Better access to roads could help Africa become self-sufficient in food and create a regional food market worth $1 trillion by 2030.
Modern and alternative mode of transportation in India: Need & Importance
An efficient urban transport system matters to India on many counts. An efficient urban transport is also critical for raising economic productivity and consequently making Indian enterprise competitive. Admittedly, Mass Rapid Transportation systems (MRTS) is one of the modes of urban mobility, its importance, especially when cities are seen as a growth node of an economic region rises significantly as inclusive growth is determined not only by the state of transport system within a city limit, but its connectivity to its periphery, rather is entire
Metro Rail News's Managing Editor Mr. Narendra Shah conducts one 2 one interview session with Mr. Rama Raju, Founder & CEO of Envision enterprise Solution, a leading solution provider for Metro Rail, Ports, Terminals, and logistics industries. Under his dynamic leadership, Envision has built strong clientele & strategic partnerships worldwide.
He is an avid reader known for his thought leadership out of box thinking and believes that technology transformation helps organizations grow exponentially.
Narendra Shah (N.S) : Thank you for being with us, we would like to know your journey so far as Founder and CEO of Envision?
Rama Raju (R.R) : Thank you Narendra, it is my pleasure to be with you on this one-to-one interview session. Metro Rail is doing a tremendous activity for the Indian Metro rail industry connecting the industry leaders and futuristic ideas. Here the role and the contribution of Metro news is valuable.
I am one of the founders and CEO of Envision, we started our journey in 2004. Since the beginning, we believe that we wanted to improve the enterprise’s operational efficiency through technology.
Keeping this in mind we always selected large enterprises where we see a potential opportunities to bring collaboration and visibility so that improvement and efficiency can be achieved through technology.
We started as 10 people team in 2004, currently we are 340+ people at this point of time even though we are a small boutique organization, having a customer base in 34 countries. We work with most of the Indian System Integrator as a niche delivery partner. We have a partner ecosystem in 20 countries and own offices in 6 countries.
It’s an exciting journey, we are thankful to our clients for the trust they had in us, we are thankful to the team for their commitment and dedication.
N.S : It’s truly had been inspirational. What suggestions would you like to give young entrepreneurs aiming to do something big in the solutions industry?
R.R : Narendra, this is a very tricky question, so what is happening is, business models are changing, the definition of entrepreneurship is also changing, and there is a lot of investment by entrepreneurs to grow fast, scale up faster or fail fast.
It is a new thought process, we belong to a slightly older thought process or a different school. What I believe in that whatever we do we should be very consistent and second is that we should always be with the team and customers because they are the one who helps us shape up the organization that is the prime importance.
Sometimes things get late, it doesn’t mean that we don’t get deserved fruits we will certainly get it, but we should not take shortcuts at any point of time in any aspect. Beyond that when we are growing we should genuinely invest in our teams because entrepreneurship is not a solo journey we grow together as a team, it is a collaborative effort.
N.S : How does Envision Enterprise boast of being superior to other service providers in segments it is dealing, in when the exact domains are being facilitated by several other service providers in a market with cutting edge competition?
R.R : I see some exaggeration, but what I feel is that we have a philosophy behind that at Envision, we want to make our life easy for our team and our customers. It is possible only when we focus on the same vertical again and again, so we opted an enterprise asset management especially to metro rail, oil and gas to seaports and terminals, Logistic and Supply chain domains.
The advantage with us is we continuously improve from each engagement in the process we deliver more value to the money for the customer. We constantly upgrade ourselves and upgrade our customers to the next level of business model.
That way, we are very fortunate, we remain to be a boutique niche solution provider.
I will give you an example. An organization from Paris did a deal with our Dubai team to implement at Vietnam. Technically we are neither present in Paris nor Vietnam. But, still they came to us and they gave us an
Mr. Rama Raju
Founder & CEO Envision Enterprise Solution
PT. Waskita Karya Revitalizes Manggarai Station for Jakarta’s Long-distance Railway Hub
Using OpenBridge Designer, OpenRail Designer and ContextCapture, Waskita identified and resolved potential issues prior to construction, saving 0.3% per month. Image courtesy of PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk
Leveraging Bentley’s Digital Twin Technology Streamlined Decision-making to Transform Future Project Delivery in Indonesia
Improving Railway Reliability in Jakarta
Projected to be the world’s largest city by 2030 with more than 35.5 million inhabitants, the Jakarta metropolitan area aims to increase passenger capacity and railway reliability for the over 1 million daily users of its network. As part of those efforts, Indonesia’s national rail operator is investing in station upgrades and alignment improvements, one of which is at South Jakarta’s Manggarai Station. The station has a single platform that currently serves over 100,000 daily commuters along the Jabodetabek and Soekarno-Hatta Airport Rail Link. When work is completed in late 2022, Manggarai Station will replace the current Gambir Station as the city’s terminus for long-distance trains.
To achieve this station transformation, Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation appointed PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk, to construct a new bridge and assemble track panels, which will connect the existing first-floor mainline track to a new second-floor rail line of the main building. The project is vital to improving passenger flow and ensuring reliable transport, but presented significant construction constraints, compounded by additional challenges—including conducting a design review within the 720-day contract period.
Committed to Quality, Cost, and Time Efficiency
In addition to construction, Waskita was required to take on the design review of the existing contract drawings due to discrepancies with current standards and existing conditions. It required an accurate representation of the existing station and surroundings to precisely design and ensure seamless integration with the new infrastructure elements. In addition, Waskita also faced construction restrictions due to the large amount of rail traffic at Manggarai Station and the requirement to maintain train operations throughout construction. Lastly, the project team also needed to pay particular attention to controlling costs on prestressed concrete bridge segments, which accounts for up 30% of the total project budget. Negotiating any changes or amendments to the contract would require presenting several options to the client for approval.
To overcome these challenges and produce quality deliverables within the contract schedule, Waskita realized that its success hinged on three main objectives: quality, cost, and time efficiency. The team determined that their traditional, paperbased 2D processes were insufficient, and that collaborative,
Top 5 Reasons of Delays and Disputes in Infrastructure Projects in India
With the present emphasis on creating physical infrastructure, massive investment is planned in the infrastructure sector in India. However, infrastructure projects in India are infamous for Delays and Disputes. As a result, there is significant time and cost overruns in projects. Projects across different government employers suffer from 50-100% cost overrun, primarily due to Delays.
Several studies and surveys are conducted to investigate reasons and their relative impact on these delays and disputes. With our extensive experience in project and claims management, we grouped several overlapping factors into 10 primary reasons and then analysed their relative contribution to Delays and Disputes. The result of the analysis is presented as below:
1. Delay in handing over Right of Way/Site
2. Poor Scope and Interface Management by Owner/Engineer
3. Delay in Payments by Owner/Engineer
4. Slow Decision Making by Owner/Engineer
5. Incorrect Contracting Practices by Owner/Engineer 1. Delays in handing over Right of Way/Site: It is not surprising to find that Top reason is the Delay in handing over the Right of Way / Site to the contractor due to unpredictable and lengthy land acquisition process coupled with politically motivated agitations and equally lengthy interdepartmental permission processes in India.
2. Poor Scope and Interface Management by Owner/ Engineer:
The second most frequent reason for delays and disputes is the unavailability of work fronts due to poor interface management among various agencies and contractors involved in the project. Although it is noted that generally, scope breakdown (work packaging) is based on only size manageability without precise scope distribution and interface matrix (RACI) and Master Implementation Program, it results in many scopes omission/duplication and too many interfaces, which in turn results in many scope addition/deletions during construction.
3. Delay in Payments by Owner/Engineer:
The third most frequent reason for delays and disputes in infrastructure projects is delayed payment to contractors. Again, several legitimate reasons range from fund allocation blues for Govt. funded projects to poor payment terms in the
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