SMART INFRASTRUCTURE STARTS WITH SMART LABOUR MANAGEMENT

India's construction sector is set to contribute $1 trillion to the economy by 2030.

- ASUTOSH KATYAL

Urban growth, infrastructure needs, and rising demand for data centers, healthcare facilities, logistics hubs, and housing are all pushing this sector forward. But ambition alone does not deliver projects. Execution does. And execution depends heavily on a part of construction that has long been overlooked—labor management.

Despite decades of innovation in materials, machinery, and design software, the actual deployment of labor, critical to any project, has remained in outdated, manual processes. Contractors still rely on phone calls to locate available labor. Daily attendance and productivity updates are scribbled on paper. Also, many workers who are skilled and ready remain unemployed.

We are now seeing that the fastest gains in construction efficiency do not always come from cranes or concrete tech. They come from how well people are organized and empowered on-site.

What Traditional Labor Management Lacks: Construction workforces are inherently fluid. Projects open and close across locations, requiring a steady shuffle of skilled and semiskilled labor. Add to this the complexities of compliance, safety, and real-time coordination, and it's clear why project delays are common. According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 779 out of 1,873 active infrastructure projects are currently delayed. Some causes are unavoidable, such as land clearances, legal disputes, but many are preventable. Unstructured communication, fragmented workflows, and lack of real-time visibility are avoidable barriers. The existing system is inflicted with inefficiencies: Contractors often cannot locate skilled workers when needed.

Workers remain unemployed for weeks despite having the right skills.