Urban Design

Subodh Dixit, Executive Director & President (engineering & construction division) and Barun Pal Chowdhury, Director, Design Build, on why India should take up Design Build extensively.

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The construction industry is becoming more organised and challenging. How have you evolved in the last few years?

SC Dixit: I think Design Build has evolved in a manner that today it has a good turf and gives us a platform to execute jobs on time, ensure quality, and maintain cost without overruns. It’s a one-stop solution. So the contractor responsible takes the entire responsibility as far as the client or customer is concerned. He is also taking ownership of timelines, cost, quality, and coordination with stakeholders, consultants, suppliers, etc.

There are two aspects to this. From the beginning the customer and construction company are aligned on the product requirements and hence, the cost, timelines and specifications are almost completely defined from the beginning. Earlier what happened was that architects would bring in their creativity with an artistic flair and that concept would be unique, but from a contractor’s and customer’s point of view sometimes it would not be a cost-effective solution. Often in such cases, there would be cost and time overruns.

Barun Pal Chowdhury: Each stakeholder should be satisfied at the end of the day. When we converse about Design Build with the client, we ensure they understand the concept. As a contractor, most of the time clients walk in blindly into the contract little realising the dynamics of the entire process. Most often than not, they are used to the traditional method of construction, which often leads to frequent discussions between client and architect on differentiation of thoughts, ideas and methodology of construction. That is exhaustive and much time is wasted on discussions instead of delivery.