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SNS's - LOCKDOWN MUSINGS KALEIDOSCOPE AWARDS & RECOGNITION

SNS – MOST INFLUENTIAL LEADERS

Having joined L&T in 2006 as an Assistant Engineer at the Sainath Education Project, Anekal, Arunkumar has worked at the Trident Hotel, Cognizant Software Technologies, HCL Technologies, US Client Safron CENCO and TOD Musarambagh projects before taking over as Senior Construction Manager at the Chennai Airport Project.

Hailing from Chennai, Arunkumar is married to Sujatha, a homemaker and they are blessed with two children, son, Shyam, and daughter, Dharshini. A voracious reader with a penchant for autobiographical and history books, he also loves listening to music and is a hard-core fan of the legendary singer SPB. He recalls with pride receiving an appreciation from the late AR for completing the Puttaparthi project in a record 50 days. His first meeting with his wife and the birth of his children are some of his other memorable moments.

A BLACK BELT CONSTRUCTION MAN

He is a 2^nd Dan Black Belt in karate. “My hobby is to practice karate,” shares Rana Dhar, “I manage some time for it on Sundays. Sometimes I even teach karate,” and Rana should certainly be drawing on some of the positive aspects of karate like balance, confidence, timing, situational awareness as he performs at his Assam Cancer Care Foundation project at Dibrugarh, Assam. “Working in such a remote location, workmen mobilization and retention was a massive challenge for us right from the beginning of the project,” he points out. “Dibrugarh is known as the Tea City of India that attracts local manpower to its magnificent tea estates but due to scarcity of resources, cost of living is very high so to mobilize and retain manpower from other states is a huge task. We had mobilized 120 workmen from Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand just before the lockdown and retaining them during and after the lockdown was a major task.”

The pandemic was a huge damper for E Ranganathan, Project Head of Assam Cancer Care Hospital Project at Kokrajhar, having been in the thick of action across several prestigious L&T projects for over a decade and a half. “Remobilization of our workforce and adhering to COVID-19 precautionary norms was an entirely new challenge,” he shares. “Our project was at a very early stage, so it was very critical that we complete the temporary infrastructure before the monsoon as soon as we received the green signal to re-start operations on May 4^th.” Since labour had gone, the team decided to engage local labour for the immediate execution of works. “Getting them to match L&T standards of safety and quality has been tough,” remarks Ranganathan.

Their remote location some 240 km from Guwahati proved to be a big roadblock for material procurement, and since they depended on the metro cities to a large extent for many consumables, the lockdown had veritably cut them off. “However, we took all these challenges in our stride and moved forward,” says a determined Ranganathan and success was just round the corner. “We enjoyed the first fruits of our labour when despite all the hurdles we managed to initiate and complete a total excavation of approximately 12,000 cum within 10 days of resuming work.” Ranganathan’s excitement is obvious.

Our client, Assam Cancer Care Foundation, has been a tower of strength for us during these tough and testing days, he acknowledges. “They helped us with the basic medical facilities, their medical staff regularly visited and checked on our workmen and they even helped us to arrange for rapid COVID-19 testing at site.”

He attributes his performance to the support he has received from Sudipta Kumar Basu (KKCL CPM), Anjan Mahapatra, Project Director, Manish Kumar, Central Project Manager, Dilip Kumar Bera, Project Manager and
Mr Prasenjit Mukherjee, Accounts Head. “Bapi Mitra Chowdhury and Anirban Saha also stood by me unfazed as we braved the challenges together posed by a common enemy,” says a thankful Ranganathan.

“I am extremely happy to be a part of an organization that takes care of its employees and builds landmark monuments like the Statue of Unity. I stand tall with pride and will continue to give my best for the organization,” he signs off positively.

Even as the challenges posed by the pandemic loomed large, Sonawane Bhaiyasaheb Arun, known for his generous heart and easy smile, stood unfazed armed with a solution-oriented mindset. In quick time, the team had to create a workman habitat inside the site premises and work to bring back workmen to reach their pre-lockdown strength of 1300. “The issue was that because of Mumbai’s rising number of positive cases, no one was willing to travel so convincing them required excellent interpersonal skills,” says Sonawane. A critical task was to make the site ready for restart following the new safety, health and hygiene norms and fresh SOPS. “Another hurdle was that we had to take several new permissions to restart work that the government authorities had newly imposed and of course,” he sighs, “there were so many restrictions on movements, on timings that we had to take into consideration.”

Approaching the issues systematically, Sonawane shares about the various teams that were formed to address specific issues of procurement, worker mobilization, site facility, approvals, safety, NSC coordination and such like. “At the same time, we had to create confidence among the workmen to return to work on one hand while on the other, extend facilities to our nominated subcontractors to help them get back to work. We even helped them mobilize workmen,” says Sonawane with the air of a man who has worked hard for his success. “Our vendors joined hands with us while our client supported us to implement our SOPs by coordinating with the Government officials
for permissions.”

Hailing from Chalisgaon, Maharashtra, Sonawane is married to Swapna, a homemaker and they are blessed with two children, son, Jai, and daughter, Maitryi. An altruistic at heart, he spends his free time to give back to society by actively participating in clean-up drives and recycling waste into fertilizer. Coming from a humble background, Sonawane in all modesty says that the joy he saw in his parents’ eyes when he became an engineer is the most memorable moment of his life.

About his association with L&T, Sonawane says, “We, as an organization, are building this great nation and that makes me very proud!”

A major challenge confronting Munjeti Gopalakrishna (or MGK, as he likes to refer to himself) at the RAMCO Line-III, Cement Plant project in Jayanthipuram, was to mobilize adequate skilled manpower after the unlock by whatever means possible to meet the project completion deadlines. He is delighted that by achieving his objective, they have successfully achieved some important project milestones. “We have handed over the process requirement to the client for the preheater, kiln, clinker cooler and ESP buildings,” he shares with a huge sense of satisfaction. “We completed the pre-assembly of critical erection works in the elevated structure that ensured that we not only saved time but we are in a much better position to achieve our targets and hand over the building to the client in time.”

While MGK and his colleagues had to rely on their vendors and subcontractors to identify and mobilize enough manpower, they were careful to search for and find skilled manpower for the critical erection works of the preheater. He is extremely thankful to his seniors and colleagues for having made this possible. “It has been a huge collective effort to mobilize manpower,” he shares with great fervour, “all our teams from planning, admin and other support functions worked very hard and in a well-coordinated way to ensure that we had adequate manpower to start operations at site as soon as the lockdown was lifted.”

Working on the RAMCO cement plant project, MGK finds himself on familiar ground because he has worked on a sting of cement plant projects before. Although after joining L&T in 2009, his first project was ICICI Bank Gachibowli and another stint at Hyderabad Metro Rail, the rest have all been cement plant projects: 6,000 TPD Zuari Cement Plant, 6000 TPD Heidelberg Cement Plant, 3500 TPD Prism Cement Plant, 6500 TPD Orient Cement Plant and the 4500 TPD KCP Line-II Cement Plant. “You can call me a bit of an expert on cement plants,” laughs MGK, who hails from the village of Loharijola in Andhra Pradesh’s district of Srikakulam.

He is married to Sudharani, a homemaker, and they are blessed with two children: Akshini and Keerthi Krishna. His favourite hobby is cricket.

In conclusion, he says, “Our organization took on a very big challenge to mobilize manpower during the lockdown by using various modes of transport which has gone a long way to help us complete our project within the stipulated time.”

An attribute that Suman Saurabh gives greatest importance to is ‘honesty in quality product delivery and EHS’ and as a professional with the responsibility of driving quality at his project, it is a very relevant attribute to have. Having joined L&T in 2010, Suman is presently working at RAMCO’s Jajpur Cement Grinding Unit, Haridaspur, in the Jajpur district of Odisha. “During and after the lockdown, most of our old workmen left our site,” he shares his challenges, “and we had no proper communication of how workmen from other states could travel to our site after the unlock. It was very difficult to find skilled manpower locally, but we had no other option but to get maximum labour locally. On top of this, we were facing huge pressure from the client to commission the plant in time.”

For Suman and his colleagues, arranging for local subcontractors and introducing new, small vendors were the only solutions to increase manpower. “We depended on their (the local subcontractors) networking to source labour and we even sent vendor supervisor teams to the nearby villages to identify, motivate and convince workmen to come and work at our site.” The vendors also helped by providing the history of new workmen that made it easier for the team to screen them before engaging at site. “The client supported us to implement our SOPs,” adds Suman, “they made arrangements to quarantine the new workmen and coordinated with our admin team and the local administration to arrange for new labour.” Suman points out that they sourced new workmen only from green and orange zones and “we started evaluating workmen through video calls before calling them to site.” Suman also acknowledges the help and support from his seniors to address his site-based issues.

Although COVID-19 has thrown up several unique challenges, Suman has been able to hold his own thanks to his 10-year experience with L&T that began at the Lafarge Cement Grinding Unit project after which he was involved in the ‘Atmosphere’ project in Kolkata. “It was an iconic project,” he shares with pride, “and I was responsible for 4000 MT of structural steel fabrication and erection.” Suman’s 3^rd project was the Tata Housing Avenida project, again in Kolkata, where he was looking after MEP works, after which he has landed at Jajpur.

In this fight to overcome the disruption caused by the pandemic, Ravi is bringing to play all his experience gained from having worked at eight projects at L&T with RAMCO being his 9^th. Hailing from the village of Puttur in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, Ravi is married to M Monika, a homemaker and they are blessed with one child, Yuva Sai. “I love watching movies over weekends,” he smiles.

Ravi is proud of L&T for having taken on challenging projects like the Navi Mumbai Airport and the Statue of Unity and for taking care of its employees during the COVID-19 crisis despite facing a severe monetary strain.

Two aspects that make Parwez Ahmad proud of being a part of L&T are the freedom to operate and take decisions. “Further, the confidence that my seniors reposed in me has always been a morale booster especially during these difficult and testing times,” he says earnestly. “These factors together have always inspired me to work harder and achieve higher standards in my field of work.”

Parwez’s contribution has been inspirational at his present project, the India International Convention & Expo Centre at Dwarka in New Delhi, to combat the pandemic. Oh yes, he nods, “We have had to face many challenges since the lockdown. One of which has been to network with subcontractors and tap new and different sources to mobilise labour. Though the prevailing travel restrictions were big hurdles, we overcame these by closely coordinating with subcontractors located in various states to arrange buses, train tickets for workmen followed by the due diligence of identity verification.” He mentions about the separate isolated blocks that were maintained to house the fresh inflow of new workmen to ensure quarantine norms along with round-the-clock medical check-ups. “Perhaps the biggest challenge,” Parwez says, “was to establish an emotional connect with the workmen by extending to them a comfortable and safe working environment since they were risking themselves by working in such harsh times.”

Apart from revamping the labour camp and setting up quarantine blocks, Parwez was involved in revisiting the SOPs for camp operation and maintenance, realign them with the Health Ministry guidelines and formulate new rules for the new, incoming workmen. He mentions the introduction of a Public Address System in the labour camp to frequently broadcast the precautions and care to be taken to prevent infections adding that the introduction of additional features in the WISA App made workmen induction far easier. “The support extended to me by my seniors and team members has been quite extraordinary,” says a grateful Parwez, “and they will remain a guiding influence to deal with such situations.”

Before IICC, Parwez has a host of other projects with L&T in his track record. “My first project was VGS Dulhera Project,” he recalls, “followed by HCL, the Convention Centre in Aero city and the BJP Headquarters project before moving here to Dwarka.”

“I like to spend my spare time bonding with my family members,” he says with a glow to his face and his family members include, his wife, Kamila, who is a homemaker and two sons, Aayan and Arhaan. Parwez hails from the village of Mania in the district of Ghazipur
in Uttar Pradesh.

“After creating confidence among the workmen, we trained and offered them incentives,” Boopathi shares. Their strategy was simple but effective. “To overcome the shortage of labour, we focussed on engaging local workmen to carry out site activities. All manpower driven activities such as stone pitching that had come to a standstill due to the pandemic, were kick-started.”

Though productivity was suffering due to reduced work hours and moderately low level of local skilled workforce, digital solutions helped to perk up progress for Boopathi and team. “Through Procube, I enter the required data, monitor lapses, identify shortcomings and thereby improve productivity,” he says with quiet determination.

Boopathi acknowledges his Project Manager, Construction Manager, Project Administrator and Time Office In-charge for their unstinted support to mobilise workmen during the strict travel restrictions in Tamil Nadu. “It is only due to their support that we could arrange buses and train tickets to safely bring workmen back from all parts of the state,” he points out.

Boopathi has rich experience in working on factory projects such as Saint Gobain Phase – III – Sriperumpudur, Natrip Test Track – Oragadam, JK Cement Plant – Chittorgarh, Maruti B&C Line – Manesar before taking over as Senior Engineer at MVDC Test Track Project.