WORKING ‘DUSK-TO-DAWN’
TO ENSURE QUALITY
Apart from being a construction giant across the globe, the aspect of L&T that most impresses Ramautar Gaur is the organization’s willingness to accept challenges by taking up projects that are seemingly impossible for any other organization. “Not only do we take them up but also deliver them beautifully which is why L&T is standing tall even today and why I am proud to be part of such a wonderful family,” he enthuses.
On his first overseas posting at the award-winning Zanzibar Water Supply Scheme project, Ramautar’s primary responsibilities were strict monitoring of Quality requirements through on-site implementation and subcontractor involvement to comply with L&T’s required standards, continuously following up to ensure implementation. “We innovated in civil construction by completing the monolithic concreting, mainly the reservoirs (columns) with stringent control of the pipelaying activities,” he shares purposefully. “All the road crossings and pipelines were completed in the ‘Dusk to Dawn’ mode without disturbing local public and transport movements.”
Initially, Ramautar was worried about the compliance of all quality norms as per the specifications laid down by the Zanzibar client, but he smiles, “though quick upgradation is tough, it’s not impossible. With the support of my seniors and colleagues, I overcame the challenges by familiarizing myself with the international terms and overall contractual compliances. I am very glad to get such a supporting staff and I thank everyone individually,” he says gratefully.
Ramautar confirms the 100% utilization of digital solutions as mandated by the Management. “The Quality Incident Reporting mobile App helped us greatly in our QMS to execute the activities and alert us through observations wherever we deviated,” he remarks.
A native of the village of Noorabad in the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, Ramautar is married to Neha, a homemaker, and they are blessed with a son, two-and-a-half-year-old Jayash. “I love singing and badminton,” he laughs, “In fact, one of my most memorable moments was when I won a badminton tournament conducted by L&T, with 30 to 40 participants.” Travelling abroad for the first time to execute a project was equally exciting.
Prior to the Zanzibar project, Ramautar had worked on the 75,000 Hectare CCA for Bansujara Irrigation at Madhya Pradesh’s Tikamgarh district as Construction Manager, looking after B4 network (comprising 20% contribution of the project, both financial as well as physical) along with some specialised laying works involving higher, 2.6 m diameter MS pipeline.
“I AM ALSO CONTRIBUTING TO NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT!”
Anand Akash is proud of L&T’s contribution towards national development and his role in it by being a part of this wonderful organization. Having joined L&T eight-and-a-half years ago, he is thrilled for being part of the Zanzibar Water Supply Scheme project team that won the Quality Award 2022. The achievement is sweeter for Anand and team as they had to face several challenges of working in a foreign country and on a small island in Africa.
“The working culture and the level of workmanship were very different from that we see in India and introducing Indian standards in a country that largely follows British standards were our initial challenges,” mentions Anand. Some of their other issues were the ready availability of resources, the time required for logistics and, he adds, “the scarcity of third-party laboratories and agencies.”
Despite these uphill struggles, the team were able to deliver a quality project. “To construct the elevated and ground storage reservoirs involving 1,100 columns with lengths of 5 to 6m, we prepared a specific methodology to cast them in a single lift,” explains Anand. “After receiving the approvals, we successfully executed the columns saving a lot of time, resources and eliminating the possibility of poor-quality incidents.” In the case of the borewells they constructed, even after achieving the desired yield for each borewell, they conducted a combined influence study of all the borewells to ensure that there would not be any yield deficiency in future. “In the process, we redesigned a few borewells and even changed the location of some as per the study,” he smiles.
“The support of the seniors and the team management was great who always welcomed ideas and views and gave me the freedom to work and even try out new things,” he says with a sense of satisfaction, adding that digital solutions saved the team a lot of time and provided easy access to records and data. “Reporting of any poor-quality incidents was easy that helped us take immediate corrective and preventive action and effectively minimize cost of poor quality.”
Married to Kumari Priyanka Mehta, who works in a bank, Anand, is a native of Patna, Bihar, and loves travelling and video-making in his spare time. Before moving to Zanzibar, which is his life’s most cherished event, Anand had worked on the Gayeshpur Sewerage & Wastewater Treatment and the Barrackpore Sewerage Integration Works projects.
QUALITY IS ALWAYS THE SUCCESS OF TEAMWORK
The Zanzibar Water Supply Scheme is K Suresh Kumar’s 6th project with L&T and perhaps one that has given him greatest satisfaction by being part of the team that won the L&T Construction Quality Award 2022. “It’s not every day that a project receives a quality award,” he laughs but there is no doubt that he values the award a lot. “This Quality award recognizes our commitment to continuous improvement, innovation and customer satisfaction,” he remarks proudly.
“We never faced any challenges because of our proactive approach for all activities,” he says, “and our success is thanks to our structured team approach involving identification, pre-qualification and selection of partners for both service providers and suppliers.” In addition, digital solutions helped the team control and monitor procurement, engineering, and construction activities. “Digitalization improved our efficiencies which is another reason why we won the award,” he grins.
Quality is always the result and triumph of teamwork. Suresh is all praise for his entire project team both seniors and the young, energetic team members who gave it their all to fulfill stringent requirements and maintain high quality standards. “Our seniors were good leaders guiding us till implementation, sharing their rich experience, helping us understand root cause of issues to evolve solutions, and giving us the freedom to work. In fact, their example has given me the confidence to become a future leader.” His josh is obvious. He is happy that the team stood together through thick and thin and is all praise for the various teams from across the Company that supported the project.
Suresh is proud to be an L&T-ite for as he says, “it gives me an identity with my relations and my neighbours,” in his native place, Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu. Success in his professional life has been closely followed by joy on his personal front: he has just got engaged to Yoga Deepa and is eagerly looking forward to his marriage sometime in 2023. We wish them both the very best! To relax, Suresh listens to music, watches movies, and plays games.
His most memorable moments are travelling by air for the first time from Pune to Hyderabad and going abroad for the first time to Zanzibar, Tanzania to work at the project. And there is no doubt that Suresh has been living his dream every day at the project.
Aravind K is an extremely proud youngster; not just for being part for an organization that helps an individual to learn and grow but also because his Zanzibar Water Supply Project won L&T Construction’s Quality Award 2022. “Opportunities for growth at L&T are not limited to any department and there are visible ladders to climb which makes it interesting and fascinating to what the future holds,” he says with a blend of seriousness and hope for the future.
Having joined as GET in 2017, Aravind was first posted in Chennai HQ in QMS. A year later, he was inducted as Internal Quality Auditor, oriented towards product quality, material testing, QMS requirements to ISO 9001-2015, factory inspections, and product quality assessment site visits. “Thereafter, I was assigned to check and monitor the successful implementation of our various digital apps at 50+ WET project sites,” he mentions. “In 2020, under the leadership of P. Sivasankaran, Head-QMS, I was given a new responsibility for QMS, QAQC implementation & monitoring in UW&WM BS project sites through site visits, audits, and approving quality assurance plans after which I was transferred to the Zanzibar project in Tanzania.”
Although Aravind has had to constantly face the challenges of a constantly changing labour workforce requiring re-orientation and training, unskilled labour, logistics and limited third party testing facilities as the project is executed on an Island, he has several achievements to proudly share. “We are the first water project in Africa to receive the QMS Certification for ISO 9001-2015 from LRQA without any major/minor NC, we introduced cross functional quality audits, conducted site-based training for workmen in Swahili, the local language, and at the half yearly feedback with our Client and Consultant, we received four Customer Appreciations for Quality.” Another achievement was the standardization of the Butt Fusion activities in HDPE pipelaying (108 kms) resulting in defect free & leak free joints in the work executed by various sub-contractors.
His first day at college, his GET training days at C-TEA Mysuru and receiving the Quality Award-2022 from SNS are Aravind’s life’s most delightful moments. Hailing from Puducherry, he loves to read and travel to relax. His family consists of his parents and his brother. “L&T has a huge brand reputation in the market and my family members are proud of me,” he laughs. “It is obvious when they express it to their colleagues and friends that “My Son / brother is working in L&T!”
QUALITY IS ALWAYS SELF-DRIVEN
Shekh Abdul Imran
Assistant Construction Manager (Civil), WET IC
Henry Ford once described Quality as “doing it right when no one is looking” implying that the quest for quality is selfdriven as is obviously the case with Shekh Abdul Imran. With this passionate association with quality, he finds himself at the right kind of project – the Zanzibar Water Supply scheme – that won the Quality Award 2022. “I am always developing new methods and continuously improving existing methods to improve our quality standards,” he shares seriously. “I also engage with our contractors to ensure quality.”
Unsurprisingly, his main challenges are quality-related too. “I focus on implementing and maintaining an effective quality management system and balancing costs, time and resources to increase quality requirements,” he points out.
Shekh has thus far been associated with nine large scale and small scale projects with L&T overseas and has worked in both B&F and WET ICs. “We successfully completed the Lake Victoria water extension project to cater water to more than 50 villages in the Zega to Tabora Water Distribution scheme,” he recalls proudly, flagging it off as a major personal triumph.
Proud of the company he keeps, Shekh is appreciative of the management’s guidance and good communication to develop quality systems. “I always support in decision making and continuously monitor project progress to maintain quality,” he says with single-minded purposefulness. He adds that as one of world’s largest organizations, L&T supports and maintains a good work culture. “An employee can properly develop his or her talent in this organization if he or she puts their mind to it,” he affirms. He is happy to enjoy the benefits of digitalization that has helped maintain the consistency of quality documents, improved accuracy of reporting and reduced human error.
Hailing from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Shekh’s better half is Hina, a homemaker, and they are blessed with two sons, Aayman and Aariz. He has a long list of hobbies including ‘gyming’, singing, dancing, swimming, painting, playing music, drawing, cycling. “My hobbies recycle my energy to maintain my positive mental condition that helps me work properly and achieve my targets,” he says, adding with a laugh, “My whole life is full of memorable moments because I enjoy my life every time and everywhere.”
While the entire Zanzibar project team can celebrate their Quality Award 2022, it has special relevance for the Quality person at site, Sylesh Koilakaru, who feels that engaging stakeholders and ensuring their involvement is critical for the quality process. “We need to continuously monitor and improve processes, implement data-driven decision-making, encourage a culture of continuous improvement and learning to ensure consistent quality,” he says. “In addition, effective quality training and development programmes are crucial as also the need to integrate quality considerations into the organization’s overall strategy and culture.”
Managing stakeholder expectations and ensuring their involvement in the quality process is a key aspect to maintain consistent quality standards. “At our project, we efficiently balanced cost, time, and resources with quality requirements, kept up with the constantly changing regulations, standards, and customer requirements, successfully implemented and maintained quality management systems,” he ticks off some of his best practices. “At end of the day, it is important to measure and demonstrate the impact and value of our quality initiatives for people at site and the management to see and believe.”
Sylesh is not surprised that he has been able to achieve all this because he believes that he is working for an organization that is strongly committed to quality, safety, and ethical standards. “At L&T, we enjoy a supportive and inclusive workplace culture focused on innovation and continuous improvement, and committed to employee development,” he points out. “In fact, an employee’s pride in an organization, as it is in my case, is influenced by many factors, including values, culture, reputation, and impact on society and community.”
His journey with L&T began with the Tabora Water Supply Scheme in west Tanzania, mandated to supply water from Lake Victoria to 50+ villages in the towns of Nzega & Tabora. Thereafter, in Abu Dhabi, Sylesh worked as a Senior Piping Engineer and played a key role in the Rumaitha & Shanayal Oil Field National Energy Board III, Extension project with the ADCO group. “I also successfully completed two cluster well heads piping and mechanical activities (fabrication of spools, erection, commissioning) at the Cairn Energy oil field project in Rajasthan,” he shares.
On his personal front, Sylesh hails from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, is married to Jyothsna, a homemaker, and they are blessed with two children, Panvith and Piyusha. Playing games, ‘gyming’ and watching web series are what helps him unwind while spending quality time with his family and the birth of his children are memorable moments.