“I LOVE THIS CULTURE TO TRY,
MAKE MISTAKES AND SUCCEED!”
– Durgaraj Gautam,
Manager P&M, RREC
“There is a wealth of information, experience and solutions implemented by each employee and although business may flourish or subside, this accumulated intellectual property will always give us an edge and we need to find a way to tap this information and deploy it wherever possible.”
Championing a Profit Centre initiative in RREC, Manager P&M, Durgaraj Gautam describes it as “a live example of efficiency improvement through team effort, clear vision and perseverance in a culture that I love where one can try, make mistakes that gives us the confidence to perform better the next time and succeed.” Having joined L&T in 2007, he has worked as P&M Engineer at DIAL, AVMRP, BPPRP and P&M In-charge at the KMDA Flyover project.
A man of many words, Durgaraj settles to explain the critical task that he is involved in. “Value creation is conceptualized by setting a stretched budget target for equipment operation aiming to optimize hire charges by blending owned and hired equipment guided by benchmarked productivity. We strive to maximize energy efficiency by optimizing the usage of fuel and exploring or deploying alternate energy sources like solar power and we aim to achieve this through a multi-dimensional approach of improving internal efficiency through collaborations, benchmarking, digitalization and advanced analytics.”
“I now sense a cultural shift with the buzz shifting towards the quantity of output produced vis a vis the cost incurred,” he elaborates, “with projects seeking solutions to optimize energy. The engagement level of owned equipment has visibly increased as the average deployment of rental equipment has decreased. We are committed to exploit this momentum and continue innovating for operational excellence by delivering cost-effective, time-bound, quality solutions powered by digitalization,” which, he agrees, has been the chief contributor to this success. “Digitalization has thrown up data from across the country through Asset Insight while custom made algorithms and advanced analytics on this IoT data have improved efficiency. Linking plants, earth moving equipment, powering equipment, weighbridges and analyzing their run patterns, start-stop-idling time, cycle time and turnaround analysis have been the major differentiators,” he emphasizes.
Almost all his memorable moments are work-related like commissioning the HMP 200 TPH at AVMRP when only two years fresh out of college, operating the hydraulic jack for a 900 ton bow string launching at the MAA Flyover in Kolkata or conceiving and developing PPA of a Solar Plant in the OpEx Model, a first of its kind in India; a fact that his wife, Bishnu Chettri, who is a finance professional, and son, Advit may not wholly agree to.
“There is a wealth of information, experience and solutions implemented by each employee and although business may flourish or subside, this accumulated intellectual property will always give us an edge and we need to find a way to tap this information and deploy it wherever possible,” says Durgaraj seriously. “A lesson learnt once should always be shared.”
