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| With the introduction of ] into ] and later with Independence, the quest was more towards progress as a paradigm fuelled by ]vian visions. The planning of ]- a city most architects hate/love- by ] was considered a step towards this. Later as modernism exhausted itself in the West and new directions were sought for, in India too there was a search for a more meaningful architecture rooted in the Indian context. This direction called ] is exemplified in the works of architects such as ], ], etc., | With the introduction of ] into ] and later with Independence, the quest was more towards progress as a paradigm fuelled by ]vian visions. The planning of ]- a city most architects hate/love- by ] was considered a step towards this. Later as modernism exhausted itself in the West and new directions were sought for, in India too there was a search for a more meaningful architecture rooted in the Indian context. This direction called ] is exemplified in the works of architects such as ], ], etc., | ||
| Indian architecture as it stands today is a pluralistic body of production that cannot in all justice be exemplified by the approaches, buildings and architects cited above. In fact, there are always voices that strive to be heard above the overwhelming hegemonic discourse. But it is an unavoidable fact that certain expressions tend to get magnified and others reduced when set against the vast canvas of the world. In that sense, there is a distillation to an essence that does not have all the ingredients. A more representative selection can occur only at a deeper level of study. |
Indian architecture as it stands today is a pluralistic body of production that cannot in all justice be exemplified by the approaches, buildings and architects cited above. In fact, there are always voices that strive to be heard above the overwhelming hegemonic discourse. But it is an unavoidable fact that certain expressions tend to get magnified and others reduced when set against the vast canvas of the world. In that sense, there is a distillation to an essence that does not have all the ingredients. A more representative selection can occur only at a deeper level of study. | ||
| The paper "Preparing Indian Construction Industry for Global Challenge: Lessons Learnt from UK" sets out the policy debate in this context. | |||
| 1.0 INTRODUCTION | |||
| No one knows for certain what the future will hold for Indian construction industry competing in global market, or indeed for any other walk of life. But that needn't prevent the imagination from trying to predict what might happen. As my mind has wandered around this theme over the last few months or so, it has become increasingly clear that at least three possible scenarios or outcomes can be argued. | |||
| • Indian construction industry could be subsumed into a local small ‘property and construction’ sector – dissipation; | |||
| • It could continue to plod along much as it is now – disappointment; | |||
| • Or it could take on a new dynamism and seize its opportunity to achieve a new relevance and purpose in the global market – discovery. | |||
| Another factor has also become clear– that the context for these deliberations and thoughts has to be far broader than the existing Indian construction industry, or indeed the Design and Engineering industries alongside which it operates. To even begin to understand and sensibly assess the real factors of influence, the major changes occurring throughout the whole of the country have to be considered and understood. | |||
| A number of macro-level trends are undeniably affecting the society in which we live. Several of these are or will most likely significantly impact the Indian Construction Industry. This paper, in setting out how these three possible futures may play out, therefore begins by articulating some of the major trends and changes that are already clear from experiences of mature industries such as UK which went through a similar phase few years ago, and that will probably shape whatever the future may hold. | |||
| The paper describes the policy debate on the issue of Knowledge Management, People and Environmental issues, learning from the UK construction industry. It describes the measures taken to tackle the issues with the help of simple tools and practical implementation by firms in the South-East of UK. | |||
| 2.0 KNOWLEDGE | |||
| Knowledge is rapidly becoming the most important asset of virtually all organisations. Construction is no exception. The ability to manage and exploit knowledge will be the main source of competitive advantage for the Indian construction industry of the future. | |||
| Knowledge is not simply information. To have knowledge about something involves the ability to judge and interpret rather than just having been told about it. | |||
| Knowledge is typically accumulated through experience or education, but there are management routines and techniques that can help to share what people know. Knowledge also comes in different types: | |||
| • explicit knowledge - knowledge that is easily communicated or written down | |||
| • tacit knowledge - knowledge that is held in peoples' heads and is difficult to pass on to others. | |||
| Tacit knowledge is often the most crucial, because it can form a distinct advantage over competitors. It is much more personal and cannot be easily picked up and imitated by your rivals. By contrast, explicit knowledge can be easily assimilated, distributed, or simply copied and taken away. To be transferred, tacit knowledge requires person-to-person contact, or else individual learning and experience. It is not just a matter of copy and paste. | |||
| Knowledge management is a fashionable buzzword and many tools, publications and events are available. It is a difficult and time-consuming task to filter through them to assess what is genuinely useful. This is particularly so for smaller firms that have limited time and resources. | |||
| However, managing your company's knowledge does not have to be an arduous task. You are probably already doing many of the things that contribute to knowledge management and it is worth evaluating how your existing tools and activities are helping to create and exploit knowledge. | |||
| During late 90s the UK industry concluded after enough deliberation that Knowledge Management can enable organisations to exploit the knowledge and learning of its people. This can result in: | |||
| • increased efficiency in project implementation, | |||
| • reductions in wasteful costs, | |||
| • greater innovation, | |||
| • greater success in winning new business | |||
| Through knowledge management the vital lessons and insights that are usually locked up in peoples' heads can be made available for others. Managers and engineers that are facing unfamiliar environments and problems can be better primed and prepared. Of course there is no substitute for direct experience, but with effective knowledge management, people do not need to go through all the same painful learning that their colleagues or predecessors have already absorbed. They will not need to repeat the same mistakes and re-invent the same work-arounds and rules of thumb. | |||
| Figure no. 1 describes the knowledge management framework in an organisational context. It is sourced from an interim report of a 2-year study, Knowledge Management (KM) for Sustainable Construction Competitiveness funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) UK. A full report is now available from their website www.knowledgemanagement.uk.net | |||
| Authors experiences in a multinational UK construction management firm as well as a small Property Development and Project Management Consultancy in London reveals that Knowledge Management techniques not always depend on IT, although it can provide support, for example, in knowledge sharing. Knowledge management techniques are affordable as no sophisticated infrastructure is required although some techniques require more resources than others. They are easy to implement and maintain due to their simple and straightforward nature. Some examples of knowledge management techniques are; | |||
| 1. Daily learning file. (Beginning with a paper version, followed by a simple html based intranet page maintained weekly) | |||
| 2. Brainstorming sessions on particular subjects | |||
| 3. Communities of Practice also called knowledge communities, knowledge networks, learning communities, communities of interest and thematic groups. | |||
| 4. Post-Project reviews. | |||
| 5. Formal lessons learnt reports after each project | |||
| 6. Apprenticeship, mentoring and training | |||
| Supported by the knowledge management thought-leaders from construction, academia and the wider business community, we need to learn how to tackle the challenges presented to the industry by the digital information age. | |||
| The purpose of the construction community should be to bring together construction professionals, academics and thought-leaders from other industries to help the construction industry tackle the challenges of knowledge management. The construction community should develop best practice and produce a toolkit to provide practical help for firms seeking to improve business performance through delivering value through collaboration. | |||
| 3.0 PEOPLE | |||
| Over the last few years there has been a lot of thought applied to creating workplace concepts and designs that ‘liberate’ the workforce and appeal to the key younger generation for whom the latest technologies are not novel but part of everyday life. An ability to continue to attract, retain and catalyse the new young talent will continue to be vital. At present the challenge seems exclusive, at least in part; creativity from construction professionals will be needed to provide appropriate services for an increasingly lucrative global market. | |||
| Population growth in Asia is well documented, but perhaps less well observed is the skill base that has developed in our country, where highly qualified and capable ‘knowledge workers’ are a third to a quarter of the cost of their so-called ‘developed’ world counterparts. This is illustrated by the fact that 12 of the top 21 global software companies are Indian. As appropriate and/or available labour pools most likely shrink with the aging population in western countries, these competitive advantage we have in the increasingly global market place will be hard to ignore. More and more the management challenges of supporting international construction projects, often in strange lands with strange laws and local practices, will be the norm. | |||
| Within India, population change is at work as well – in particular amongst the sought-after ‘knowledge worker community’. They are tending to move to the parts of countries where the weather is better and the quality of life is high. They are settling in and establishing urban and suburban centres, which is driving up the population of cities and metropolitan areas. (Such urban centres still provide unrivalled efficiency by collocating labour, capital, materials and markets – many of the ingredients necessary to get rich quickly). Indeed, by 2015 it is projected that, for the first time, a majority of the world’s population will live in cities. | |||
| This is already leading to major problems with transportation infrastructure, which is diminishing effective labour catchment areas as the distance that can be covered by the one hour commute gets less and less. Yet there are still more factors at work, such as the increasing importance of time to these ‘key’ people, and the ‘second-earner’ impact on labour-pool (in)flexibility. | |||
| This all leads to the quality of services provided by Indian construction industry becoming an increasingly critical factor. As leaders in construction industry; | |||
| • do you know if your people will be able to compete in the international arena? | |||
| • do they have the necessary technical/analytical skills, skills to create a striking client relationship, interpersonal skills and project management skills of global standards? | |||
| • are you providing them what ‘they’ need – money, opportunity, training, workplace and work-life balance? | |||
| Learning from UK industry, there is a strong business case for improvement in this area. The argument is well documented in one of the biggest research undertaken by UK construction industry’s ‘Movement for Innovation (M4I)’ in the year 2000. This business case hinges on the ‘3 Rs’ – firms who fail to improve their attitude and performance towards respecting people will fail to recruit and retain the best talent and business partners. To improve performance, it is important to involve, engage and empower all people in issues that directly affect them. | |||
| The main themes Indian construction industry could focus on from the example of UK industry are; | |||
| • Diversity in the workplace | |||
| • Site facilities and the working environment at site level | |||
| • Health | |||
| • Safety | |||
| • Career development and lifelong learning at all levels of employment | |||
| • The working environment in off-site offices | |||
| 4.0 ENVIRONMENT | |||
| The fundamental ‘people’ changes that are occurring and number of other issues are straining the resource base of the planet. This paper is not intended to be a ‘pitch’ for the ‘environment’ and a documentation of the argument for (or against) global warming etc. | |||
| The construction industry in UK is embracing ‘Sustainability’ pertinent to the following three reasons; | |||
| 1.Ethical dimension | |||
| 2.Government direction | |||
| 3.Customer direction | |||
| 4.01 Ethical dimension | |||
| Notwithstanding the fact that we are chopping down 12 million trees or make 42 species extinct every day, even if we just consider buildings; buildings consume up to 50% of the total energy consumption in the world. | |||
| The construction industry in UK generates 17.5% waste of the total national waste (Source: www.detr.gov.uk, UK). Thus, there is the ‘ethical dimension’. | |||
| 4.02 Government direction | |||
| The UK government is piling on taxes and by-laws to counter the environmental impact of buildings. For example, there was no landfill tax up to 1996. It is £14/tonne of waste currently increasing at £1/year to be £35/tonne by 2013 and eventually coming in line with Europe £100/tonne. Also the transportation costs and the land costs to dump the waste generated are increasing. | |||
| 4.03 Customer direction | |||
| Now global companies do not look at building costs in isolation. The ‘capital cost’ is added to the ‘operating cost’ and the figures are generated as the ‘real cost’ and most consultants are now asked to justify the choice of plants and equipments and the building fabric to ensure the running cost and the energy bills are kept to a minimum. | |||
| Thus, due to above three issues, the UK construction industry is embracing sustainability at an exponential rate. | |||
| Notwithstanding the current commendable initiatives and government directions in India, what one can say is that there is an increasing chance that the Indian construction industry should and will have to delve further into this area and understand the requirements of global consultancy services in the area of Sustainable design, Sustainable construction, Environment management and Facilities management as more and more companies jump on the bandwagon of Corporate Social Responsibility, albeit to reap the PR opportunity to begin with. | |||
| With western policies about ‘energy trading’ and many other environmental policies being questionable for betterment of our nation, the Indian construction industry needs to understand ‘Sustainability’ far better than their western counterparts. Are we ready? | |||
| 5.0 CONCLUSION | |||
| The fundamental shifts that are happening throughout society demand a response from every sector within it. The Indian Construction fraternity is not an exception. How are we and will we respond to the issues identified in this paper? At least 3 reactions can be conjectured; | |||
| •Dissipation: Indian construction industry could be subsumed into a local small ‘property and construction’ sector; | |||
| •Disappointment: It could continue to plod along much as it is now; | |||
| •Discovery: Or it could take on a new dynamism and seize its opportunity to achieve a new relevance and purpose in the global market. | |||
| Two things are certain. Firstly, none of the three scenarios set out above will happen, at least in their entirety. The future is never that predictable. More likely some of their elements or a combination of them will come to pass. Secondly, each and every ‘member’ of the extended Indian ‘Construction’ fraternity, will play a part in shaping the profession’s future, whether they like it or not. In this game there is no opt-out. To do nothing is to actively shape the future, most likely down the path of ‘disappointment’. It is my hope that the Indian construction industry as a whole can quickly build on its rapid progress and development so far, and get its collective might together into one more or less co-ordinated entity. From this position it will have a chance to strike out for the most challenging and exciting of these scenarios – the voyage of discovery that reaches out beyond corporations and business enterprises and seeks to bring new levels of benefit and value to the country as a whole. Now that is a legacy worth creating! WHAT PART ARE YOU GOING TO PLAY IN IT? | |||
| About the authors: | |||
| Mr. Nimitt Karia, ICIOB, MCMI, MBA, MSc, DCT is working as a project management consultant in London involved in high profile commercial schemes at different stages from cradle to grave. Having passed his degree from School of Building Science and Technology (CEPT, Ahd, India) followed by postgraduate studies in Construction Economics and Management (UCL, London, UK) his formative experience on building projects of various sizes has given him a useful insight into Project Management. His experience on Recreational, Airports and Property Development Projects at senior management level, involvement in Best Practice and Knowledge Management initiatives and also the learning as part of the Executive MBA (MUBS, London, UK) helped him to excel in understanding constraints related to soft issues in organisational context and has broadened his perspective regarding Strategic Management. He has a strong interest as well as extensive implementation experience in the area of ‘Sustainability’ strategy and is also involved in academics as a guest lecturer at UCL, Bartlett school of built environment. He can be reached at nimskaria@yahoo.com. | |||
| ==See Also== | ==See Also== | ||
Revision as of 15:15, 4 December 2003
Indian architecture is that vast tapestry of production that encompasses a multitude of expressions over space and time, transformed by the forces of history considered unique to the sub-continent, almost always never destroying but absorbing.
The earliest production in the Indus Valley Civilization was characterised by well planned cities and houses where religion did not seem to play an active role. Later the Aryans reverted to the village as a unit of life.
The evolution of Hinduism as a synthesis of Dravidian and Aryan gods, and the two other important religions, Buddhism and Jainism, gave rise to a rich and varied range of buildings for worship. The Dravidian and the Indo-Aryan style of temple architecture are epitomised in productions such as the magnificient Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur, and the Sun Temple at Konark. The pyramid formed an essential architectonic element in any temple composition- stepped in the former style, stepped and slightly curved in the latter style. The structural system was essentially trabeated.Stone was the basic raw material for the Indian craftsman.Decoration was fundamental to Indian architecture and is seen in the myriad details of figured sculpture as well as in the architectural elements. Spatial aspects too were addressed, the experience of a South Indian temple complex is particularly rich and meaningful.Buddhism is represented by the Chaitya Hall, the Vihara and the Stupa- exemplified by the awesome caves of Ajanta and Ellora and the monumental Sanchi Stupa.The Jaina temples are characterised by a richness of detail that can be seen in the Dilwara temple in Mt.Abu.
With the advent of Islam, the arch and dome began to be used and the mosque too began to form part of the landscape, adding to a new experience in form and space. Later,with the Mughal period, surface decoration rather than sculpture adorned buildings in the form of glazed tiles and semi-precious stones. Over time, Hindu and Islamic architecture together produced a synthesis that is exemplified in the glorious production of Akbar- the city of Fatehpur Sikri, considered by many to be superior to the Taj Mahal in terms of what it has to teach to civilisation- syncretism, tolerance and the best of different worlds.
Indian architecture is generally known only for its religious buildings, but secular production too was given importance. Cities of the desert region in the North such as Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, towns such as Srirangam in Tamil Nadu evolving around the temple as nucleus, the stepped wells of Gujarat, the vernacular architecture of the warm, humid area of Kerala- all these are unique in their response to socio cultural and geographic context.
With colonisation, a new chapter began. Though the Dutch, Portuguese and the French made substantial forays, it was the English who had a lasting impact.The architecture of the colonial period varied from the beginning attempts at creating authority through classical prototypes to the later approach of producing a supposedly more responsive image through what is now termed Indo-Saracenic architecture- a mixture of Hindu, Islamic and Western elements. Institutional, civic and utilitarian buildings such as post offices,railway stations, etc., began to be built in large numbers over the whole empire. The creation of New Delhi in early 20th century with its broad tree lined roads and majestic buildings generated lots of debate on what should be an appropriate architecture for India.
With the introduction of Modern Architecture into India and later with Independence, the quest was more towards progress as a paradigm fuelled by Nehruvian visions. The planning of Chandigarh- a city most architects hate/love- by Le Corbusier was considered a step towards this. Later as modernism exhausted itself in the West and new directions were sought for, in India too there was a search for a more meaningful architecture rooted in the Indian context. This direction called Critical Regionalism is exemplified in the works of architects such as B.V. Doshi, Charles Correa, etc.,
Indian architecture as it stands today is a pluralistic body of production that cannot in all justice be exemplified by the approaches, buildings and architects cited above. In fact, there are always voices that strive to be heard above the overwhelming hegemonic discourse. But it is an unavoidable fact that certain expressions tend to get magnified and others reduced when set against the vast canvas of the world. In that sense, there is a distillation to an essence that does not have all the ingredients. A more representative selection can occur only at a deeper level of study.