By: Sumit Bharana, Director, Era Landmarks
The Indian realty sector is facing an acute scarcity of labour as on today. The fast emerging problem will soon drive the realty sector to take to large scale mechanization and what is often referred to as project management. The propensity can be clearly understood based on the premise that the shortage of labour is projected to rise to about 65% mark by the next decade.
Additionally more work-force nowadays is willingly shifting from the traditional brick and mortar industry to fetch more lucrative opportunities offered by IT, ITes, banking, and Telecom industry.
In order to meet the challenges of cost, quality and time, the future of the sector will predominantly be contingent on project management, mechanization and pre-cast or prefabricated technology. The sector has perpetually witnessed an age old struggle to manage cost, quality and time in various construction projects.
With the factor input cost of raw material expected to double in the near future, the sector is not left with much of a choice than to adopt and blend in the best of globally acceptable practices. For the same reason, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that in order to sustain in the due course of long run, the sector might just have to strongly consider a large scale ‘mechanization’ on one hand, while ‘outsourcing of project management services’ on the contrary.
At the same time, it has also been found out that the currently prevalent rate of mechanization at about 20% in India is relatively low as compared to that of the developed nations where it currently ranges somewhere between 60-70% mark. With India precisely placed at the brink of rapid large scale urbanization and development, an ever-increasing demand for commercial and residential space has been correspondingly been observed. Given the currently prevalent dynamics, such needs could only be met only by taking to mechanization and project management practices.
As for the compulsions and circumstances that resulted in the present stage of crossroads for the sector, the perspectives of much of the analysts, builders, developers have been multi-faceted nonetheless. The shortage anticipated in the next few years that could be attributed to the rapid pace of development, particularly in the Tier II & Tier III cities. In such a scenario, it is the project management services that will offer all consumers a one-stop solution. The same will enable well-integrated and supervised implementation of projects right from day one of design until the stage of final delivery.
It is also imperative to take into a strong account, a pertinently ideal project management practice depending on the nature of the project including aspects such as design, construction-related activities, and management of work schedules, which could often lead to time overrun for the delivery of the project. Sadly, this is likely to spur the overall cost of construction as well. All put together, the realtors sooner or later might just have to consider, mechanisation of labour as an all new alternative to overcome the potential crises and take the increase in their cost of construction as nothing short of a pinch of salt, so to speak.
