Green Building Material - Bricks from excavated soil...

The Economic Times of India, Mumbai Edition (dated 3rd June 2015) has published an news article that states "Green Building in City may Get up to 20% Discount on Property Tax". It seems that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is in discussions with Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) on the proposal. Well... that is a great news as the proposal is aimed at a discount on property tax paid by developers and residents and aims at popularizing and boosting the demand eco-friendly and energy-conserving structures.

If the proposal is accepted and it goes through that I believe this will help "green" become more mainstream and popular in the Real Estate market. Also, in the present stagnant Real Estate market where the supply seems to be more than the demand for housing, a "green" building project is perhaps easy to sell and more importantly today's environmentally conscious buyers are willing to pay a little higher price to buy into a "green" building project. A favorable decision on the proposal by the MCGM will also trigger a large market and demand for "green" materials and thus perhaps may bring down the overall cost of construction of "green" and sustainable buildings. Also, the said proposal could be in line with the Government of India's "green" policy because "green" buildings will lead to "green" cities which would be self sustainable.  

Now, if the primary objective of a "green" building is to reduce the impact of building on the environment and human health, then why can the excavated soil that is removed whilst laying the foundation of the building be used to make bricks. These bricks can be used directly in the project itself, making it a true "green" project as one will save on removal of the excavated soil and transportation and dumping of the same to an alternative location; mind you, there is a cost associated with all that removal of the excavated soil and its transportation and every cost does count. Using hydraulic presses, the excavated soil mixed with about 10% of cement as a binding factor can be compressed into bricks which directly used to make walls. The existing moisture content in the soil itself is good enough to form the brick structure. Walls made from such hyper compressed bricks will need minimal plastering as they would be on a very smooth surface and also be uniform is shape and size. So, the fact that these hyper compressed bricks are compressed at high pressure, their crushing strength would also be far superior to the normal kiln-burned clay bricks. Also, the fact that these hyper compressed bricks would not need any "curing" as in case of cement blocks, the speed of construction and overall project timelines can much faster.

In fact, the MCGM themselves can also consider setting up a hyper compressed brick making plant and supply the hyper compressed bricks to the Real Estate developers, thus also compensating for the loss of revenue on property tax as a result of the above proposal. As for the raw material, I am sure there is enough construction rabble available which is freely in large volumes the MCGM perhaps does not know what to do about other than using it for land filling.

Is it time to understand a Smart Transformation?

Perhaps, traditionally, IT penetration and its uses in the Real Estate / ECO companies, at least, in India continues to be underutilized and even if they have deployed the technologies then the technologies continue to work in silos and independent of each other.

For example, the engineering department designs and undertakes structural analysis, the outcome of their activities is CAD drawings which are in paper form. Now, at times, when you construct there are changes that need to be incorporated in the design resulting in communication and a lot of to and fro between the parties involved - architects, contractors, sub contractors and the material suppliers. Many a times, updated and revised CAD drawings are not available at the site thus resulting wastage, delays in delivery, cost overruns and most importantly, customer dissatisfaction.

It maybe argued that today, in India, there are many an ERP implementations in Real Estate / ECO companies and it very true that these implementations have played rich dividends to the companies in form of streamlining and effective transaction capture and structured data flow.

But now, with changing times, Real Estate / ECO companies in India need to look at the next step - transformation of their business and value extraction from existing enterprise data available in the advent of the SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analysis and Cloud) technologies.

Well... the transformation has to be - internal and also in the way customer interactions take place.

One approach to the transformation could be - implementing a "project centered approach", a "centralized platform" with mobile computing. The silos need to be broke down. There is a need to shift to a "project centered" approach and a need to collaborate in real-time... a need to bring together the silios - design, structural analysis and clash detection, energy analysis etc. on a common platform wherein they all see how the project unfolds itself and most importantly all see the "same" picture.

In a real-time "collaborative" environment on a "centralized" platform, the teams need to work together efficiently and need to be able to share data across computing devices - be it a desktop or laptop or a mobile device. This is where cloud computing can help wherein - the rendering, various anaylsis can be undertaken anytime, anywhere; the project plans are updated instantly using mobile devices... this is where one could combine CAD design and BIM and extend it to the project team.

And then apart from the traditional ERP solutions automating the transaction trail, there are in-memory computing solutions that can help Real Estate / ECO companies improve their bottonline through:

• analysing project variance data for a better understanding and early identification of possible cost overruns
• linking the Construction Operations & Finance for a project performance analysis
• streamlining design to have better pipeline visibility

The need for transformation further becomes importantly because the customer is changing and the customer expectations are changing too. For example, today, we are seeing the real estate buying going through a change with "disruption" as the main name of the game. today, there are housing projects been sold "online",  there have been tie-ups with the traditional e-commerce companies and portals to sell property, "online property fairs" and "online offers" on property sales.

I believe in the next 2 or 3 years the "real estate agent" will have no role at all, the middle-man will have to go, customers will want to look at available properties in the comfort of their homes - online (which they can do today too) but through a virtual reality (VRC) headgear, maybe they may want a virtual reality (VR) walk-through or perhaps choose a virtual agent to take them through the project details and its features; further they may want to visualize how their existing furniture and other stuff will look into the new space, may want to add their bit of customizations to the new space. All of this even before they decide to buy the home.

Works and projects are been developed wherein an intelligent machine program (of course, with explicit permissions) could track the customers movements, learn from preferences based on likes and dislikes to intelligently suggest the possible dream homes that one could take a look at.

In the post decision "to buy" stage, if the customer is seeking a home loan, the customer may want the real estate company to line a virtual interview. Alternatively, there could be a linking of the customer's income tax account and PAN details with the Banking Loan Approval department to give instantaneous loan approvals and sanctions. Also, given the Governmental initiatives on e-enabling of services, there could be a portal that will accept online property registration and documentation. Now, the real estate company needs to ready for such "disruptive" initiatives such may not be within the scope of the working of the Real Estate / ECO companies but could impact their operations and functioning.

And then there is the the safety aspect of the home - everybody wants to ensure safety of their dream home, their family and the furniture and all the stuff in the home. So, here come in technologies around the concept of "smart connected homes" and stuff like - automatic door locking and unlocking, motion sensors, voice activated appliances, smart energy switches and smart lights and bulbs etc. Though today, Real Estate / ECO companies charge a premium price for such amenities but days are not too far away in the future when customers will demand this as a "given" as part of their dream home. 

So.... if the world is changing and if the customer expectations are changing, the question is - Is it time for you to undertake a Smart Transformation of your Engineering, Construction, Operations activities or risk your business by waiting for others to be the first initiators of the change and lose?

Your Answer is....????