India needs to build 75 million homes in the next 10-15 years due to the rapid rate of urbanisation which is projected to shoot up to 55-60 percent. Where will these home come up? Most of them will be around super cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, etc along with the 100 smart cities proposed by the Indian government.

     By, 2050 India will have 900 million urban dwellers but the prices of land are going up and it will be tougher to buy a home in the cities going forward with the average income of households or per capita GDP being $1876 (INR 1,31,320 ) in the year 2020. So, we need our housing to be more affordable and at the same time, it should be built faster and better without flouting the environmental norms. So in short we need the future of housing to be built fast, better, sustainable and budget-friendly.

Technology will play a major role in to build the homes of the future in terms of construction technology, Robotics and Information Technology have to come together along with better project planning and execution to build the affordable homes of the future. 

How can technology help us build faster, better, sustainable and budget-friendly homes?

Faster- Construction technology has evolved over the last two decades with the uprising of Mivan Shuttering and prefab construction, it has helped us build a large building in less than half the time it uses to take earlier. A large residential complex of 400-500 units use to take anywhere between 3-4 years to build now with Mivan Shuttering (Shear Wall technology) it takes less than half the time. A commercial building is adopting prefab construction and it has helped reduce time and effort by half due to off-site construction the effort of labour in hot conditions has along decreased and resulting in increased productivity. 3-D printing of villas in the future will reduce the effort of manual labour on-site, in the next 10 years, it will be vastly adopted once it becomes cost-effective. L&T has recently printed a 2 storey Home using 3-D printing including steel reinforcement in less than 120 hours, so a home can be built and delivered in less than 30 days. Project Management has also improved a lot due to the increased adoption of information technology in planning, execution and monitoring of projects. Tools like BIM and integrated project management are helping engineers coordinate well between various teams and help them reduce time, cost and remove the information asymmetry in between the planning and execution teams, now in a connected world the information flows seamlessly and decisions are taken in concurrence with the field and office teams in a matter of minutes instead of days. AI and ML will play a role in accurate planning of project schedules and timelines and auto-correction of schedules corresponding to the current status of works.

India’s first 3-D Printed House- https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/l-t-construction-3d-prints-india-s-first-building-with-reinforcement-120122400454_1.html

Better- Affordable houses must not mean a compromise in quality, with the evolution of construction technology like MIVAN shuttering the quality of the homes built can be now uniform and there is not a chance of low quality unless the design mix is altered. Mivan Shuttering/ Shear Wall Technology not only helps us build faster but stronger and better quality homes with great wall and slab finish, it helps with the great structural stability of the entire building. The precast wall has inbuilt pipings for plumbing, electrical and helps reduce a lot of time and effort with translates to savings in cost with better quality when large scale projects are executed. Quality checklists and mobile applications for onsite engineers to do and document the quality checks is helping ensure good quality buildings are built with less human intervention. The field team can immediately update the photos and videos to the project manager using the mobile application and the project manager can approve to go ahead based on the quality checks performed by using the data collected. AI and ML will play a big role in the future in analysing the defects using machine vision and suggesting corrective measures.

Sustainable- The building of the future need to be resource-efficient in terms of energy and water usage. We need to plan and build in such a way the environmental impact of the building can be minimised in the longterm. We need to adopt solar rooftops for harnessing renewable energy, rainwater collection tanks for potable usage, recycling of waste and water to reduce the depletion of natural resources, reduced usage of diesel generators, along with energy efficiency etc, are few things we can keep in mind while designing the building of the future. We must aim to build the net-zero building that is affordable.

Construction sites are dusty and they contribute  a lot of waste debris and air pollution can change when we use more sustainable construction techniques like off-site fabrication of key elements in the building and Mivan shuttering. Using techniques like off-site fabrication and Mivan Shuttering a lot of rework and wastage can be eliminated when constructing large residential complexes. When constructing a smaller building the choice of materials like using PPC Fly ash blended cement, AAC blocks, etc can bring in the use of sustainable materials into home construction.

Budget-Friendly- India needs a budget-friendly home and there is a large demand for such homes from a lot of first-time buyers who are migrating to the cities. The supply and demand id skewed in the affordable housing sector. Construction cost can be controlled by the use of effective construction technology, better and effective execution by use of technology. The cost of construction has stabilised over the years if not for the sudden price hikes of steel and cement. The intent and massive opportunity to build affordable homes is evident but affordable housing is a low margin and high volume game, the land prices must be conducive for developers to develop affordable housing projects, if India wants to achieve its goal of housing for all and the keep up with the rapid urbanisation it should find large land parcels that are affordable around the city, government institutions like railways, etc must free up their land parcels and provide them to developers or investors to build affordable housing units.

Amplify Infra is a tech-enabled residential construction company that builds individual homes and apartment complexes in Hyderabad. We use the best of construction and information technology to live our vision to build faster, better, sustainable and budget-friendly homes. Our integrated project management and supply chain management enables us to deliver quality homes with the agreed timelines and budget, we aim to help make all our buildings sustainable and resource-efficient and if possible net-zero buildings. Visit our website to know more- www.amplifyinfra.com

Written By

Yashwant Ram Meesala

(CEO, Amplify Infra)