A Study of India's Construction Giant: The DLF Group

In the last issue of the AECbytes Newsletter, I described the enormous construction boom that is happening in India—where I am currently traveling—and provided an overview of the technology adoption in its AEC industry. I have visited several architectural, engineering, and construction firms during the course of my travel to explore the role they are playing in this construction boom, to study their use of technology in more detail, and to understand the issues that they are facing. One such company that I had the opportunity to visit and study was the Delhi-based DLF Group, a veritable industry giant that is currently building about 4 million sq. ft. of residential property, 2.5 million sq. ft. of office space, and 500,000 sq. ft. of shopping complexes. We will explore what this massive construction activity takes from a technology standpoint in this AECbytes feature article.

Overview of the DLF Group

The DLF Group is one of the oldest construction companies of India, dating back to 1947. It started as a family business, and continues to be so to this day: it is a closely held public limited company where 99% of the shares are owned by the family. It is currently headed by one of the family members, Rajiv Singh, who serves as the Vice Chairman. In the early years of the company, it was based in India's capital city, Delhi, where it catered to the huge influx of people that resulted in the doubling of the city's population almost overnight. Anticipating the growing need for quality housing of an expanding market, DLF developed close to 21 urban townships in Delhi. Today, these townships house nearly a million people.

In the 1990's, DLF shifted the focus of its development to a suburb called Gurgaon, located on the southern border of Delhi, which was at that time totally empty and undeveloped. Seeing the latent potential of this suburb, located close to the airport and within driving distance from Delhi, DLF started developing its "DLF city" project there. The vision behind the project was to create an environment that could support a "walk-to-work" culture, by co-locating commercial and residential developments. Spread over 3000 acres, the DLF City is currently one of the largest townships developed by the corporate private sector in India. It is an integrated city that spans five phases and encompasses state-of-the-art residential, commercial, corporate, and institutional complexes as well as community, educational, recreational and health facilities for all sections of the society. It boasts of a high profile client list, housing many leading multinational companies including Pepsi, GE, Nestle, IBM, British Airways, ICI India Ltd., American Express, DuPont, Smithkline Beecham, Rolls Royce Energy Systems, Xerox, Cargill, Svedala, Max New York, McKinsey, Bluestar and Hughes Software. Figure 1 shows a rendered image of the American Express building in DLF City.

The DLF Group has essentially taken a vast acreage of undeveloped land and transformed it into one of the most happening places in the country, famous for its sleek office towers, shopping malls of international standards (see Figures 2 and 3), multiplexes with state-of-the-art projection systems, upscale homes and condominiums, even a world class golf course. The timing of its development has also coincided very nicely with India's economic boom and increased globalization, making DLF a very successful company with a annual turnover of 300 crores (about 60 million USD).

How It Operates

The DLF Group has a workforce of about 800 people, of which 350 form the Construction Division while the rest are involved in sales, marketing, real estate, property maintenance, and so on. The company maintains an office in Delhi, but the bulk of the workforce is located in Gurgaon, where most of its current building activity is taking place. The Construction Division comprises of a small Design and Architecture Group of 25 people, in addition to planners, engineers, site supervisors, and other administrative personnel.

All of the core design and engineering work of the DLF Group is contracted out rather than done in-house. The company prides itself on working with the best architects and engineers in the country. Thus, most of their architecture bears the signature of Mumbai-based Hafeez Contractor, one of India's most famous and commercially successful architects. An idea of his immense popularity can be gauged from the fact that he was the only architect that made it to "India's Top 50 Power List" put out recently by India Today, India's leading weekly magazine. Contractor's architecture has a distinctive modern style, as evidenced by the examples of his buildings for the DLF Group shown in the preceding illustrations and in Figure 4. DLF's line-up of other reputed consultants includes Mohit Gujral (architect), Harsh Kumar Anne (electrical), Deo Lalikar (plumbing), S.C. Mehrotra (structural), and Mahindra Raj (structural).

Given this scenario where all the design and engineering work of the company is carried out by outside professionals, the coordination between them becomes the chief task of DLF's Design and Architecture Group (DAG). At the outset of a project, the DAG works closely with the marketing department, and based on their inputs, it develops a detailed design brief. Subsequently, it is involved in design discussions and charettes with the architect, essentially acting as the "client" on behalf of DLF. It provides design guidance on local bye-laws to the architects and engineers, and is responsible for obtaining the necessary approvals and sanctions from various government agencies for construction. After the design has been finalized, the DAG also puts in a lot of work making modifications to fine-tune the design according to DLF's preferred construction style and budget for the project. All the costing is done in-house, which means that all the specifications for the design are also decided by DLF.

For its vast array of construction projects located in the Delhi-Gurgaon area, DLF works with a limited number of contracting firms who have grown to understand the philosophy of the company and the type of architecture it creates. This ensures both efficiency as well as consistency. For many of its commercial, retail, and recreational facilities, DLF is also the owner/developer and is therefore responsible for their operation and maintenance. For residential developments, DLF is involved in the post-construction phase for about six months to a year before handing the operation and maintenance over to the respective residents' associations.

How Technology is Used

In AECbytes Newsletter #12, I described how AutoCAD is all-pervasive in India's AEC Tech industry, with 2D drafting very much the norm. This is true for DLF as well. All the drawings that DLF gets from its architect and consultants are 2D AutoCAD drawings, so AutoCAD is the chief application that the Design and Architecture Group uses for viewing the drawing files and making the necessary modifications to them. Any 3D work that is done on the project is carried out independently by the architect and consultants at their respective ends, for example, modeling and rendering, piping layouts, structural modeling, and so on. DLF does not have any 3D applications in-house, which means that the separate 3D disciplinary models are never coordinated with each other. All the renderings and visuals for the marketing of the project come directly from the architect (see Figure 5); none are created by DLF. E-mail is routinely used to exchange drawing files back and forth, but there is no project website or document management system as such.

As mentioned earlier, all the work of costing and specifications is done in-house by DLF, and these are done on the basis of 2D drawings only. Thus, cost estimation is done with the help of Excel spreadsheets for which the building data is manually extracted from the 2D drawings. Specifications are similarly created using traditional manual methods.

For project management and scheduling during construction, DLF uses Primavera, which thus becomes the only other AEC application, apart from AutoCAD, to be deployed internally. For other administrative tasks within the Construction Division such as purchasing, inventory, accounting, HR, and so on, DLF uses an Oracle-based application that was developed in-house. The Real Estate Division, responsible for the management, marketing, and sales of all DLF properties, uses a standard Oracle ERP application for its work.

Outlook on More Advanced Technologies

I spoke with some of the key managers and executives of the DLF Group to find out how critical a role technology plays in the overall scheme of their business, currently as well as in the future. What are the primary pain points of such a large construction company and how many of these can be addressed by technology? The overall response was that while the company was always looking for new technologies that could lead to greater efficiency, faster design and construction processes, and some cost savings, it had not identified and implemented any specific technology in-house such as project websites, building information modeling, 4D construction simulation, property management, and so on that could help achieve these goals. There is no dedicated group or person in the company who is responsible for exploring, evaluating, and implementing new technologies. Instead, the company relies on the individual users in different departments to bring to its attention any new technology that seems to promise some concrete benefits.

The company also sees advanced technology implementation as being more within the purview of the architects and consultants it uses for its design work. It has found that the consultants are more up-to-date on the technologies in their respective fields, and therefore leaves the implementation of any new technologies up to them. However, having recently become acquainted with the concept and potential benefits of building information modeling (BIM), the company plans to take a serious look at it, and if necessary, push its architects and consultants to adopt it rather than wait for the effort to be initiated by them.

In the near term, the company plans to deploy an Oracle ERP application, similar to that used by its Real Estate Division, for the Construction Division as well in place of the current in-house application for purchasing, inventory, accounting, and other administrative tasks. Also on the agenda are plans to develop an application that DLF can use in the project planning phase for assistance in developing the design briefs for its individual projects.

Analysis and Conclusions

Somewhat contrary to my expectations considering the size of DLF's construction portfolio, I did not find much evidence of any cutting-edge use of technology by the company. As in most of India, 2D is still pretty much the norm, and the number of applications that are used for design and construction are quite limited. Thus, many of the issues that AEC professionals have to grapple with in the US and other countries where the level of technology adoption is much higher are non-issues here. A prime example of this is interoperability, which is dominating technology discussions in the AEC community in other countries and is being used as an important criterion to determine which software solution to deploy (see the AECbytes feature article on the IFC building model). With the limited range of technology adoption in India in general, most professionals haven't even heard about interoperabilility, let alone being concerned about it.

Another observation that came as a surprise to me during the course of my discussions with DLF, and the other Indian construction firms that I have met, was the relatively mild response to my question about the "pain points" in the business. The same question posed to a construction company in the US would have launched off a tirade! It's not as if the Indian AEC industry does not have its share of inefficiencies, errors, miscommunications, and so on in the building process. But all these problems, which can add up to astronomical sums in other countries, seem to be taken in stride here as the normal cost of doing business. The fact that construction labor is quite cheap makes changes at the construction site less expensive compared to a country where labor is pricier. Naturally, the motivation to research and use advanced technology to tackle pain points is also relatively less. Also, given the booming construction business, there really isn't much down time to devote to studying and implementing new technologies.

However, as I pointed out in AECbytes Newsletter #12, this lackadaisical attitude to technology in India may soon change with the entry of global design and construction firms in its booming construction market, who will bring with them advanced design and construction technologies. Local firms like DLF will have to quickly get up to speed to stay competitive. Even now, DLF could benefit tremendously from deploying a building information modeling solution just to automate costing and specifications, and efficiently manage its vast stock of facilities and properties. Also, considering the geographically dispersed nature of its architects, consultants, and contractors, implementing project websites to collate all project-related data in one location would be very useful. Then there is model-based multi-disciplinary collaboration, interference checking, code checking, 4D construction simulation, model-based operation and maintenance, and so many other advancements in the AEC technology field that can improve speed, efficiency, accuracy, and quality. It will be interesting to see if a construction firm like DLF can translate its visionary development and commercial success into leadership in India's AEC technology field as well.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to all those at the DLF Group who took the time to talk to me at length and show me around DLF's projects in Gurgaon. I would like to also thank the DLF Group and Hafeez Contractor for suppling many of the illustrations used in this article.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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