More Vignettes from India's AEC Industry

This feature article captures my discussions with some of the other firms that I have visited in the course of my travel in India, providing a diverse array of perspectives on its AEC industry and the outlook on technology. It takes an inside look at Hafeez Contactor's firm, one of India's most commercially successful architects; the well reputed practice of Jasbir Sawhney and Associates; the fast-growing real estate development firm, Total Environment; a young and upcoming architectural firm, InFORM; and finally, a small design services firm, Alf Design Consultants.

Previous articles in this series include Newsletter #12, which described the enormous construction boom that is happening in India and provided a general overview of the technology adoption in its AEC industry, and the feature article published last week that studied in detail one of India's largest construction companies, the DLF Group.

One of India's Most Successful Architectural Practices

In the article on the DLF Group, we saw that most of its architecture—currently about 4 million sq. ft. of residential property, 2.5 million sq. ft. of office space, and 500,000 sq. ft. of shopping complexes—bears the signature of Mumbai-based Hafeez Contractor, one of India's most famous and commercially successful architects. A testimonial to his stature 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. Established in 1982, the firm's work covers a gamut of building types including hospitals, hotels and resorts, recreational and sports facilities, institutional projects, commercial complexes, industrial buildings, apartments and townhouses, and private residences. The firm is equally active in interior design and has worked on interior projects for corporate and airline offices as well as hotels and restaurants.

I took the opportunity to visit Hafeez Contractor's firm to find out where they stood vis-à-vis their technology adoption. As in most of India, it was AutoCAD all the way through within the firm, starting from the translation of Contactor's paper sketches of the design concept, to design development, and subsequently all the way through to construction drawings. All the 3D work, such as that shown in Figure 1 and the illustrations in the DLF study article, are outsourced to a specialized visualization firm. On an average, the firm is involved in about 300 to 400 projects at a time; thus, the workload is on the 200+ staff is tremendous, and there is little time to devote to investigating new technologies in depth. The senior members of the firm have seen demos of Autodesk Revit provided by their local reseller, but are not convinced about its suitability for their firm, given their current workflow and processes. The main hindrance in implementing a building information modeling (BIM) solution like Revit, according to them, is the reliance of the firm on a large number of draftpersons, which comprise almost 40% of their staff. They see Revit as an architect's tool, not a draftperson's, so implementing it would require a major restructuring of their workflow, which would be very disruptive.

During my visit, I encountered a good example of the kind of software challenges the firm was facing: the trees in the renderings created by their visualization specialist looked fake rather than real and the firm was just preparing to purchase fairly expensive entourage libraries that would improve the quality of their renderings. Thus, "pain points" are those that are related to current tools and processes and the focus is on solving these immediate problems. There is acknowledgment that several inefficiencies exist in the current process, but these are taken in stride and are seen as less disruptive than trying to implement something new.

Contractor's firm is evidence to the fact that change to the next generation of technologies for designing and documenting buildings is likely to be the toughest for large and successful practices who are so busy that taking a step back and re-evaluating their current tools and workflow is not an immediate priority. In all likelihood, the push for them to make the change will come from their large developer clients such as the DLF Group, which as described in the previous feature article, is planning to take a serious look at BIM.

An Established and Well-Reputed Architectural Firm

In New Delhi, the capital city of India, I had the opportunity to visit the venerable practice of Jasbir Sawhney and Associates, which was famous even in the days when I went to architectural school. Established in 1969, this firm ranks among the top architectural firms of India in terms of design reputation and respect within the profession. Led by three principals, the firm has consistently maintained a staff of not more than 15 people and is selective about the projects it takes on, so as to maintain the high quality of the work it is reputed for. The firm's portfolio includes buildings for government and business, libraries, art galleries and museums, schools, research facilities, transportation systems, community buildings, hotels, housing and urban design, both in India as well as in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the Republic of Maldives. Two of their recent projects are shown in Figure 2.

With two of the three principals of the firm being avid technologists who actively use computers and design applications themselves, the firm is very progressive in its technology outlook. It has the distinction of being the first firm in Delhi to adopt CAD, all the way back in 1984. Being one of the early adopters, it ended up acting as an informal consultant on CAD to several other firms. This pioneering distinction in the Indian CAD industry led to the firm being profiled in Cadence magazine and to a contributed article by one its principals, Dinesh Sareen, in Cadalyst magazine in the late 1980s. In contrast to many other firms who outsource their visualization tasks, Jasbir Sawhney and Associates does all its 3D modeling and visualization in-house using 3DS Max. AutoCAD is used for 2D drafting. The firm had acquired some copies of Autodesk Architectural Desktop (ADT), but did not find its 3D capabilities very useful and reverted back to using it like AutoCAD.

The firm prides itself on embracing technology rather than being intimidated by it, and is keen to always remain up-to-date with new and emerging technologies. As a result, it is taking a serious look at BIM and plans to start a pilot project with a trial version of Autodesk Revit. If the project is successful, it would like to upgrade its ADT seats to Revit, provided the cost of the application is made commensurate with the value of the local currency. The principals do have some concerns about the implementability of a BIM application and think that it is best suited for the designer who is making critical decisions about a project. As a result, they would be hesitant to try Revit out on a large project right away. At the same time, given the small size of the firm and the principals' comfort level with technology, Jasbir Sawhney and Associates is currently in a better position than most Indian firms to implement BIM successfully and continue to maintain its leadership position in the Indian AEC industry vis-à-vis technology adoption.

A Fast Growing and Critically Acclaimed Development Firm

Established in 1996, Total Environment Building Systems is a fast-growing real-estate development firm based in Bangalore, the city dubbed as India's Silicon Valley because it hosts the largest number of technology companies in the country. With 52 projects to date that range from residential apartment blocks to corporate campuses, Total Environment's vision is to cater to the increasing number of Indian expatriates as well as foreign nationals who are arriving in Bangalore to work and stay, most of whom are exposed to the highest international standards of home and office environments. The firm has established a reputation for producing elegant and organic-looking architecture by using natural materials that age gracefully and by paying great attention to detail. Landscaping is also a key feature and an attempt is made to integrate existing trees and other natural elements into the design, as shown in Figure 3.

Headed by two architects and a structural engineer, Total Environment designs all the projects it develops and is thus a terrific example of design-build, of close integration between architecture, engineering, and construction. Most of the 120-odd staff comprises of architects, structural engineers, and civil engineers who are responsible for project management and site supervision. There is only one draftsperson on board, which makes the firm relatively unique considering the ubiquity of draftspersons in most Indian AEC firms. The relatively small size of the firm, the close integration between the different disciplines, and the minimal reliance on drafting personnel allows the firm to be relatively more advanced in its outlook on technology. While AutoCAD is still in use, the firm is acutely aware of its limitations in supporting an intelligent design and construction process: the lack of coordination between drawings; the need to create separate 3D models for visualization that have no connection with the drawings; manual creation of schedules, specifications, cost estimates, construction phasing plans, and so on.

To help eradicate these "pain points," Total Environment has been looking into 3D object-based CAD and BIM solutions. It already has a copy of VectorWorks ARCHITECT—an attractive option as it was affordably priced—and has been implementing the application on a few projects. The results have been promising enough for the firm to contemplate a complete switch to a 3D based process relatively soon. It is also in the process of evaluating Autodesk Revit. The choice is somewhat complicated by the fact that the firm has had a lot of trouble with the Windows platform and is considering a transition to the Mac platform, in which case Revit would be out of the reckoning. Macs have been relatively uncommon in India until now, but with Apple waking up to realize the enormous potential of the Indian market, the Mac is making an inroad. Total Environment is thus on the verge of making several key decisions along the technology front, and is being closely watched and courted by the reseller community. Being a fast-growing firm that is winning critical acclaim and awards for its architecture, Total Environment stands to become a key poster-boy for the BIM solution it finally chooses to implement.

A Young and Upcoming Architectural Firm

InFORM is a small 10-person architectural firm established in 1997 in Bangalore by two principals, one of whom had worked in Peter Eisenman's firm in New York. The influence of this experience on the work of the firm is unmistakable, with most of the projects incorporating unconventional geometry as shown in the accompanying illustrations (Figure 4). To date, the firm has worked on over 80 projects of diverse building types including private residences, corporate offices, auditoriums, museums and galleries, academic institutions, factories, clubhouses, and health care facilities. It actively participates in design competitions, and recently bagged the winning prize for the prestigious 150000 sq. ft. NAAC (National Accreditation and Assessment Council) campus in a national open competition (see Figure 4). The firm has also been the recipient of two national architectural awards in recent years.

Considering the complex geometries of most of its projects, 3D modeling is critical to InFORM, not just for post-design visualization but for actual design conceptualization. In addition to physical models, the firm relies heavily on the use of form.Z and 3DS Max for digital modeling. While 3DS Max is relatively common in India, as I mentioned in Newsletter #12, INFORM was the only firm I came across that is using form.Z as well. The nature of the projects requires the structural engineer and other consultants to also work with the 3D model, which is sent to them in DWG format for analysis. Once the design has been finalized in 3D, 2D sections are derived from the model and exported to AutoCAD for creating the required 2D documentation needed by the contractors for construction.

InFORM is painfully aware of the inefficiencies of its current process: modeling the design in 3D using a general-purpose 3D modeling software and then creating 2D drawings that have no correlation to the model. Every time a change is made to the design, all the 2D drawings have to be manually updated and a fresh set of drawings has to be printed all over again. The principals are aware of BIM and find the concept appealing as it can bridge the model-drawing divide and potentially eliminate the inefficiencies in their current workflow. However, given their penchant for creating unconventional forms, they are also concerned about the possible design limitations of current BIM applications in restricting the kind of architecture they can create. They do, however, plan to investigate the issue more closely and start on a pilot project soon.

A Design Services Firm

The last firm profiled in this article is a small 5-person design services firm, Alf Design Consultants, based in Pune, a city close to Mumbai that is growing in importance and is seen by many as the next IT destination in India after Bangalore. The firm provides some 2D CAD services but its forte really is rendering and animation, based on its high proficiency with applications such as 3DS Max and Lightscape. I had the opportunity to see some of the animations Alf Design produces, and I was very impressed with the level of detail and the lighting quality. A couple of its rendered images are shown in Figure 5.

Alf Design has clients in India as well as overseas. I found out that competition is stiff in this business. Firms such as these are coming up in increasing numbers and they are constantly attempting to outbid each other by dropping their prices, to the extent that this is not a particularly lucrative business any more. Many of these firms are located in cramped quarters and are working around the clock, almost like sweatshops. Alf Design has found that Indian clients will usually go in for the lowest bid, irrespective of quality, whereas overseas clients are more discerning. But lately, even they are trying to push for lower rates. With the rapid progress of India's economic boom, the standard of living is going up and so is the cost, and there is a limit to how low rates can go. With the lowering of trade barriers around the world, Indian services firms are soon going to face stiff competition for global business, not just locally, but from lower-cost firms located in other countries as well.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to the principals and associates of all the firms covered here, who took the time to talk to me and furnished the images of their works for publication 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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