EXPLAINED| India Holds World Record For Fastest Road Construction, Here’s How The Govt Exceeded Highway Construction Target

The road and transport ministry exceeded its highway construction target for the fiscal year 2021 amid pandemic that disrupted construction activity in the wake of nationwide lockdown during the first quarter.

Union road and transport minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said India holds the world record for fastest road construction. "We made three world records in March. India now holds world record for fastest road construction. We made it to Guinness World Records by building a 2.5 km 4-lane concrete road within 24 hours. We also built 1-lane 25-km bitumen Solapur-Bijapur road within 24 hours," the minister said, reported ANI.

The government managed to exceed its highway construction target for the fiscal year 2021 amid the pandemic that disrupted construction activity in the wake of nationwide lockdown during the first quarter.

What are key achievements?

Around 13,000 km of highways were built in FY21 or 37 km per day. In comparison, the target for 2019-20 was 11,000 km. In February, a world record has been created by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) contractor Patel Infrastructure for laying the highest quantity of concrete on a four-lane highway in just a duration of 24 hours. The other project in which the four-lane stretch of 25.54 km has been developed between Solapur-Vijapur (NH 52) in 18 hours Gadkari said that the pace of highway construction in the country has touched a record 37 km per day in the financial year 2020-21.

The record was set for laying of Pavement Quality Concrete (PQC) for a four-lane highway of 2,580 meters in length within 24 hours.

The work started at 8 am on 1 February 2021, which got over the next day same time in which it succeeded a distance totaling 2,580 meters X 4 lanes i.e. approximately 10.32 lane kilometres. With a width of 18.75 meters, as much an area as 48,711 square meters of concrete was laid for the expressway in 24 hours. The highest quantity of concrete laid in 24 hours – 14,613 cubic meters was laid down. It was part of the greenfield Delhi-Vadodara-Mumbai 8-lane Expressway project.

How did the ministry manage to exceed the target amid covid-led lockdown?

In order to reach the target, the ministry implemented certain measures, which included the transition from a milestone-based billing (typically 45-75 days) to monthly billing. Besides the release of retention money or performance security in relation to the work already executed.

The measure aimed to reduce the cash conversion cycle and pushing the performance guarantees and associated margin monies released for the executed portion of the projects, as per the Mint report.

Besides measures such as bank guarantees for road contractors also helped to maintain steady cash flow, fast-tracking payments, and clearing pending dues, besides ensuring availability of land for road construction projects, aided construction activity.

There were measures to make land available to contractors besides channeling funds, and ensuring timely payments and clearing dues, and facilitating payments to help contractors achieve better cash flow to finish projects on time. Besides, traffic on national highways also reached back to pre-pandemic levels once the lockdown was lifted even as rail and air passenger traffic continued to be sluggish.