and welcome back to our lectures on principles of construction management and today is lecture
number two where we will talk about the interdisciplinary nature of modern construction projects traditionally
construction projects were seen to be largely civil engineering projects now its not so
anymore and that is what we will see through an illustrative example of metro construction
now before we get into a discussion on metro construction and the example and the issues
involved and so on lets go over the course once again urban built environment in the
twenty first century is focusing on various infrastructural aspect such as commercial
buildings malls metros airports roads and rails and accordingly modern infrastructure
projects are getting increasingly interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in nature in that they
span several disciplines of engineering so most of our treatment here will be with
the civil engineering bias but we will not try to use a lot of knowledge of technical
civil engineering or the specific of civil engineering but of course we will have to
borrow from civil engineering issues as a manager of these projects a certain level
of awareness and knowledge of diverse issues is required
needless to say depending on the stage of construction of a project the project manager
could be from civil engineering with a civil engineering background or it could be from
a mechanical engineering background or an electrical engineering background and so on
its important to understand that in the construction phase at different points in time different
activities are predominating in the initial parts there is a lot of civil engineering
that goes on as we go along in the project perhaps depending on the nature of the project
mechanical engineering and electrical engineering these kind of issues become more important
so organizations tend to change the project manager from time to time depending on the
expertise similarly or having said that even when civil engineering activities are going
on and the project manager is a civil engineering background person that person should have
a basic understanding of the mechanical and electrical engineering issues and so on so
that is what is the backdrop against which you should try to understand our treatment
of construction projects so now coming to internationally nature of
projects lets take some illustrative examples like metro construction or an automobile plant
or even a transmission line project so if we broadly divide so if we broadly divide
the engineering domains the civil mechanical and electrical of course there could be other
disciplines also involved depending on the nature of the project depending on the stage
in which the project is and so on if its a metro construction there are definitely civil
engineering aspects mechanical engineering aspects and electrical engineering aspects
similarly in an automobile plant once the plant has been commissioned and is in operation
then its not necessarily a great civil engineering operation so its a mechanical engineering
operation with controls electrical engineering software people all these people come into
play as far as management of that operating plant is concerned but at the time of construction
it is largely a civil engineering activity in the case of metro construction however
even during operation the civil engineers continue to play a very important and a vital
role its not only metros but in fact if you think
about it if you look at the railways for that matter you will realize that even in the operating
phase the civil engineers have a very important role but the training and the kind of skills
required is not necessarily those required at the time of construction at the time of
operation you require skills in non destructive testing monitoring repair and so on so the
skills required is different but the background is the same
now if you look at the third example which is sited here the transmission line project
an electrical company can decide to lay a transmission line from point one to point
two there will be electrical engineering issues of course because what kind of power to be
transported what kind of towers to be used what height the towers will be and so on those
are issues which need to be resolved in consultation with the regulatory authorities and so on
but once the electrical part of it is completed the loads and so on are handed over to civil
engineers for structural design and so on there is a construction part where the towers
are erected and once the towers have been erected civil engineers are obviously not
the best people to identify the kind of wires to be used the kind of fabrications to be
done or for that matter the kind of laying of the lines is concerned or substations on
the way the construction of the subways of civil engineering issue but the equipment
that goes into the substation is definitely not civil engineering
so the project manager who manages these projects has to have some understanding of all the
different facets of the project so now getting back to our example which we will deal today
is metros so now if you look at metros we need to break it down it would be easier if
we break down a metro system into components and then try to see what kind of expertise
would be required to manage or to be able to implement a particular part of the construction
so now there are different ways of looking at this breakdown one is to look at what are
the different components in terms of lets say the stations so there are stations where
the metros or the trains they come they stay there for a certain amount of time and therefore
the kind of issues that go into the planning of a metro station would include movement
of passengers coming in and going out the movement of trains coming in and going out
if you look at the planning of stations primarily the issue is movement of passengers embarking
and disembarking and how we will transport them from the outside of the metro area so
if you look at any metro station you are approaching the metro station from an area which is not
really metro so first thing is that the passengers will come into the metro area then they will
come to the platform and take the train on the other side people will disembark from
the train get out of the platform to the station area and then leave the metro area
so one of the parts of planning and construction of stations is the movement of passengers
similarly there is this issue of trains which are coming in and going out there is the related
signaling issues and so on and so forth in both these cases there have to be appropriate
provisions for safety measures or emergencies that may arise so if there is a fire in this
station there have to be emergency evacuation systems in place and so on and that goes into
the planning and construction of stations moving from there there are maintenance yards
where the coaches and the locomotives are maintained that is they are overhauled some
kind of minor repairs are carried out and so on so again if you look at the movement
of trains so the trains move on tracks which are laid on sleepers and the load is then
transferred to the ground so apart from the coaches and the engines everything is basically
a civil engineering domain story whether it is the tracks whether it is a sleepers whether
it is the palace or whatever goes on in transferring the load to the ground
so as far as the maintenance yard is concerned depending on where the maintenance yard is
somebody will tell you that ok this is the length of the trains which need to be parked
so that they can be cleaned but the layout and the civil engineering infrastructure that
goes water supply their removal of waste water from there and so on that remains a civil
engineering domain issue similarly if you look at operations rooms
and offices so there is the need for having operations rooms offices where different people
associated with the metro operations will work from and that has to be again planned
continuing with the story there could be tracks and now if you just pause to think about some
of the metro systems that you may have seen you would realize that the tracks could be
underground or they could be on grade or above grade
now depending on whether the tracks are underground or on grade or above grade different aspects
come into play and as engineers we need to understand the issues so that we are able
to handle them as they come during design or during construction a proper understanding
of all these things helps us plan the system better and ensures that as we go along in
a construction project or in the project of metro construction we do not have to make
sudden changes another way of looking at some of these systems
would be lets try to divide them into similar structures now if you look at similar structures
there could be buildings operations rooms and stations can all qualify as buildings
similarly they would be tracks there would be tunnels if the track is underground will
have make tunnels there would be bridges now bridges can have two functions here one
would be crossing a river or any other obstacle the other way of looking at a bridge would
be all kinds of track which are above grade they could also be looked upon as bridges
in one form or the other so depending on the what view we take these are basically inclusive
of all kinds of above grade structures which are designed to carry the metro above ground
then there is rolling stock which is definitely not a civil engineering story and that consists
of coaches and the locomotives and besides that there are controls and monitoring systems
there is an entire power network which has to be laid down and so on so depending on
which way we break down a particular system we will have a better understanding as to
what is the kind of expertise which is required for executing a project
now execution of the project does not necessarily mean only on site operations if it comes to
rolling stock for example these coaches and locomotives have to be procured when it comes
to buildings or tunnels we need to decide what kind of material we will use and that
decision is also an engineering decision and needs to be taken with proper planning and
technical issues being kept in mind now here is an example of a station and you
can see that apart from the train and the platform there are so many other things which
are a part of the station there are signages which tell people which way to move in case
of an emergency which ways the exit there are signages to tell people how much more
time to the next train there could be signages relating to whether a train will stop at that
station or not what is the next stop for that particular train coming the coming into the
station and so on so all these things need to be properly planned
included in a drawing which is used for communicating among engineers from different walks of life
similarly if you look at a maintenance yard here is a place where you need a lot of water
supply a lot of systems to make sure that certain amount of testing can be carried out
so now here is a maintenance yard where you had need facilities which are required to
maintain the coaches and the locomotives that could include water that could include some
amount of power there that would definitely need some amount of lighting depending on
where that yard is and so on and so forth in operations rooms and offices of course
you need different setup and that needs to be planned when it comes to an underground
track which is essentially a tunnel we have to understand what are the issues that go
into the planning design and construction of a tunnel that would include things like
lighting ventilation emergency communication the kind of slopes that you have to have you
have to make sure that there is no leakage of water from outside into the tunnel what
are the kind of emergency evacuation plans from the tunnel and so on
in fact its sometimes important and required that along with the tunnel we run what is
called a service tunnel which serves as a parking space or which serves as a place where
people who may have to evacuate from a train in the case of an emergency can leave the
tunnel and assemble in a service tunnel the service tunnel also serves as a area through
which service lines such as water and power run in addition to this space within this
tunnels when it comes to an above grade track of course
the situation is more or less similar to that of a bridge and you can see that we have the
standard bridge piers and the slab and so on which is designed for the kind of loads
that is to be carried by the structure so now other components in a metro system would
include power supply signaling ticketing we have to make sure that there is no rush of
people at ticket counters and at places where there are wickets to check the tickets when
the passengers are coming in and the passengers are going out
then there is a very important component of emergency management it could arise on account
of power failures it could arise on account of a terrorist threat and any kind of an unforeseen
event it could arise on account of an accident where a derailment has occurred or where the
trains have collided and so on and so forth apart from these now once we are talking of
these things like i mentioned there are issues related to lighting ventilation communication
air conditioning and power supply besides firefighting all these plans have to be put
in place so that the metro system can be designed now its no single engineers cup of tea to
be able to put together or have all the knowledge that is required for lighting and air conditioning
communication systems and so on so different people come together form a team and carry
out this exercise of planning and designing a metro system it could be stations it could
be the track it could be the control room it could be the maintenance yard and so on
so now coming to the food for thought this is a type two assignment as i said we will
probably not give you a solution because there is no solution to it find out the different
cities in the world with well developed metro systems now in this day and age where information
is not really at a premium you can get information from a lot of sources its easier to find information
the more important issue the trickier part is analyzing that information and using it
to understand the subject matter of the system better
so if we look at places like tokyo or newyork london moscow which have well developed metro
systems now of course we can include delhi in that list if we try to understand look
into the history and find out when were these systems built what was the kind of technical
issues addressed and how that will make us understand the rules of different engineers
better the second question that i want to leave for
you is study the details the metro system in any three cities which could include important
stations in the network delhi may have a certain number of stations if you look at the tokyo
metro network you will find certain number of stations if you look at the newyork metro
system will have a different number of stations and the more the number of stations the more
the number of lines the more complex the system becomes and that makes the planning that much
harder have you ever thought that when we change lines at a particular platform how
do those lines go so for example if you are talking of a line
which connects point a to point b and the line which connects point c to point d how
do these lines actually go as far as their layout is concerned this here as far as the
roads are concerned we can easily have a crossing we can have traffic signals to control whether
the traffic is moving between a and b or the traffics moving c and d and whether the left
turns are allowed right turns are loud and so on and so forth
when it comes to metros those kind of degrees of freedom if you want to call them do not
exist but how do the lines cross the lines will cross means that there have to be tunnels
or it will be a grade separated system and if it is a grade separation what should be
the minimum clearance so these are the kind of things which are technical details we have
to keep in mind when we try to do the layout planning of a metro system
so i would like you to pay special attention when you try to study the metro systems in
different cities as to what are the kind of depths involved in these lines the thumb rule
basically is that if the line is very shallow the line was probably one of the earlier lines
that was built in that system as we moved in time ten years later fifteen years later
we want to add a line and obviously we have to go deeper in the system and that poses
technical challenges which we need to address try to determine the total length of the metro
system try to understand the total number of special structures in that metro system
and try to see what is the average passenger traffic in a day in those metro systems so
that will give you an idea that ok this system is designed to handle a million people at
hundred stations so what is the peak demand so how is the passenger movement being controlled
at different stations in different trains and so on
let me assure you that if you do a thorough literature survey on this or if you look at
some videos which are available for different metro systems you will be able to make
some very interesting observations with this i must repeat the reference books but these
reference books are not really centered on metro construction they are more related to
the course on construction management itself so in fact you will probably have to look
for some material on your own and try to understand the metro systems better
thank you