A one-day Mega Conclave called ‘Nirman Samvaad’, a first ever interaction between the Ministry of Railways and the Construction Industry concluded here. This Conclave was organized by Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd. (RVNL), a dedicated arm of Ministry of Railways for fast track implementation of railway projects. This Mega Conclave was an initiative taken by Hon’ble Minister of Railways and Coal, Shri Piyush Goyal as a step to streamline procedures and remove bottlenecks to ensure the fast track implementation of projects on the railways. It was a major event aimed at taking measures to ensure expeditious implementation of ambitious Railway Infrastructure Development Plans.
The Conclave was chaired by the Hon’ble Minister of Railways & Coal, Shri Piyush Goyal who had a personal interaction with the participants. The conference was also attended by Chairman Railway Board, Shri Ashwani Lohani and Railway Board Members, Chairman & Managing Director, RVNL, and senior officers from Railway Board, Zonal Railways, CPSEs etc. The event was attended by the top management of 400 construction & consultation companies. During the ‘Samvaad’, 6 representatives from major construction and consultancy companies i.e. M/s KECInternational; Siemens, Larsen & Toubro, Systra MVA Consulting India Private Limited, Tata Projects Limited and Afcons Infrastructure Ltd gave presentations.
The meeting was thrown open and all participants were given opportunity to raise their respective issues and suggest remedies. The highlight of the conclave was a lively interaction session conducted by Hon’ble Minister of Railways. The issues raised covered concerns on contract management, improving cash flows, execution of projects, expediting the inspection of various items to be procured from RDSO approved vendors, adoption of FIDIC documents by Railways, delay in acquisition of land, problems in obtaining licenses of minor minerals, suggestions for reducing the time and cost over-run, expediting the payments of the contractors, risk sharing between the employer and the contractor, increased requirement of training of technical manpower, availability of traffic and power blocks, proper estimation of quantities at the time of inviting tenders were discussed.
Minister of Railways gave directions that the suggestions made by the participants should be followed up and necessary changes in the systems and procedures be made to ensure that the pace of project execution is improved to implement the Ministry’s ambitious investment programme.
Backgrounder:-
Ministry of Railways has ambitious plans for development of Rail infrastructure to meet the ever increasing transport needs of the nation and a huge investment in this sector has been planned. The main focus is on:-
- The pace of augmentation of railway network needs a quantum jump. The speed of execution of doubling/tripling and quadrupling which is about 800 kms per annum for the last 5 years, needs to be accelerated 2 to 3 times to meet the increasing demand.
- Completion of electrification of the full rail network in the next 3 to 5 years. So far out of 63000 RKM, 25201 RKM have been commissioned on electric traction till 31st March 2017. The average pace during last five years is about 1300 RKMs per annum which needs to be increased by 6 to 8 times to electrify remaining 38000 RKMs to meet the ambition of complete electrification.
- Taking up of Hill Rail Projects, including Rishikesh – Karanprayag, Char Dham rail connectivity, Bhanupalli – Bilaspur and on to Leh.
- Completion of ongoing and proposed Dedicated Freight Corridors.
- Mumbai- Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor and other projects on Diamond Quadrilateral to link the major Metropolitan Cities.