JnNURM, the Holistic Urban Developmental Approach – Main Driver of Trenchless Techniques in India

I started writing this editorial on board the flight from Bangalore to New Delhi where IndSTT had organized the second Initiation meeting for the Working Group for developing Standards and specifications of Trenchless Techniques and a Pipe Bursting and HDD for Water and Sewer sector workshop. Both the events (First in New Delhi and Second in Bangalore) were quite successful with participation levels of 200 and 175 respectively and hugely interactive question and answer sessions. Out of these quite a few were exposed to pipe bursting first time and the successful display convinced them about the usefulness of this technique in meeting pipeline renewal challenges difficult urban settings.

While pondering about the cause of such good delegate turnout it occurred that Basic Services to Urban Poor component of JnNURM, which requires water supply and sewer disposal projects, is one of the primary drivers of such delegate show for a long time to come. With humongous sums of money committed for this mission a chance is available to the nation to develop the best of trenchless techniques and operating system through the mission related projects activities.

Generally, in past, the subsurface network development or renewal projects were undertaken on a selective basis where the owner agency was concerned only about the asset under development. They would not look at the state and quality retention of other urban assets leading to mismatched urban developments. More and more projects were being undertaken by open cut methods. The alternative to open cuts is Trenchless which earlier had a difficulty in India since the region has a low wage economy leading to competitive advantage to open cuts due to lesser direct costs. With the changed scenario, where the Holistic Urban Development approach is being adopted, Trenchless Techniques can provide an economic alternative to open cuts.

Under JnNURM the nation has the possibilities to get the holistic urban development process as situations are getting created where one will have to evolve and alter the way of working as it is impossible to follow the older subjective working doctrine of open cuts. If you make an open cut to develop or maintain a subsurface network, you will tend to damage another set of above ground infrastructure. Now since both are part of the same urban setting, one would be forced to evaluate and estimate the complete project costs (Costs for the actual project as well as cost of rectifications of other services) in place of working in isolation. So we have established the demand for Trenchless now let us look at the supply part of the system.

It was 2nd December 2005 when I was compiling an article on JnNURM. It may be recalled that it was launched on 3rd December 2005 by our Hon’ble Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to give focused attention to integrated development of urban infrastructure and services in select 63 cities with emphasis on provision of basic services to the urban poor including housing, water supply, sanitation, road network, urban transport development of inner (old) city areas etc. A look at the City Development Plans can tell one that, at times, there is no other choice available than executing the projects through Trenchless Techniques.

A major issue raised in that article was application of Trenchless in JnNURM projects. This article was published in the Dec 2005 issue of NDI. Statistics show that today after one and a half years later, over 350 projects totaling about Rs. 26,500 crores have been sanctioned under this mission. A substantial number of these projects have been sanctioned for projects where Trenchless Technology can play a vital role. But the present capacity of TT service providing agencies in the nation leaves much to be desired. If you still have a copy of that issue of NDI, I would like you to have a look. This is one of the few of the predictions made then which have come true today.

Water supply or sewer lines in older areas, a major component of the mission, requires use of Trenchless techniques to the hilt but the capacity constrains are forcing the projects to be delayed inordinately. We have project execution agencies loaded with Trenchless requirements, dedicated funds to execute them, desires of city managers to complete these projects, but we do not have enough capacity to do this.

There are several tell-a-tale signs of this situation. Evidences are the No Dig India Seminar we had organized on 28th and 29th March 07 and the series of working group initiation meetings where a substantial number of participants are turning up as all realize that they need to do the job but the site conditions and low levels of technology sensitization, dearth of Standards and specifications are stifling the work progress.

Call of the time is that if wish to have a properly developed Trenchless Industry in this region, we need suitable equipment, manpower, materials & consumables, technical inputs available to meet the demand. IndSTT is endeavouring in that directions and one of the primary actions of sensitization is through these events and publications.

In your hands you have the July issue of No Dig India where some details are provided to the readers on the technology front. Two of the articles in that direction are Guidelines for the Application of Pipe Bursting and Replacement of Drains and Sewers by means of Pipe Bursting which details of working systems related to Pipe Bursting Technique. Another one is Steel Sheet Piling where the reader is informed about the basics of Sheet Piling. Quality issues in HDD should play a major role in that direction we have invited an article Quality Assurance Systems for Large-Calibre Horizontal Bores where the alignment controls for HDD are discussed. There are several case studies which will provide the readers insight about the difficulties the stakeholders faced and their remedial measures they had taken. The intent is to sensitise the readers about these and prepare them to use lateral thinking process in overcoming their problems. One of the notable articles is the Case study dealing with Installation of Gravity Flow Sewer System in Rampur using HDD. It is expected that these would be helpful to the readers. In addition the regular developments have been discussed in various articles.

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