Sandeep Choudhary

#FabTalk Glaze Tecno India, a 35 years old contracting firm of repute based out of Mumbai and New Delhi, has done a plethora of top-class facade installations for prestigious corporate and government projects across India. Mr. Sandeep Choudhary, Director, Glaze Tecno India Following are excerpts of an interview with Mr. Sandeep Choudhary, one of the Directors of the firm: On the scope of façade materials in Government projects The Government projects come up mainly in the underdeveloped areas. Like in the eastern part of the country there will be a huge scope in another 3 to 5 years. For, you will have airports, IITs, IIMs, and other institutional buildings coming up. Recently, for instance, we have worked for IIT Patna. And unlike the old Government buildings, the new ones coming up are going to have extensive building envelope or curtain wall related works. So there is a huge scope in Government projects in the coming days. On quality concerns about ACP ACP is being used rampantly today, and sometimes I feel that at many places it is getting used where it shouldn’t be used. This is because there are many cheap and low-quality brands available today, have powder coating instead of PVDF coating and the like. To a great extent, ACP is getting misused. Survival concerns drive many brands to be more cost-competitive, thereby compromising the material's quality. Thus, the image of the product is taking a beating. Buildings barely 5 years old become shabby. It’s a lovely product, enabling easy installation and so on. So brands like yours should maintain their quality and give the correct information to people. You should also cater to a reputed clientele who value quality so that good quality jobs can be done with good quality products. On the kind of support expected of a façade consultant I do welcome the presence of façade consultants. But as you always say, every coin has two sides, and the same applies to façade consultants. Façade consultants should ideally guide and help the contractors rather than just doing a policing job. A well-done project results from good teamwork between the client, the architect, the façade consultant and the contractor. Nobody should indulge in a blame game. There are a few consultants today who are really good, have the right approach to a project, and are not bothered by who the contractor is. A consultant should guide the contractor about things which he is not aware of, for every day is a learning day. I can’t necessarily know everything, and so does the consultant. So we should work with the spirit of cooperation and teamwork, learning from each other when required. A contractor’s job has to do with the management of resources. From our experience of working in 16 states, we know how big a problem is the accumulation of resources. And execution, in many cases, is a nightmare. Different parts of the country offer different kinds of challenges. There are local problems. Transportation is a huge problem. And then, there are problems regarding taxation as well, which varies from state to state. A façade association can help. I believe there should be a sort of façade association which should comprise region wise manufacturers, suppliers, and fabricators. And there should be a sort of categorization among the members based on their capacity, knowledge, and experience so that the right person gets the right kind of job to do. For instance, a project worth Rs.20 crore should only go to someone who knows what the job entails, and has the experience and knowledge to handle it properly taking into consideration all the pros and cons. Someone who lacks the expertise and doesn’t know the scope of the work will try to grab the deal by quoting way below a viable price, and will thereby ruin the quality of the project eventually. On architectural designs getting more challenging by the day We welcome that. A deviation from the matchbox kind of structure is always preferred. We have been fortunate to do many prestigious buildings since we do a lot of Government and Corporate projects. Challenging designs are welcome but the proper execution of that depends on whether you have a capable design team, whether you have good structural consultants who have the expertise to meet the design demand and so on. We have done quite a lot of challenging projects. CBI Headquarters in Delhi was extremely challenging. It is a slanted building in a cut cone shape, standing 78 metres tall. The 8000 sq. m. of ACP used in that was used as an MS structure to form a band or a ‘C’ which goes across the facade, right from 78 metres height, through the bottom of the building. Before that, we had done the Airtel project at Chandigarh back in 2007-8, where you can see the shape of ‘A’ everywhere, on the elevation, on the section and so on. The ACP was bent 680 to work out the fascia, which was again quite challenging. We also did the 125-metre high Infinity Benchmark building in Kolkata. On how quality issues can be addressed I wish we had a façade engineering course. There should be façade engineers, civil engineers, structural engineers, and so on. People have yet to realize that facade is a specialized job. Going by the arbitrary yardstick of the number of years put in by someone is not enough. This leaves the room open for those who know even a little bit about façade taking advantage of the ignorance of others, which is, of course, not the right attitude. There’s some awareness in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi and a little bit in Kolkata etc. But there are so many huge projects happening and coming up in the small MPV towns where everything is executed arbitrarily, and the clients are taken for a ride. Interior grade ACP sheets get used for exterior application and vice versa. Quality is compromised at will. So I do feel that there should be an association or a kind of watchdog that surveys the façade jobs across India every year. Manufacturers should also take the onus of going to the site and finding out if their products are getting appropriately installed or not. For, you know, a façade is not like selling soap or beauty products. It is like selling your face.

Sandeep Choudhary

The Adorner: Architectural Designs Getting Challenging by the Day