Is this the fate of concrete jungles?????

comment allez-vous?

look at the love of masonry and r/f internal column,

almost saying:"you shed your clothes,so i have shed mine too"

a typical beam-colum junction:speechless!

tell the researchers to vote for such marvels rather than taj

for the wonders of the modern world!

look at those R.S.J's placed!

one places a hand on a girls shoulder more firmly than this!

exposed rebars of an external beam,cracking
gimmicks seen as well.
spalling of concrete.

the exposed rebars of R.C.C slab
the rebars are corroded,the concrete cover is lost!

cracking of concrete slab due to distress

and tension beyond the assumed design limits.

the louvered window and masonry junction detailing

poor junctioning of R.C.C beam and masonry.

poor control over water seepage

is it LOVE?,no its DOVELY RUSTING!
corrosion stains emerging on concrete surface!

impropre methods of treating the exposed columns with epoxy and aggregate
repair or retear?

Yeh Kahan Jaa rahe Hain Hum......??

my dear friends and lovers of the fraternity and industry of construction technology,the above

pictographic photographs are semblances and eptomies of the ignorance as well as carelessness that we have been giving the industry for so many decades.unfortunately,we are proud to be still associated with this industry who begets bread and butter for us and in return demands nothing but a secure,durable and safe future from our so called skills like designing and constructing.

Laymen entrust so much of blind belief in us and invest the entire lifespan of their earnings in what they call a home and we address as a scheme! the difference is not just in the way of addressal but also approach and thinking.would we live in such a structure which is distressed within 40 years of its life?

No,we wont and we have to understand for ourselves that they wont as well!

The strength and life of good quality,non-reactive aggregate is about 75 years.considering what we learn through "rangwala's engineering and building materials" or "chudley and berry's non-sensible treatise on construction technology' (we use these only for drafting right angled junctions and double-flemish bonds at various plans,leaving it there in five years of bookish development) that concrete gets all its strength from aggregates and cement is just a binder in a situation where water is the hydration activator,the inference that one makes is that structural durabilty of a well-built,unadultrated structure is anything more than 60 years.

Agreed,that we cannot control certain catastrophic factors of failure which are non-man-made but we can definitely assure that the structure does not fail due to failure of rebars,or weakening of concrete covers,bad anchoring of foundations into the strata.....can we not??

Why are there more than 55% of the structures who loose their faith to the fate of repairs (hoping that atleast they encorage proper retrofit and breathe some life into the longetivity of the usable life of a structure) in the first 20 years of their birth?

To sound politically correct we either avoid commenting or play the blame game.

But,think about this: "The blame game is a game of soccer,you throw,the mud splashes with the ball on you as well.if you are the kicker now,no sooner would you enjoy the seat of goal keeper".

instead,why dont we as a team bridge the gap between and work towards building a whole nation of better built infrastructure rather than one money churning township? i have enrolled myself to this genre,are you with me?

answer for yourself,the earlier the batter!!!

reflections....

its been really long since i have had blogged, not that there are many readers complaining about it,anyways,i do it for myself and not for unpredictable and unbankable readers.

last few days have been full of retro-mood, catching up with books, meeting old pals and professors etc.
pendant this fortnight, i was awakened to a new side of me, which is that i am also an architect and so i must blog soemthing techno or since i m into arbitration about techno-legal stuff!

but, apart from that i m also doing construction management, which is more of management oriented course than hard core construction related.

management is very manadatory and it requires an integrated approach towards practice of various management functions like direct, organize, control, plan,communicate. co-ordinate,monitor, motivate,and initilaize as well.

a professor often repeats a famous quote to us that " a good manager is not the one who does great things, he is the one who makes great things simpler and has the ability to get work done. a manager must be a live symbiosis of intelligence, performance, sincerity, efficiency and dicatorship! he should always be able to produce better in quantity and quality that what is expected of him".

ahem,,sounds wierdo???
how many of us apply these logics after we move out of the management school and run a business?
or to put it other way round, if not in business, how many start application of these functions of management in personal life while we are studying itself?
may be the % of such great people is really too less in comparison to the ones who dont apply.

people over the years take things for granted, take people for a self-convenient consideration, just to ignore that these same people had studied team-work and taking the co-ordination of the complete team in their Koontz.

there are times when one needs to systematize the scheduling of ones life with perseverence, control and directions, but if that be the case why do people forget it when they destroy their life in the arms of addictions?
one great guy said somewhere that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail,but then why the so called gen-next is so blank when asked about their plans for the future, what does one do?
may be they can answer on what they want to do, but what about how, when and where?
arent these questions vital enough?

i personally believe that if you dream big there is no harm, but dream a dream that you can achieve in stages and thats possible with planning and management.

many of my colleagues are in their mid 30's or 20's but they absolutely have no focus!
some girls who are married and have children say that we cant think beyond our family, now that we are married while men say that we just want to earn more and keep chasing a better life illusive notion all their life.
is this what our education has induced us to become?
to become into money churning machines with absolutely no time for our job satisfaction?
no wonder, the corruption and mal practices in the industry are in boom.

i understand that no one can be a perfect planner, even a good PM can lag behind with his activities scheduled when he has to surrender to catastrophic failures.
but, all that we learn in planning and scheduling is only to provide back ups at the right time so that even in case of a migranatic failure in and around the area of work,the work can be started in lesser lag than when in not planned situations.

"charity begins at home", and so does management.

we admire L.N.Mittal.azem premji, mr.murthy and bill gates. all of them had planned their professional life with enough redos and replays of struggled periods in their life.thats the thing to be taken.

the whole point is that "we" as humans have lost humanity which is the basic of any management school.
people say that the classical style of management is outdated and needs to be replaced with open door and free participation concepts.but do we really know that this is quite much bookish?
most of the biggies (family run businesses) run on monarchial basis.

nothing wrong in it, but it is leading to ego wars when there are more than 2 heirs to the throne.this shows lack of apllication of management concepts from people who have done their MBA's from harvard and michigan, need to give the universties a wake up alarm!

in a country like india where construction industry is the second largest after asgriculture needs to managed in a meticulous way, but unfortunately there are very few companies like L& T who are so particular about on site activity scheduling and resource management.

we need visionaries, not mere managers. we need a JRD not a ness wadia sporting his girlfriend more than his ability to take take india at a higher podium with his financial powers atleast if not the intellectual fortes.
btw,when can a manager be a visionary?

when he starts to conceptualize beyond the restraints of "his rewards" for the sevices he offers. he will atleast show an urge to raise somewhere in a crowd.

i read lot of articles on how a site must be managed, but working in a techno-leagal firm gives me a perspective to look at the other side of lack of proper application of principles of management and discharge of its funtions.

most of the projects are stalled due to lack of co-ordination and communication.
and here we are, shouting at the top of our voice as project managers flashing our degrees!
whats the use?

as managers we tend to forget that we also have to negotiate and act as quasi-concilliators to bring about a smooth sail of the ship called " project".
so, my dear cell of manager's 2k6 wake up!
try and be not like the typical vexing managers!

TFC