NHAI becomes first construction sector organisation to go 'fully digital'

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has become the first of its kind in the construction sector to go fully digital. With the launch of cloud-based and artificial intelligence-powered big data analytics platform Data Lake and Project Management Software, the entire project management workflow of NHAI has been transformed from manual to the online.

New Delhi: In view of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on Friday said it has gone fully digital with cloud-based 'Data Lake Software', becoming the first such construction sector organisation.

With advance analytics, the 'Data Lake' software will forecast the delays, likely disputes and give advance alerts, thus expediting the decision making. At the same time, the software will facilitate in taking correct and timely decisions as the system is likely to predict financial impacts of different alternatives based on the historical data.

"As one of the biggest reforms, the NHAI has gone 'fully digital', with the launch of unique cloud-based and artificial intelligence-powered big data analytics platform Data Lake and Project Management Software," it said.

The entire project management workflow of NHAI is transformed from manual to the online portal based, wherein the complete project execution operations including 'workflow with timelines' and 'alert mechanism' have been configured, the authority said adding, all project documentation, contractual decisions and approvals are now being done through the portal only.

NHAI said it has a history of having a large number of arbitration cases pending with huge amount of claims and counterclaims.

Majority of the disputes are generic in nature like delay in handing over of encumbrance free site, shifting of utilities, idling charges of plant, machinery, equipment, manpower and delay in decisions etc.

It said these disputes can be minimised as the 'Data Lake' software has provisions to keep track and check on all these constraints and will ensure work is carried out within the deadlines in a transparent manner.

As all processes are going to be portal-based, decision-making is going to be faster and will eventually diminish chances of litigation in future, it said.

Under the software, the complete project documents and correspondences will be stored in digital format in the cloud-based 'Data Lake' linked with GIS tagging and Unique Project ID, so that the project data can be easily retrieved as and when required from any location.

All stakeholders of the NHAI, including contractors, consultants and independent engineers, have already started using it extensively, the authority said.

NHAI's e-Office module is also integrated into the system so that all correspondences can flow digitally in a secured manner from field units to headquarters seamlessly.

In the current COVID-19 scenario, when most of the organisations are facing serious challenges in working, NHAI employees are continuing their works undeterred and happily without any fear of physical contacts and touching of physical files, it said, and added that rather lockdown period was used to train its employees about using 'Data Lake'.

(With inputs from ANI and PTI)