– Pothiyath Sukumaran Nair, Joint President, HAPBCO
What is the set up and business of your company?
HAPBCO is a 60-year-old company and was constituted by late Hajee AP Bava with first project in KCP Cements Ltd, Macherla in the year 1947. Thereafter, the company never looked back. Currently, the company has four regional offices working. Champion of company, Hajee AP Bava passed away in 2010. The company has a fully professionalised and strong business ethics, which are never compromised. Quality, skill and safety have been priorities of the company.What is the company’s business?
The company was initially started with cement projects fabrication, erection and commissioning. In the last 10 years, the company has undergone sea change. The team has expanded to 400 staff and over 15,000 workmen, and has diversified into refinery, fertilizer, zinc plants, and most importantly, renewable energy like setting up solar power projects.
In last 3-4 years, a new system has been introduced called WHRS (Waste Heat Recovery System) in almost 15 cement plants, recently like My Home Cement, J.K. Lakshmi, Emami Cement and UltraTech. WHRS converts waste heat from calciners and coolers to steam generation and then power (energy), which economises the cement production cost.
We have safely installed more than 25 boilers at various cement plants. Recently, the company has also installed 2 x 25 MW heat recovery system boilers at Rashtriya Chemical Fertilizer at Alibaug, Thal in Maharashtra.Besides erection and fabrication, what are the other businesses of HAPBCO?
Operation and maintenance: Besides taking up turnkey projects of setting up integrated plants, the company has been awarded with operation and maintenance contracts by many cement plants. This not only reduces the downtime, but also improves the life of equipment of the plants as our preventive maintenance quality is very effective.What is the infrastructure you have?
With the passage of time, HAPBCO is fully-equipped with cranes, heavy lifts, hydra machine, chain pulley blocks, tools and tackles and micro alignment equipment. All capacity heavy cranes (50MT to 800MT) hydra, motorised winch, alignment equipment, plenty of welding and fitting tools in our all regional stores are all available any time.How important is safety and quality in project execution?
Both are very important components, because in project execution, workers work day and night and on heights. HAPBCO is an ISO-9001 certified company.
To ensure quality, we have a quality policy to be executed by well qualified and experienced engineer’s QCD team. HAPBCO, being an ISO-18001 certified company, ensures safety on all sites with regular training and safety regulating system ensuring unfailing use of PPEs and work permit system. We have been honored with best safety standard citation from all our clients.
ERP system: All functions of the company are monitored by ERP system with periodical audit.What is future vision of HAPBCO?
As per Nair, the company is visualising to be the world’s premise engineering construction company, delivering projects and services to a global marketplace. We also are establishing our own workshops for keeping regular use items ready for installation.How do you plan to meet the growing competition in your business?
We already have overseas projects and have plans to expand global business. To meet the local competition, we ensure that projects are being done with utmost safety and quality while executing the projects.
Recently in Udaipur Cement Works, while commissioning a 8 km-long OLBC (Over Land Belt Conveyor) for the first time crossing national highway, HAPBCO used two cranes together to erect the conveyor gallery on columns, which is very rare skill applied by any engineering company.
In UltraTech (Vikram Cement), HAPBCO erected and commissioned a 3 km long OLBC curved conveyor, which is rare most.
Nair dealt with business diversification from cement and steel business. HAPBCO has completed projects in CPP and recently took Up Adani Solar Power Projects (3 x 20 MW) in Karnataka. The first phase has already been commissioned and remaining are in progress.What future you envisage for fabrication and construction company’s role in Indian industry?
Nair opined as per IMF, India is to grow with 7.6 per cent GDP. This means that industry will come up either with greenfield projects or expansion. Even five year plan of Government of India has ambitious infrastructure development plan, where contracting companies shall play a pivotal role. The company having adequate resource availability will have an edge over others. HAPBCO, being one of the oldest company, has sufficient resources to meet its resource requirement.What is the compatibility of HAPBCO human resource?
The company has a full fledged HR department having richly experienced senior executives of industry. Regularly training and development programmes are conducted for skill and attitudinal improvement. Talent acquisition is regular process of the company. For future needs, the company engage fresh GETs/MTs and train them up to take up new assignments in the company. All projects are headed by very senior HAPBCO executives who are with company since long many years and have been groomed in HAPBCO culture.How to make project execution cost effective?
Idle time and non-utilisation of manpower in lifting, transporting, and engaged equipments for want of prerequisite material, land, drawings and machines to be installed should be avoided. Many times, the government statutory clearance also delays the project and increase cost of execution. Rework is another problem which should be avoided by maintaining quality work.
(Communication by the management of the company)