Economy & Market

Change is the only constant in life, but….

Published

6 years ago

January 10, 2020

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Life is all about change, management schools run special courses on "Change", change is synonymous with progress, those who cannot adapt to the fast changing world are expected to perish, and this is true for individuals like us, for organisations, and for countries and nations as well. In fact, it has become an oft-repeated adage that "Change is the only Constant in Life"! Specially, in the last 20 years, with the advent of digital revolution in the world, change has accelerated in our lives, and also all around us, and we are having to accept and adapt continuously.

Personally, we do not like things to remain static, and love to have new and new things all the time in place of old, like new books, new movies, new clothes, new friends, new food, new places, everything new. But, at another plane, when it comes to internally changing ourselves to accept and learn new ways of doing things, for example new business processes, we resist change and tend to cling to traditions and established practices. In short, we want everything to renew and change, excepting ourselves. "Change" is a very interesting topic, it can be quite complex particularly when we transgress into behavioural aspects of change, and volumes have been, and will be written on it.

What about "change" in the context of project management? Good project managers dislike changes in the execution phase of projects. Truly, any amount of discussion and debate on changes in scope of a project is good in the planning phase, because it helps integrate the expectations of all stakeholders. But once the project execution commences, with tight accountability on time and cost of completion, we should avoid the propensity of making frequent changes in scope. In fact, in an ideal world, changes should be banned after the zero date has passed, but this cannot be implemented in actuality, because sometimes disruptive changes in technology, market, community, etc., taking place after the project has started, makes it an imperative to consider corresponding and commensurate changes in scope of the project. Therefore, we in project management parlance have designed rigorous processes for "change management", to deal with such eventualities.

Over the years, change management in projects has become a large subject, dealing with the process of initiating, recording, considering, analyzing, and approving all kinds of changes in the context of a project, small and big, be they in the areas of scope, financing, project team, implementation strategy, articulation of deliverables, contracts, et al. Professional project managers deploy very robust change management Processes to ensure that only the very deserving "changes" pass through the gate, and even if they do, these are well-documented for posterity. To refuse to even consider any change at all, can turn out to be wrong (in exceptional cases) when a great technological or market opportunity would be lost for such dogged refusal. Hence, the need for an elaborate process for change management is fully justified.

During my days in project management, we used to be very sensitive about changes. I always believed that the easiest way to filter changes proposed, was to evaluate financially (and otherwise) the benefits of the proposed change, and weigh that against its possible quantified impact on time and cost overruns, (both over the life-cycle of the project) and then take an objective decision in the interest of the stakeholders. This is nothing but simply the age old "cost-benefit analysis"! Believe me, all such numbers can be computed in all situations, with some assumptions/approximations needed on some occasions! But in all cases, we used to clearly record impact of such changes for all round awareness and to maintain a balanced perspective.

In one cement project we were doing, a very good suggestion came halfway through the project, that a few months can be saved if we were to switch to a slip-form concrete design of the pre-heater tower; as some of us will know, construction of the pre-heater is the critical path of a cement project, and three months saved there is equivalent to pruning three months form project time duration. We quickly went through the presentations by prospective contractors, and did our math on that basis, and found that these options will cost higher, but will save more in terms of time. But we felt that the difference, i.e., the net benefit to the project, was not significant enough to adopt a relatively untried methodology having some downside risks and uncertainties. However, we made it a point to capture our considerations in the form of a short report, such that in future the same technology may be reconsidered, with due preparations to manage the uncertainties. I cited this example here to communicate that it is important to consider changes proposed, but it is more important to consider the same objectively, keeping aside emotions and biases, relying on numbers.

All the examples that we broached in one of the earlier issues, on political interferences in projects, are actually major changes brought about into projects at a late stage, without adequate objective consideration, without application of any change management "gate" or processes. As we know by now, this has grievous consequences on viability of the project(s), and ultimately the stakeholders have to pay for such follies, knowingly or unknowingly. Our dismal history of public governance bears mute testimony to this painful reality.

When will this "change"? Who will "change" this malady? While we wait, as project managers, let us be sure to apply rigorous change management filters for our project. And, may be, extend this concept of evaluation also to"changes" that confront us in our lives, our jobs, our environments.

– SUMIT BANERJEE

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

4 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.