Abhishek Kumar_Transport Engineering_ProjectsMonitorAbhishek Kumar, Director of Ayoleeza Consultants Pvt. Ltd, has more than 11 years experience in various fields of civil engineering from consultancy to design to quality control at different stages of construction. He also has considerable exposure in rural road projects.

From the day he completed his B.E. (Civil) from Pune University and M.Sc. in Transport Engineering from B.R. Ambedkar University, Bihar, Kumar has been involved in the geometrical design of horizontal and vertical road alignment; pavement design of rural roads; preparation of detailed project reports for national highways and rural road projects; and exposure to quantity estimate and rate analysis of all types of road works.
Abhishek Kumar’s wide experience in construction supervision of World Bank-funded road projects brought him in contact with a diverse group of engineers and surveyors from whom he learnt planning, coordinating and executing traffic surveys, including O-D survey and analysing and interpreting the data so obtained from site to forecast future traffic.

As a project coordinator, Kumar has been involved in consultancy services for supervision of civil works for Bihta-Sarmera Road (SH-78) under BSHP-II (ADB funded) and for Madhya Pradesh State Road Project-III (Package 2, Jabalpur) [ADB-funded], both FIDIC contracts.

Commenting on the slow progress of works in the road sector, Abhishek Kumar told Projectmonitor, “The factors responsible for slow progress of national and state highways, MDR, ODR and rural road projects include delay in land acquisition, shifting of utilities, obtaining environment and forest clearances and railway approvals, poor performance of contractors, and law and order problems in most of the states. The most obvious answer can be attributed to India’s democratic political fabric that makes it quite difficult for aggressive policymaking and implementation.”

According to Abhishek Kumar, the steps necessary for smooth implementation of projects are removing the bottlenecks and accelerating the pace of construction of various projects which include setting up regional offices by clients headed by chief general managers with adequate delegation of powers and setting up high-powered committees under the chairmanship of state chief secretaries to resolve the bottlenecks relating to shifting of utilities, environment issues etc. Further, all projects are to be closely monitored and periodically reviewed at headquarters as well as the field units for expeditious completion, he stated.

“The government should reward on-time execution and punish delays. This could also necessitate some bold measures in terms of people-friendly land acquisition policies,” Kumar said. “More importantly, successive governments should ensure the momentum is continued in the nation’s interest.”

Abhishek Kumar is a member of Indian Road Congress, Indian Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers, Consulting Engineers Association of India and Institution of Engineers, and has carried out foreign assignments too. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D in Environmental Science and Engineering at BIT MESRA, Ranchi, in Jharkhand.


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