SUBMISSION 1: THERLI KRISHNA PRIYA
PART A
1) INDIAN ARCHITECT’S ACT 1972
a) Clause 25 (b) : Qualification for entry in register:- Under this, a professional who does not hold a “qualification”(read education and/or expertise in architectural studies) but has engaged in “architectural practises” for more than 5 years can be registered as a member of the architectural fraternity. It is absurd in theory to justify, and the time-frame used to define moreover so.
b) Clause 15: Under this, the Council has been given the responsibility to enlist the colleges/universities abroad and recognize the architectural qualifications offered. They are entitled to negotiate and make arrangements with the foreign nations to facilitate the same. Even then, limited countries and their institutes are recognized. In the time of rapid globalisation and developing technology, it is required by the Council to recognize more of these universities, and also to provide the information in a platform accessible to all.
c) Miscellaneous comments:
i) “That graduates of architecture will be required to have completed at least 2 years of acceptable experience/training/internship prior to registration/licensing/certification to practice as an architect (but with the objective of working towards 3 years) while allowing flexibility for equivalency.” This evidently isn’t in tune with the Indian Education system. Are we not supposed to match with the international standards?
ii) Where is the law mentioned for Indian Architects to comply with the UIA?
iii) All the competition entries are exhibited for public perusal for a week. Why can’t something similar be exercised for public tenders too?
iv) Under COA’s Design Competition Guidelines, all partners of a firm are to be registered with the COA. Is it really put to practise? How do multidisciplinary firms work?
v) What is the role of Professional Advisor?
vi) In Architectural competitions and tenders, whose anonymity is more justified: competitors or jury?
2) TENDERS
a) REOI for Preparation of Proposal for Assisting Cities to Participate in the Smart Cities Challenge
The applicants shall be either a single business entity or a consortium of business entities (maximum 3). Foreign companies are also eligible, in lieu with Companies Act 1956.
Clause 2.7. (a) Right to Accept or Reject any of the Applications is unfeasible when it talks of accepting or rejecting any application at any time without assigning any reasons thereof and without any obligation.
Clause 2.16(b) reserves the right to utilise the services of consultant/s or advisor/s to assist in the examination, evaluation and comparison of application, whose description of duty is not mentioned anywhere.
Clause 2.22.(b), (c), (d). Specific qualifications and experience data for the key personnel as well as the consultancies are detailed out. The evaluation criterion is on the basis of organisational/staff strength, understanding of scope with approach and methodology, relevant experience of applicant/company (important) and qualification and experience of key personnel (maximum).
b) RFP Consultancy Services for Preparation of Concept Master Plan and Revised Detailed Master Plan For 1579.64 sqkm in CRDA Region
High standards of eligibility criteria are ensured, keeping into consideration the “experience” and “turnover”. JV’s are encouraged with any company with a registered office in India whose combined credentials will be used for qualification. In case of sub-contractors venturing along with firms, no credential of the sub-contractor will be used since they’d be only seen as a consulting company of the Lead company. Experience of the firm in terms of Regional Plans, city master plans and urban infrastructure is taken under eligibility criterion. Key personals with positions team leader+urban planner, project manager+planner, socio-economic development specialist, transportation planner, water supply and sewerage system specialist, solid waste management specialist, environmental specialist, housing and real estate development specialist, conservation and heritage specialist, disaster management expert, financial analyst, and GIS engineers are required.
Specific qualification of positions such as Team Leader is asked to have “Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from accredited college/university. Such criterion leaves me baffled since the course is limited to only one or two colleges in India.
c) RFP for appointment of Architectural and Design Consultancy firms empanelled with USIDCL for providing consultancy services for Design and Planning for Construction of Uttarakhand Space Application Center(USAC), Dehradun
Appointment of consultant for the project by USIDCL is mentioned to be via single source selection system. Under clause 3.4.11, “The USIDCL is not bound to accept any of the proposals submitted and reserves the right to reject any or all proposals without assigning any reasons thereof.” The evaluation of bids in the technical bit is via master planning, design concept planning and presentation, where the concept planning has the highest weightage. Only when 60/ 100 in achieved in technical bid, financial bid would be opened.
Comments:
· Most of the qualification criteria listed out disables veteran institutions to take part in the significant national projects.
· Collective development where all institutions of the country are involved in major projects is missing. Consultancy for project management and technology can be outsourced but planning and design could be put up as competitions for best outcome.
· Focus on international commissioning of national projects is evident.
· Transparency in selection procedure of each company/firm/consortium must be presented.
· Professional advisor’s role MUST be defined.
· A proper format of tender must be formalised.
3) ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITION
a) Bamiyan Cultural Centre
The competition carried out in compliance with UNESCO-UIA was an open one-staged competition. The eligibility criteria lodged architects, engineers, designers and students as individuals, companies or joint ventures. The only requirement being one of the team member had to be a licensed or a registered architect, which makes sense. The jury was panelled with 7 members out of which 5 were architects by profession and other two were special advisor of ICCROM and British Museum Curator. The qualifications of jury selected was careful which included Dean of Architectural School, Architect of AGA, Architects dealing with Urban issues of Afghanistan and an international architect. The selection was based on design requirements provided in the brief, voted by 7 the jury members where the competitors were kept anonymous. Also, exhibition of all entries in an online portal is maintained.
b) Nalanda University Campus
Similar to Bamiyan Cultural Centre Competition in genre, Competition for Nalanda University Campus was a single stage competition. But this competition had a prequalification criteria. The competition had a Selection Committee to evaluate for the prequalification of the participants. This committee consisted of 1. Vice Chancellor- Chairperson, 2. ADG(Architecture) CPWD, 3.CEPT Faculty 4. Architect. This competition disallowed Registered Companies and LLPs from participation along with foreign architects/firms who are not registered with COA. Joint ventures within national and international firms were encouraged for exposure and to get through pre-qualification round. Heavy focus was given on the experience of the participants in terms of campus planning, handling big projects, competitions won, and net zero/ green buildings, along with average turnover which is again a translation of the participant’s experience.
c) UIA-HYP
Its an architectural open competition by The School of Architecture, Tianjin University and Urban Environmental Design with the support of UIA for the students of architecture worldwide. Every year an eminent international architect is asked to prepare the brief and lead the jury along another architect representing UIA. The competition aims at exposure and global communication at student level with architects.
Comments:
· Registered companies were striked off for competition in Nalanda which is dubious.
· Indian competitions must archive all entries at a virtual platform for public perusal.
· Yet again, competitions must have minimum eligibility criteria for architectural design. Yes, it becomes a hectic process but serves best results in terms of design.
· Experience in competitions must not be a prerequisite at design level. It can be exercised at execution or judgement level.
4) ESSAY-INDIA 2040
Though India is sought to be the “land of opportunity”, popularly quoted today, it is also known to be a land of cottage industries. The same applies for Architectural practices in India as well. In our country, we witness tens of thousands of small firms and a fewer still small companies grabbing at projects and sustaining themselves. We have been running firms like that, supplying to the demand of the same scale. This is the only trend up until the Economic liberalisation of India in 1991. Since then, even though we still continue to adopt the traditional ways to run businesses, we see significant change in the profiles of businesses functioning in India. With the effect of globalisation, we have invited upon ourselves many Multi-national corporates and companies which render the skylines of our metropolitan cities. The initial arrival of these companies did not disturb the existing setting much, them striving to adjust to the Indian market and survive them. But suddenly, in the recent past they have come about as an oddly stimulating breed within the Architectural fraternity.
With the wake of big initiatives in Indian history in terms of scale, opportunity and development like Smart City mission and Capital city designs, our country finally released a platform where the trained skill set, wasting away and waiting for the right kind of opportunity, could be put to use. But due to the lack of required standards for handling projects of that scale in typical Indian firms, most of these projects were given out to the Multi-National Companies. Then what about the veteran firms and their expertise within the set context? What about the encouragement provided by opportunity to the zealous youth to carry forward a fresh entrepreneurship?
MNCs provide services which are interdisciplinary in nature and they tend to have workforce which can cater to large number of projects at the same time. Hence, these companies become better option instead of fragments of smaller firms to give out full responsibility to. As a developing nation, we will keep on having such infrastructural demands coming in and architectural needs of the same nature seeping in majorly for the next 20-30 years. So within this timeframe, I imagine (or rather hope) the firms to grow out of their cottage-industry form and into a multidisciplinary configuration as a reaction to the demand, which the veterans are already capable of in terms of skill but cut short at will. On a contrarian picture, there is a possibility of the Indian architectural firms to remain the same in scale and take up smaller projects. Essentially, the architectural practise gets divided into specialities where taking up smaller design projects becomes a type. The advance of MNCs become more prominent and their bearing in Indian soil becomes firmer. Personally, this becomes an undesirable situation since this suggests that the fresh Indian skill set has more probability to get absorbed in MNCs where the think tanks are at the top-shelf only and they are exposed to just about 1% knowledge-base. The idea of entrepreneurship must be encouraged in the form on opening up their own firms for us to develop and expand our human resource. Hence, parallel development in the functioning of firms must be realised and growth in size must be attempted upon.
Architecture is a multi-faceted field and we all agree to it. We, as architects, are called jack of all trades and king of none. Being aware of that, we as architects must welcome multiple partners with expertise in different fields. When we have experts of different fields working with collaboratively, the firm’s definition as a multi-disciplinary strengthens manifold. This would in turn demand for larger workforce and the size of the firm would therefore increase the confidence of the client to entrust with projects. Location of the firm does not matter much in today’s date, thanks to technology. It shouldn’t matter where you’re located till the time you are accessible. The idea is to carry forward the idea of veteran and inclusive business form and scale it up in size with the help of other experts in the field. Apart from this, there must be an inter-disciplinary harmony desperately needed in the Indian system. There must be ways to establish better communication and understanding between government bodies, independent firms, architects, planners and bureaucracy so that joint development at all fronts is witnessed.
PART B
CASE STUDY
Firm: Mehta and Associates
Establishment: 1991
Principals: Er.Hitendra Mehta, engineer (member of Indore Development Plan 2021, Executive council Indian Institute of Engineers, Indian Geo Technical Society, Indian Structural Association, Consultancy Engineer Association of India, All India Housing Development Association, INTACH)
Ar. Jitendra Mehta, architect.
Region of Practice: Indore, Madhya Pradesh
Size of Practice: About a 100 employees (architects, planners, transport planners, urban planners, regional planners, engineers, surveyors, consultants, landscape architects, HR department, etc)
Services: Multidisciplinary : UP & RP, Architectural, structural, TP, Real Estate, Infrastructure, Independent engineers, Project management consultancy, landscaping, interiors, Approvals, valuation, project and construction management, environment impact assessment, green building design solutions
Types of Commissions: 60% Public, 40% Private
Design Diversity: Institutional, Policy making, urban planning, transport planning, master plans
To have multidisciplinary firm demands many experts, hence, employees. It also attracts different types of projects and hence has a good turnover. With multidisciplinary aspect, big sized firm, and a good turnover, the confidence in giving big projects to them is established. Hence, it builds up a great portfolio and experience chart, which further promotes them into receiving a project as huge as Smart City for Indore. Even with everything lined well for the career of the selected firm, they were still at a point where they were inexperienced and fresh. In India, to have a kick-start at that point, political connections and contacts are often used.
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