Government introduces new IT initiatives for quicker road building process

The union minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari yesterday launched ePACE, INFRACON and an updated version of INAMPRO, three innovative IT initiatives of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH), developed  in-house by NHIDCL (National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd).

All the initiatives are aimed at making the road building procedure faster, more transparent and more efficient.

Moreover, Gadkari also called upon the stakeholders to make conscious and active use of innovations and international practices in engineering and construction of roads. He said that the road transport sector in the country has immense potential, given the high traffic density and adequate availability of resources. However, the potential cannot be realized fully unless every player in the chain of execution has a positive attitude and is ready to give up outdated practices in favour of new and efficient ones. The Minister was speaking at the Highways Sector Stakeholders Meet in New Delhi yesterday.

The meet was attended by officials of the MoRTH, NHIDCL, besides contractors, consultants, bankers  and material suppliers concerned with road construction. The Road Transport minister further highlighted the policy changes to streamline procedures and ease out road blocks like land acquisition, environment clearances and paucity of funds. He stressed the importance of technological initiatives like satellite-based road asset management system, use of concrete for road construction, electronic toll collection, INAMPRO other IT initiatives.

ePACE (Projects Appraisal & Continuing Enhancements) is an online integrated management  information system that brings projects from all wings of the  ministry under a common platform,  ensuring  their effective and real time tracking. More than 2,000 projects being executed by multiple agencies are currently listed on the portal and it is possible to get any information about their real time status, fund utilization, etc. The portal can be freely accessed by anybody, and information regarding projects in any particular state can be found at the click of a button. The portal also allows for validation checks to prevent wrongful entries, making it difficult to fudge figures. It has provision to obtain reports in multiple formats with graphical interface for round the clock monitoring. It has also been provided with GIS interface to enable easy geo-tracking of the projects. The application has a data export engine for feeding into other applications. The architecture of the application is scalable and customizable.

INFRACON is the national portal for infrastructure consultancy firms acting as a bridge between consultancy firms working in the road engineering and construction sector and domain experts and key personnel who are deployed for both project preparation and supervision.  The portal hosts the credentials of consultancy firms and key personnel and has linkages to Aadhar and Digi-locker for data validation and purity. So far, 474 consultancy firms and 2,387 key personnel under various categories are already registered with the portal. In addition, agencies within MoRTH, like the NHIDCL can receive technical proposals through INFRACON, leading to a significant reduction of paper work during bid submissions and also bringing in transparency.

INAM Pro has been developed as a web-based application (www.inampro.nic.in) for infrastructure and material providers. It is a web-based market place that brings together the material providers and the prospective buyers on a common platform. The platform was launched in March 2015 to facilitate contractors and cement buyers engaged in executing central/state funded roads and highways and bridge construction projects to place cement orders online with the registered cement companies offering cement at competitive rates in the vicinity of project execution locations. Cement companies are facilitated to update their offered stocks and the prices on the portal. They in turn get instant intimation about the orders placed and are able to approve the delivery schedules as requested by the cement buyers without hassles and delays. This helps cement companies to plan their annual production in advance and schedule deliveries with better precision. The companies also have the facility to increase the cement stock offerings based on market demand and reduce prices to attract more buyers. In addition, using INAM Pro, companies can track orders, add more products, cement offerings, view listed buyers, and submit their complaints or suggestions to the ministry. Similarly, buyers are able to view and track the orders placed with different companies and also submit their suggestions or complaints. With the help of the platform, the ministry can track and monitor the activities of buyers and suppliers, and remove impediments of both the parties

Given the success of INAM-PRO, other materials like steel and steel slag have also been brought on this platform so as to make this as a comprehensive e-market place for infrastructure providers.