Dearth of skills affect India's infra sector

K Ramanathan

India’s infrastructure sector is in peril, it seems. If the recent reports released by a top industry body and a leading international consultant to be believed, the sector, where billions worth projects are underway across the country, is facing a significant dearth of skilled workers, which includes project management professionals, engineers, safety experts and planners.

While industry body ASSOCHAM has estimated that the sector needs one million project management professionals, a joint report by Project Management Institute (PMI) and global consultants KPMG, said that the sector should add three million worker force, from project managers, planners to civil engineers, surveyors and safety experts by 2022.

The ASSOCHAM report, ‘Road Sector Role in Futuristic Development of India’, gave a thumbs down to the existing staff in the sector as most of them, according to the survey, in infrastructure construction space are not trained properly to handle big projects..

“Infrastructure sector is a project-oriented industry and has cost runs in several billions of rupees. So, project management should be high importance which connects all concerned department of the construction industry for a smooth execution of projects,” said DS Rawat, secretary general of ASSOCHAM.

He also said, “As the projects in infrastructure sector are becoming increasingly complex they require optimizing allocation of resources and coordination with multiple vendors which require professionals having project management skills.”

With dozens sub-contractors and contractors, thousands of workers and hundreds of vendors spread across miles of project site, some should be there to coordinate with all of them and in the absence of such system, the projects face unique set of challenges that generally lead to severe delays and cost overruns.

Blaming that severe skill shortage and the growing demand-supply gap for qualified construction professionals are affecting the sector, PMI India’s Managing Director Raj Kalady said, “People are not preferring this profession but set their eyes on more lucrative fields like IT, financial services etc. So, the sector has the dearth of qualified professionals for the safe completion of several projects across the country.

According to government estimates, over 550 infrastructure projects across India are facing huge escalation in overall project costs to the tune of about Rs two lakh crore due to a series of factors like environmental rules and regulatory approvals, land acquisition and shortage of skilled, well trained, competent and certified specialists in infrastructure sector like engineers and other professionals.

In its study, the ASSOCHAM has suggested that the country should enhance the quality of vocational training and education as per the demands of the sector. To meet the talent crunch for highly critical jobs, many firms are now hiring foreign nationals having professional degrees. Many organisations are also looking at short-term training camps to enhance the skill sets of their project teams.

"The Government has not realized the urgency of meeting the shortage of skills. During the 12th Plan (2012-17), the Government will take steps to improve project management skills among the existing employees and new recruiters. But at the same time, there is also a pressing need for industry and academia to introduce project management into their studies," Kalady said.