During early 90s, Bangalore development authority has announced a development of ring road in Bangalore outer part of central city. Initially, intent of BDA was to keep the truck traffic out of downtown Bangalore, but surprisingly the city has outgrown the Outer Ring Road.

International Tech Park, Whitefield, famously in those days called ITPL (now it is officially known as ITPB), was the only big IT hub, which we used to see, visit, do business with MNC companies especially for the interior fit-out works. The roads in those days were not so different from today, the only difference is the traffic flow. It used to take more than an hour to reach ITPL from south Bangalore, mainly because of congested old airport road, not so qualitative road from old madras road to ITPL.

The progress of outer ring road (recently it has officially renamed it as a Puneeth Rajkumar ring road) during 1990s were seen as a growth of the city and a route to ITPL.

I doubt anyone (except the current land & building owners in the locality) had a prediction of ORR to be an IT corridor as it is today.

During the kick start of a project called Ecozen & Ecospace, which is either side of the proposed ORR, the outer rog road was still under construction.

The project Ecozen & Ecospace, which was built by RMZ group, is highly rated by me even today, not because it was unique or tech driven premises but because they were the first comers in the ORR to develop the commercial spaces for the office use. The people who are involved in those first kind of a projects are only can feel the joy, pain, anxiety, new technology adoption, way forward etc., The team of RMZ comprises of Sri.Venugopal, Sri.Tejas, Sri.Krishna, Thiru etc., along with young team of Potential were involved in the dream project. Today, as & when I travel in this ORR, feel immensely proud to see these two projects, which are more than 12 years old, involved by me as an electrical designer.

Especially, Ecospace, which is much larger in size, always a big learning tips for most of the designers who are involved in the project. The flood level of nearby drain was much more than a planned ground levels. The ground water table was not so appealing in those days hence it was not a worry-threat to have a lower ground level. But project has taken a cautious call to raise the entire 25 acres of ground level nearly by 3 meters. Seeing recent water flood issues in the east ORR region, the decision taken in those days is quite remarkably visionary act I feel!

The technology adoption without local preparative-ness & local supply has badly impacted the project growth, we found it little late in this project.

We have proposed a cable-less power distribution from the Transformer secondary. All the transformers were placed outdoor and the busducts were needed to bring it indie the building via underground tunnel. Those days, busducts were used import, the one we brought t from abroad, was installed underground with necessary supports as required. The building was ready, client started occupying the space, the power was charged but within few days of loading, the busducts got damaged and power to entire building was interrupted.

Our contractor could able to arrange a cables in lot (worth of 35 lac or so as I remember) to facilitate power to the building, temporarily, we thought it is for few days but it too more time. A team from supplier flown to India, examined, and assured for the replacement of parts as required apart from sharing their findings on poor workmanship. Later, found that refilled compactness was also could be the reason for breakdown of busducts. Our learning curve surely went upward during those periods, presume it applies to everyone in the project!

What inspires you and why?

A team of professionals from RMZ, who never off sync. between them for any statement or action taken by them. Even after 15 years, I could not find one team which speak with the same tune, from junior engineer to Higher management level.

What is your guilty pleasure?

The technologies either came late to India, or we learnt little late otherwise we could have avoided the power breakdown.

My takeaway?

A first-hand experience, comes with basket of elements like doing a mistake, learning new things, fearness, anxiety, excitements etc., which is always brings full of confidence thereafter.

https://www.rmzcorp.com/our-spaces/bengaluru/ecospace

 

Sincerely Ramesh G