One of the days during office hours, I got a call from Brigade for a site visit in Chennai on the next day itself. I was thrilled to hear that a big project from Brigade group is kicking off soon. I took an early flight and reached a project site somewhere In the month of later part of year 2016, which is within the vicinity of several tech parks, known to me very well by then.

I was waiting outside the gate as the brigade team yet to reach from some other flight from Bangalore. A big old traditional rustic gate at the entrance created an eagerness in me to see what is inside!

Little while later, traditional cum modernly dressed fair lady dropped down from the car and waved at me. I approached her and got introduced to her along with two more gentlemen, who were accompanying her. She is Ranjitha, an architect from Brigade, very soon found to be friendly natured seasoned professional in the industry.

Gate were made to open, and we started walking together, inside the lush cemented, rough patched, looks to be several year-old buildings. It is an old building belongs to the famous paint manufacturing facility “The Kansai Nerolac Paints.

As we observed, the proposed project site looks to be un-maintained premises for several months. We found several abandoned materials, debris, insects, birds etc., apart from, a snake crossing an internal road!

Gathering sufficient information from site, team got dispersed. I went to meet known TNEB officials on power feasibility and collected few information from them as well.

Back to Bangalore, and to the drawing board, we started conceptualizing the schemes for the volume of power required for the proposed project called “World trade center”. Since I was involved in their first World trade center, Bangalore earlier, I could quickly pick up lessor learnt list from my library apart from visiting other recent similar type of projects executed by Brigade group.

We had a several schemes in mind, filtered to few on board with pros & cons for each of the schemes presented to the team. The schemes were related to grid power with different voltage grades, standby power with HT & LT as a hybrid option apart from bloom energy, cable-less power distribution, plug & play power usage, equipotential grounding etc., First challenge we come across was to avoid basements for any services but with a tag of not to occupy premium upper office floors! To meet this criterion, we had proposed indoor transformers, placing at the ground floor but this was against the client’s brief.

We had proposed district cooling schemes as well to keep away electro-mechanical stuff from the office buildings. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a ground space to accommodate it. After several workshops, finally concluded to have an exclusive utility building to place electrical panels, generators, and a cooling tower on the roof of it.

Because of the finalized outdoor transformers, one more challenge we come across was to get the LT busducts to the utility building, that too underground, which was quite risky, particularly in Chennai water flood condition.

While involved in the project called Raheja towers, Chennai, I recall those days, we used to travel from Bangalore to attend regular meeting every Friday. One of those Friday during completion stage of the project, we had inspected service rooms including generator room, transformer yards etc., and returned over night to Bangalore. We got an early morning shocking news that the generator room hass completely immersed in the rain flooded water in the night!

The bitter experience of Raheja Towers came to easy my design forwarding with overhead busducts, but it was rejected upfront by the architect for the only reason for its Aesthetic impact Ness.

Now, we went back to drawing board and gone with the suggestion of underground tunnels to carry the busducts and it was agreed immediately by all the stake holders. Now, responsibility of keeping this tunnel healthy and functional against all anticipated odds were placed on us!

We took all necessary precaution for the underground MEP design provisions in the tunnel to take care of fire accidents, water flooding, ease of maintenance, risk management etc., complete to make sure none can impact while our busduct system is in operational.

Few days later, the decisions were taken to change the location of the busducts from underground tunnels to overhead structure.  We gave the overhead bridge ideas, keeping maintenance and fire norms meets the end.

Moving forward, we had proposed cable-less distribution of power from Utility buildings to the office floor using busducts and rising mains. An N+N configuration were proposed for the rising main sizes, which had compliances of all the norms in the industry.

During execution, new request came to increase the configuration strength of Transformers, which had a big impact on already started & built utility room. Somehow, managed to rearrange the electrical panels to accommodate additional panels related to newly added transformer. A last-minute challenge came from NBC 2016, was on implementing conventional lightning protection as against widely accepted Early streamer lighting protection system. Having a first-hand experience of such changes, we had made a provision in the building those uncertain challenges and it came to our rescue to accommodate the last minute changes.

What inspires you and why?

Base building design is always an inspiring story to tell because of its magnitude of mental stress, challenges, and end results!

What is your guilty pleasure?

Due to covid 19 lock down, I could not travel and serve the project as I dreamt for, especially during completion stages.

My takeaway?

I’m proud to be part of my journey with the most reputed office complex World trade center in the country, that too twice. I loved to carry my learning curve in future as well.

https://www.brigadegroup.com/commercial/project/world-trade-center-chennai

Sincerely Ramesh G