Feedback Infra pitches for a big role in designing greenfield expressways

Gurugram-headquartered Feedback Infra, an integrated infrastructure services company, is pitching for a major role as a designer of greenfield expressways, having bagged the mandate for two large projects.

The firm has got the mandate from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to design the 1,100-km-long Nagpur-Hyderabad-Bengaluru and the 600-km-long Delhi-Ludhiana-Katra expressways.

The company expects a major boost for development of expressways as well as highways, especially with the Centre’s ambitious Bharatmala project. It has even created an independent business vertical — Feedback Highways IndVe — to give a special focus to designing expressways and highways.

The Nagpur-Hyderabad-Bengaluru expressway is the longest proposed by NHAI so far, and will pass through Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. The value of these two projects for Feedback Infra will be over ₹20 crore each.

According to Rajeev Bhatnagar, Managing Director, Feedback Highways IndVe, the company will be involved in all aspects of developing the two expressways. Feedback Infra will conduct a pre-feasibility study, propose the alignment, and outline how much land will have to be acquired.

Once NHAI accepts the preliminary report and completes land acquisition, the company will come up with a detailed project report that will outline the total cost of construction, access control, the places that will have to be demarcated for wayside amenities, locations where tolling booths will have to be installed, and even specify the amount of cement, steel and other construction materials that will be required. It will also suggest links to existing highways.

Bhatnagar said new concepts and technologies are being used for the expressways. Since the two have new alignments, drones will be used for aerial surveys. For topographic surveys, there will be extensive use of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which is a remote-sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges, mobile mapping. Ground penetration radar will be used for designing the expressways.

Theconstruction project is expected to provide a major boost to not only cement and steel consumption, but also in the use of the latest in construction equipment.

An expressway will have a minimum of six lanes against two for highways. Expressways are estimated to cost ₹25-30 crore a km, compared with ₹10 crore a kilometre for a four-lane highway.

According to Bhatnagar, Feedback Infra was involved in the Agra-Lucknow expressway, where it worked on selecting the alignment, feasibility and managing its bidding by dividing the 302 km project into five separate construction packages.

The company is the nodal consultant for the Maharashtra government for the 700 km Mumbai-Nagpur expressway. It will work with the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation to review the detailed project reports being prepared by five different consultants, and review and finalise specifications and construction standards.