Khaperkheda stage 1

Khaperkheda Stage I

BHEL received a turnkey contract from MSEB with Zero date of 1st August 1985 for 2x210 MW Greenfield project. At that time BHEL received 4 turnkey contracts; Rajghat, Tenughat, Kolaghat and Khaperkheda. BHEL's earlier experience with turnkey contracts of Parli, Libya  Trpoli 

, NALCO and Muzaffarpur was not good. BHEL had lost heavily and didn't want turnkey contract on usual terms. Hence these contracts were taken on Cost plus basis for non BHEL works. BTG supply and erection was on PVC basis.

At the same time MSEB awarded contract for 2x500MW BTG supply & PMG services to BHEL. Initially MSEB wanted to award the work to BBC without inviting BHEL to quote. Government of India had to intervene. Mr ML Shishu of MSEB had prepared the tender documents in such a way that BHEL products were not meeting the specifications. While the tender documents were getting finalized, Mr Shishu had to leave MSEB. He later joined NTPC. BHEL didn't want to lose the order having supplied all previous 500MW orders in India.  Mr MK Sridhar, then Director ( Technical) was put in charge for submitting the offer. He made all units to remove overhead and profit from the estimate. As a general rule all estimates we're reduced by 40%. The logic given was that the order is crucial to maintain shop loading. When the price bid was opened, BHEL was L1 with a difference of more than 60 crores. The competition expressed that BHEL had forgotten to quote for 1 unit. GEB was upset on knowing the price as they had finalised 2x210 MW Gandhinagar order higher than this 2x500 MW price. Mr VP Bhatia and Mr MH Venkateswaran had a tough time explaining and pacifying GEB. As MSEB P&P wanted to gain experience in design of 500MW units, BHEL was given Khaperkheda project on Turnkey basis.

That was the time when Mr BS Samat, CMD wanted to vigorously follow Project Management concept. Product Erection responsibility was transferred to Manufacturing Units. Regions were responsible for site infrastructure, civil works and BOP. Erection staff was transferred to Manufacturing Units' roll.

Mr Thamburaj who was earlier in Malaysia was made Head of Erection Services by Trichy unit. He insisted on computerising site stores activities. EDP department of Trichy developed Boiler Material Management program using dbaseIII. PCs were provided to sites and data entry operator engaged. Problem was, most of the site staff had no exposure to computer systems. VK Ravindran was transferred to Trichy rolls from WR and posted to Khaperkheda to take care of boiler material management. He would be after me to get issues related to computer systems resolved. To help him I had to learn dbase programming.

BHEL had developed a computer based PERT system that was run on a central facility in New Delhi till the computer center was damaged in fire. BHELPERT was developed using COBOL language. Mr AK Mathur and CK Pani got it adopted to be run on MMC601 systems at regional HQs and then on PCs. We ran this program earlier at Baroda HQ and later on Khaperkheda based PC.

Salary program developed in COBOL and Finance JV entry program developed in BASIC language we're also ported on PC. It was Herculean task to manage salary program at Khaperkheda. We had staff from almost all units of BHEL with different entitlements and deductions. In addition to this we had large number of persons on deputation from Government departments. They were getting central DA and different types of allowances than BHEL employees. Since their number was large, manual preparation of salary was cumbersome and time consuming. Accounts staff wanted these to be processed on computer using salary program. At site we created different control files for these people and helped Accounts.

For boiler hydro test DM water was arranged from Koradi power plant. FQA had reservation about completion of boiler works. Mr PN Umayorubahan had to visit from New Delhi and give clearance for filling water.

We had lots of problem with BOP packages. Most of the suppliers didn't have Erection and Commissioning engineers. There were no mannuals for Installation and O&M of BOP. Our Commissioning engineers reporting to PS-TS refused to commission these packages in the absence of documentation. It became responsibility of erection engineers to commission these equipment.

It was a time when leftist/ maoist leaders led by Susan Abraham became active on labour front in Chandrapur and Khaperkheda area. Work was affected and one day police had to take severe action including firing. 

BFP foundation was wrongly cast in Unit 1 and it was affecting commissioning schedule. A small BFP was arranged from Ballarpur to start boiler commissioning. Temporary piping was connected to this pump and boiler commissioning commenced.

For initial coal firing we had to depend on Coal handling system supplied by Engineering Systems Ltd. It was called D point CHP. At D point, there was a Coal hopper which supplied coal to Koradi power plant by bucket conveyor. There we had make an opening and take coal to our system. The design envisaged a ground conveyor from Crusher. This ground conveyor was located on backfilled area. The backfilling was more than 5 meters deep. Initially we were able to feed coal to meet contractual commitment. But after heavy rain the filled soil washed away sinking the conveyor. We had tough time rectifying the conveyor and it's control room.

Khaperkheda was a good experience for many.