Communication with erection sites

The first manufacturing unit of BHEL was established at Piplani, Bhopal in 1956. Subsequently in 1964 manufacturing units were established at Haridwar, Hyderabad and Tiruchirapalli. At that time, Tiruchirapalli was connected by Meter Gauge railway and a separate broad-gauge line was laid in 1929 from Erode to Tiruchirapalli for transport of equipment from BHEL plant. In view of poor road infrastructure, equipment from plants was transported by railway to the project sites. Project sites developed railway siding to receive the equipment and coal. For the Hydro projects, railway siding was not feasible and the equipment had to be transported by road only from the nearest station with siding. For this the equipment was sent in dismantled condition and site engineers had to virtually manufacture the sets at site from first principles.

Apart from the difficulties in transportation of equipment, the sites suffered from poor infrastructure. Unreliable power supply was a major issue, in addition to non-availability of safe drinking water and basic civic facilities. Residential accommodation was provided by Electricity Board or Irrigation department subject to availability. Most of the times these were temporary project quarters. Telephone lines were non-existent and no Post office existed nearby. As most of the sites were at remote locations away from major cities or towns, reaching the sites was a tough task. Anyone visiting the site would have to send a telegram earlier to the site, so that he would be picked up from the railway station or Bus stand by site vehicle. Major projects like Obra in UP had good township developed, but reaching the site was difficult. Sites like Wanakbori, Singrauli, Korba were difficult to reach from main line of railways.

Delivery of Drawings and documents was a critical issue. The documents dispatched from Engineering centres and Manufacturing Units used to take weeks if not months. It was usual practice to send a person and collect the urgently required documents for smooth progress of work. Sites with better infrastructure had telephone lines and TELEX machines to communicate with Manufacturing Units and Regional offices. To mitigate the difficulties in communication, NTPC Korba site was connected by HF set with PSSR Chennai. Similarly, NTPC Singrauli site was connected by HF set with PSNR New Delhi. BHEL had to take permission from WPC (Wireless Planning and Coordination) of DOT (Department of Telecommunication) for the bandwidth and pay a license fee for every pair of Wireless set. For use of Walkie-Talkie sets at sites, permission from WPC was essential.

In 1985, BHEL received Turnkey contracts for Khaperkheda Stage 1, Rajghat, Kolaghat and Tenughat projects. The peculiarity of these contracts was that Boiler and TG packages were ordered on BHEL with PVC clause, whereas Balance of Plant was ordered on Cost plus basis. Order for Project Management was placed separately on equal monthly instalments. A senior purchase committee (SPC) was formed for each project with members from PEM and Customer to invite bids and select the successful vendor and price. This modality was adopted by BHEL because BHEL incurred heavy losses at earlier Turnkey contracts of Parli-3, Tripoli West, Libya and Muzaffarpur in Civil and associated packages. This modality envisaged joint measurement by the Contractor, BHEL and Customer representatives. For any deviation from the approved (released for construction) drawing a Design Change Note was required to be approved by PEM before release of payment.

Khaperkheda project was 20 KMs from Nagpur and infrastructure was very poor. To enable proper communications, a city office was established in Nagpur city, where Telephone with STD facility and TELEX from Koradi project was shifted. For initial 2 years, only the Civil staff was accommodated in MSEB site colony and other staff would travel daily from Nagpur to the project. For any communication people had to come to Nagpur office and communicate/ get clarifications. Mr J Varadarajan was AGM in-charge of the project. He established a protocol with the then ED(PEM) Mr KC Vaishya and Mr Gopalan of PEM (Civil). Mr Varadarajan would collect the points from site staff and communicate in the evening/morning with Mr Vaishya/ Gopalan. They would interact with their team and clarify. In addition to this, a decision was taken to send a senior executive from PEM to site for a fortnightly basis. Site staff would prepare Design Change Notes (DCN) and get the approval of the PEM person. On return to New Delhi, he would update the design documents to incorporate the design changes. This way the Design Change Management was expedited. In addition to this site staff would go to PEM and interact to expedite document release.

On completion of NTPC Korba project, the HF set was transferred to Khaperkheda and PPD WR Baroda received the other set from PPD SR office.

A PC-XT was installed at all the four Turnkey projects. This PC-XT was used to run the Payroll system for site staff and Financial Accounting package. BHEL CMS had developed a COBOL based PERT network software package called BHEL-Pert. That software was converted to run on the PC-XT and generate turn around document for the project. As a trial we connected this PC-XT to the HF set and established connectivity with HF set linked to another PC at Baroda office.

Around 1992, BSNL offered a V-SAT based Remote Access Business Messaging Network (RABMN). It was essentially a Virtual Private Network (VPN). BHEL management accepted the proposal and V-SAT terminals were procured for Manufacturing Units, Regional Head Quarters, RODs and important sites. This network was called BHELnet. CMS in collaboration with DOT organised training programs for the dealing executives to establish local connectivity. It was a shared network and the bandwidth was very low. Many times, the speed used to drop to some BPS instead of KBPS. Time slots were fixed in various units so that sites could interact with Engineering / FES executives. Mr KS Rao, who was then ED PSSR instructed SR sites to communicate with him only through BHELnet. In PSWR we gave a preference to Hydro sites for connectivity. The first Hydro project to be connected was Hasdeo Bango project, nearly 100 Kms from NTPC Korba. Mr Srinivasan a Senior Manager in his 50s was the Project in-charge. When I took a JTO from DOT Nagpur with me to the site established the connectivity, the expressions on Mr Srinivasan’s face can not be forgotten, it was pure joy for a person isolated for decades at erection sites. He made extensive use of the facility and maintained the equipment along with PC and UPS in tiptop condition.

In 1996 BSNL came up with HVnet satellite terminals. The bandwidth provided was more up to 64 KBPS. These V-SATs had additional provision of a telephone for voice communication. We installed it at SLPP Mangrol, BHEL’s first utility size CFBC boiler project. M/s LLB, BHEL’s collaborator had placed their Project Manager and engineers to supervise the erection activities. We were able to place even International call using the HVnet terminal. The voice call was not good as we could hear echo due to the packet switching time delay.

As the days progressed, the demands for better connectivity also developed. At Bellary Video conferencing equipment was installed and used for meetings with PSSR Chennai office and Customer office at Bangalore. By this BSNL/Reliance had laid optical fibre cables across most of the country. BHEL Corporate IT set up a taskforce for implementation of MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switch) network and connect major sites with Corporate office, Regional HQs, Manufacturing Units and RODs. Idea was to fix a rate for normal operation and additional charges for high bandwidth operations like VC for short durations. Establish FTP sites so that sites could download the drawings and documents from Engineering centres.

To enable sites to receive various documents from Units, a facility was created to connect to the servers at Manufacturing Units and PEM and extract the relevant information in the night hours using CRON.

Apart from BHEL, private companies are also now setting up proper infrastructure at sites to download drawings/documents and print them using plotters/ laser printers. The site engineers are provided with workstations so that they can prepare as built drawings at site and give back to Engineering office.

We have come a long way in this area