Infrastructures projects not only contribute to the country’s GDP but also create job opportunities for the residents thereby pushing the government’ vision of employment.

Apart from this with PPP (Public Private Partnership) and FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) grooming in the infrastructure segments has led to a strong bonding of government agencies and private sector giants leading to improved serviceability standards for the common man.

The above paras highlight the importance of infrastructure projects from the view point of revenue generation, employment and economic growth of the country.

The infrastructure segment is broadly divides in the following segments

• Transportation – Highways, Railways, Ports and Airports
• Energy – Power Generation (Thermal, Hydro, Solar, Wind power), Power Distribution Petroleum, Coal mining
• Urban Development – Affordable Housings, Smart City Infrastructure
• Telecommunications – Broadband, FTTH, Mobile Connectivity, Managed Services, Hosting
• Engineering – Steel, Fertilizers, Heavy Electric, Mining

Each of the mentioned infrastructure segments have evolved over the years to provide better services to the users and trends for each of them are different when we talk of technicalities and design aspect.

But some trends are common for all of the above mentioned infrastructure segments which they need to follow and adapt as the same will ensure investment protection, upgradability and scalability on the infrastructure that is being built. These considerations would ensure that the infrastructure would offer compatibility and adaptability to the new technologies. The details of these trends are mentioned

• Use of available data with sophisticated analytical tools will help decision makers to enhance the reliability of the projections which are used to divert the funds for infrastructure projects
• Designs should be flexible and planned with a vision that will facilitate investment protection and new technology interface
• Apart from Flexibility designs should be sustainable in terms of the investment being made and also the design should facilitate social sustainability so that the infrastructure benefits can be reaped by all sections of the society making it a win-win situation for the investor and the user.
• Designers should take speedy and prompt decisions for infrastructure projects considering disruptive technologies and technology obsolensce as the most critical parameters. This should be kept in mind while planning, designing and deploying infrastructure projects as delay in decision making may lead to non-usage of the infrastructure due to obsolete technology which in turn will result into financial losses.
• Automation and use of technology to optimize productivity and performance can make the infrastructure fragile and the risk of control going to the wrong hands is very high. In this scenario where infrastructure is data driven cyber and physical security should be planned, designed and implemented in way such that data is protected and it will make the infrastructure full proof with minimal chances of cyber attacks.
• With the use of data analytics etc. the concept of dynamic pricing is likely to rise where in infrastructure owners will charge the users in real time scenarios rather than using the concept of flexi pricing which is time based.
• In a data driven design concept of infrastructure with multiple data owners the concept of data sharing to bettering decision making and serviceability is bound to groom in the forth- coming infrastructure projects.

Having analysed the trends let us have a look at the technologies which are bound to impact the infrastructure vertical

• Augmented Reality – will give the customer the feel of the real world using camera lenses and help them to strengthen the decision making which for the developer is an advantage as it will lead to better conversions.
• MIS (Management Information Systems) – Integrating multi departments and multi-disciplinary individuals on the same platform and allowing them access of data from other departments for decision making and project planning will enhance productivity, optimize operational costs due to precision in defining timelines and also the analysis of collected data will lead to betterment of future project planning.
• Drones – With the innovations in Drone technology enhancing its precision and accuracy it is becoming a very important armour for the infrastructure projects which help in Arial surveys, site monitoring etc.
• Robotics – With manpower constraints the uncertainty on time lines to complete infrastructure projects looms large. This results in huge monetary losses for the developers. Process automation thru robots is the solutions and as the usage penetrates and adaption increases the same will lead to decrease in the cost.
• Cloud Hosting – Majority of the work force in infra projects is spread and working in remote areas. Project data accessibility for on field decision making is remote mobile office is equally important and to cater to this type of requirements usage of public or private cloud is the answer. Also since it supports scale out architecture CAPEX investments are almost nil and enhancement based on the project requirements can be done in hours which give the infra owner the flexibility to scale as and when required saving the CAPEX costs associated with owned systems.
• GPS Systems – This satellite based systems which have grown in precision and accuracy in real time monitoring and other task like survey facilitates project managers for managing the vehicle fleets, doings surveys and facilitating vigil of equipment’s fitted with GPS sensors.
• Wearables – For enhancing the worker safety.
• IOT’s – For Engineering segment where productions are related for getting real time information from various stages

The revolutionary technologies will not work unless and until the same is supported by properly laid infrastructure with supporting tools and accessories. We at Telecom and Management consultants recommend the following designs guidelines to ensure that the above mentioned technologies works well. The guidelines are:

• Green and clean energy is one of the most impacting factors in the infrastructure segment for reducing the carbon foot prints and creating an eco-balance. For the same we recommend use of solar panels or Windmills based on the availability of spaces in the infrastructure segment and apart from this one use POE enabled lightings with optimum usage of day light.
• The above mentioned technologies will generate huge data that has to travel to and fro from the data center in an unblocking manners and all the applications will use a single backbone as there will be convergence of ICT and MIS (Management Information systems). To cater to this and futuristic traffic requirements that is bound to generate lot of video traffic we should have robust scalable and upgradable converged networking backbone that would ensure seamless flow of traffic in a non-blocking mode.
• Wearables, Robots etc. need access of the network in real time for which high speed Wireless networks using secured high speed Wi-Fi or Li-Fi should be built along the site office and area of operation to ensures seamless connectivity for the Wearables, BYOD’s, Scanners and other telemetry and IOT devices which will transmit data over the IP back bone.
• Since MIS and MES will converge the foundation in the DC should be strong enough to provide processing capabilities capable of delivering data in line with the network speeds. For these we need to deploy high speed virtualized servers with SANs that SSD’s/Flash with high IOPS and enough storage capacities as per the application requirements.
• Create efficient and compliant intercommunication tools within the infrastructure project site and the main office.
• Support remote site offices with high speed WAN backbones using Service provider networks like MPLS or VPN over leased lines.
• Create mobile apps co linked to the master site for facilitating communication and real time data access related to inventory stocks etc. on mobile devices for the field and mobile staff.

This is just a brief of the setup we are recommending in general for more details contact us on info@tandmconsultants.com