Expat Expels Growth Chronicle
Expat Engineering India Ltd (EEIL), a subsidy of Expat Group, is established as a new entity to cater to the growing need of engineering services. While sharing the company’s growth, Mr. Arvind Gowda, CEO, EEIL in an interaction with Built Constructions says that it is important to pay close attention to skilled labour shortage.
Expat Engineering India Ltd (EEIL) was started as a ‘contracting division’ by Expat Group to develop the land projects owned by the parent company in 1999. However, in 2008 EEIL embarked on a new journey as a separate entity to cater to the extensive need of our growing clientele. Our team has been awarded several infrastructure projects, including development of roads, erection of telecommunication towers and laying of underground water connections for both the private and public sectors, in addition to a myriad of residential projects. Our expertise and conviction has already taken us to more than six states across India.
"We lay utmost importance on building long lasting relationships and delivering superior quality projects. Innovation is our main mission at EEIL and we are committed to improve the effectiveness of the Quality Management System. We provide personalized attention to the demands and unique requirements for all of our projects. This ensures quality and timely execution of each project. Our team is backed by dynamic architects, committed labour force and material suppliers, sub-contractors and consultants. Our core values lay foundation for all our employees, like commitment, ensuring quality, value creation for all our stakeholders and building and sustaining long lasting relationships," says Mr. Arvind Gowda, CEO, Expat Engineering India Ltd (EEIL).
Implementation of Latest Technology
We keep adapting to the latest technological trends and innovation. This proves beneficial for the overall development of the project. Mr. Arvind held fast on certain facets that helped the company to grow. Some of them are : Adherence to the values and mission of the company like integrity (Straight is the shortest distance between two people), perseverance (When we go down, we don’t give up. We get up), stewardship (Employee by appointment. Owner by nature), work-life balance (Work and life must dance together) and other-centric (In our alphabet ‘U’ always comes before ‘I’). Retaining customers comes as a considerable challenge in today’s scenario. Expat Engineering has been successful in executing repeat job orders for well-known developers/builders such as Brigade Group, Annai Builders, ExcelSoft Technologies, Kumar Builders, K Raheja Corp, Eiffel Developers, and our parent company Expat Group. “For our parent company we have worked on projects like Genesis, Sparsh, XLR8 indoor sports arena, Wisdom Tree and plenty of Land Development projects. Expat group and EEIL integrate its policy of customer centric approach and innovation in order to keep enhancing their skills and portfolio,” he adds.
Implementing enterprise resource planning for the organization and developing vendor cooperative movement - a unique business development model developed in-house to address exponential growth. Also, evaluating low cost housing technology to address the huge demand for affordable housing and implementing advanced leadership program to build future leaders comes handy.
In the present scenario of skilled labour shortage, Expat Engineering closely pay heed to the issue. “Our segment is largely labour intensive. The issue around a shortage of skilled labour can only be dealt with, if more people are trained for the required job in the sector. The training should be in sync with the changing technology and trends. Mechanization of the industry in India started about 10 years ago. Construction industry primarily uses a wide range of machinery and equipments like earth moving equipments, construction vehicles, material handling equipments, and construction equipments. We use RMC over the conventional site mix which reduces the requirement of labour. RMC allows the concrete to be manufactured and delivered in freshly mixed or unhardened state. Adopting self-aligning Aluminum forms, to provide better quality, is one of the technologies we are looking to implement. Deploying tower cranes, builders hoist and other such machines ease our daily operations. The machinery proves to be beneficial for us as we save our time and ensures precision in our construction process,” he informs.
Growth in Real estate
One of the flourishing segments is real estate sector, even Expat Engineering has encountered tremendous development and growth in all the business lines that it operates in. Infrastructure sector is likely to grow at a CAGR of 18.3%. The residential and commercial segment has a share of 34% in overall Indian construction. The residential real estate sector is one of the major contributors of the total turnover of the Indian real estate sector and is accountable for the majority of the market share. Residential real estate includes residential buildings and integrated townships (multiple residential building complexes along with other amenities like schools and hospitals). As per the Planning Commission, it is estimated that about 600 million people will live in urban areas by 2030. The increase in urbanization has pushed the segment to think more on the line of affordable housing. Affordable housing or low cost housing will be the perfect solution for the strata like the middle class and upper middle class. The demand for affordable housing is predicted to be 11 crore by 2022 under housing for all schemes (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna). This is one of the most promising developments in the residential sector and EEIL is targeting to contribute to this sector by honing our skills in the low cost housing technology. Primarily, the company’s focus remains on low cost while not compromising on the quality. This, Mr. Arvind claims is one of the market differentiators and Expat Engineering is committed towards delivering the same.

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Infrastructure segment is responsible for propelling India’s overall development. As per Union Budget 2015, about Rs. 70,000 crore is planned to be the year on year investment in infrastructure development. |
Infrastructure segment is responsible for propelling India’s overall development. As per Union Budget 2015, about Rs. 70,000 crore is planned to be the year on year investment in infrastructure development. This makes infrastructure another promising sector with high potential for growth. Indian construction industry has seen sustainable demand from the industrial as well as real estate segment. USD 1,000 Billion investments for infrastructure sector projected in 12th five year plan (2012-17). Total of 10% of India’s GDP is based on construction activities.
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India is expected to become the third largest construction market in the world by 2020, with the real estate sector expected to reach a size of USD 180 billion, according to CREDAI and CBRE report titled ‘Assessing the economic impact of India’s real estate sector’. |
Commercial market segment registered growth in demand in the second quarter of calendar 2015 with more than 8 million sq. ft. of commercial office space taken up across seven major metros. This translates into a 70 per cent growth over the first quarter of 2015, according to a report, India Office market View for Q2 2015 by leading commercial real estate services firm, CBRE. The investment grade commercial office real estate in the country has grown tenfold from about 37 million sq ft in 2003 to about 370 million sq ft in 2012, with another 100 million sq ft lined up to be completed till 2015, according to CREDAI and CBRE report titled ‘Assessing the economic impact of India’s real estate sector’.

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Expat Engineering has adopted some of the strategies and technologies to optimize and integrate activities. |
Ingredients of Success
Planning, estimation, people management, scheduling and execution of projects are an integral part of engineering services. Expat Engineering has adopted some of the strategies and technologies to optimize and integrate activities. Planning these strategies is crucial for any company’s development. A company should shape out a plan or an approach which integrates their core value and mission.
This will enable the company to grow holistically and lead to value centric approach. We have also adopted a systematic approach to integrate these activities. “At our head office in Bangalore, we have our Contracts Head who oversees the process of contract administration which includes estimation, planning and scheduling for all the regions. We also have region wise Operation Heads who oversee the site execution of various projects.
Our dedicated procurement division handles the procurement for all the regions. A well established back office setup, also adds to our operation's success as they take care of the needs of the execution team in terms of billing, people management, etc.,” he points. Recently, Expat Engineering was awarded ‘The Helmet of Honour’ by the Parkside team and Brigade Orchards.