Recent years have seen rapid development in India’s infrastructure sector, especially with the construction of roads, new refineries, expansion of petro-chemical complexes, port and harbours, and various types of industrial facility. However, in terms of land use, not every area is suitable for every major structure, due to varying topography and soil stratification. Detailed, accurate, and reliable soil investigation data is very important to ensure the right foundation solutions (piling or ground improvement solution or open foundation). This data helps, not only,at the design stage, but also when finalising required construction methodologies. Major operational aspects such as working platform, rig capacity, depth requirements, hammer capacity (for driven piles), installation rate, selection of stabilising fluid, and the materials to be used in the foundation (type of cement and steel) can be decided well in advance if we have sufficient and consistent soil investigation data.
Construction engineers faces several surprises during execution of foundation works in most of the infrastructure development projects which lead todelay in completion of foundation works resulting in overall delay of project delivery.In general, subsoil conditions vary drastically across the construction sites. Unfortunately, many people underestimate the importance of geotechnical investigations, interpretation, design and execution aspects of the foundations during the conceptual phase of a project.
Keeping these challenges in mind, there are numerous geotechnical service providers (geotechnical / soil investigation contractor, geotechnical consultant, foundation contractor) who are playing a more advanced, key role in the overall planning and optimisation of project cost and schedule. One such company is Keller India. Ageotechnical specialist contractor renowned for its techniques and foundation solutions which solve a range of challenges across the entire construction sector; including bearing capacity enhancement, mitigation of liquefaction potential, shoring and earth retention, settlement control, ground water control, and near shore marine construction. It is their knowledge of local markets and ground conditions which makes Keller India ideally placed to understand and respond to a particular local engineering challenge. The firm’s global knowledge base also gives it an edge, allowing it to tap into the wealth of experience and the best minds in the industry to find the optimum foundation solution.
As part of the world’s largest geotechnical specialist contractor which has 162 years of operations behind it (including, now, 20 years in India), Keller India has seen great success by adhering to group’s core values: Integrity, Collaboration and Excellence.
“We are dedicated to instilling these values into each employee and the way we work, which will ultimately lead to Keller’s success. We believe in our expertise and won’t make compromises on our high standards. Keller, as a specialist, will always carry out work in a timely manner with the highest quality and safety track record. The employees at Keller are true experts with a large base of geotechnical engineers, and customers can rely on us for complex geotechnical issues. Keller provides best practice, offering a wide range of geotechnical techniques and sustainable solutions to our clients,” shares Managing Director (Keller India) Y. Hari Krishna.
Solutions for all challenges
One of the first challenges for Keller India was setting up its business unit. With just two employees, the team had to work extremely hard to build a strong, well-trained local workforce, while ensuring an uncompromising commitment to Keller’sHSEQ standards. But the hard work paid off, and today, 20 years later with a 500-strong workforce, Keller Indiais celebrating a milestone anniversary.
Thegreatest challenge been to introduce innovative foundation techniques in the Indian foundation market, but with support from global colleagues and with their local technical and operational expertise, the business has been able to successfully do just that.
Over the years, with trust from its clients, Keller India ventures into providing numerous foundation solutions; bolstered by regional experts who understand their local markets whilst leveraging group expertise. “Our products and solutions are combined with environmental innovation, helping us to serve our customers by providing alternatives and value engineering.
The foundation solutions offered by Keller India range from ground improvement techniques (vibro stone columns, vibro compaction, vibro sand columns, deep soil mixing), heavy foundation techniques (bored cast in-situ piles, driven piles, contiguous flight auger (CFA), diaphragm walls), small diameter drilling (soil anchors, rock anchors, uplift anchors, micro piles), grouting (jet grouting, permeation grouting, compaction grouting) and near shore marine, ”highlights Sridhar Valluri, Head of Business Development.
The versatile ground-improvement method vibro stone columns/ vibro replacement has been a big part of Keller’s offering.The technique was first developed by Keller’s founder, Johann Keller and has been used on thousands of projects thanks to its suitability for a wide variety of subsoil stratification and structure foundation requirements. It offers an economical solution with relatively quick execution that enables standard shallow footings. It’s an environmentally friendly product as it uses natural and in situ materials, also the vibro equipment that we use is extremely quiet with low vibration which is designed and manufactured by the in-house equipment manufacturer exclusively for use by Keller companies.
Leveraging technology for optimum results
With the construction market becoming more digital, and sites increasing in sophistication and complexity, Keller India is leveraging in-house equipment manufacturing capacities and developing market-leading data acquisition systems to control and record the processes and share information with the customers and the rest of the supply chain.
“Ensuring that quality standards are met at all times, we deliver consistently high performance and continuously improve to meet our customer's needs. We do this by making all our employees and clients aware of our approach to quality and continuous improvement, developing integrated systems and processes that facilitate the achievement of our objectives, implementing tools and techniques that help reduce potential waste in our processes, materials, resources and drive operational excellence”, says Saday Kumar Mishra, General Manager.
In 2002, Keller India marked its presence in India by introducing the deep vibro technique. In the following years, the business solidified this presence by broadening its technique offering including grouting/anchoring, bottom feed method vibro stone columns, BCIS piling, diaphragm walls, jet grouting, marine jetty construction, precast piles, and the most recent one being DCIS piling. In its 20-year journey, Keller has completed more than 400 contracts, which includes milestones such as executing 1 crore m3 of vibro compaction, 20 lakh running metres of bored piles, 1 lakh m2 of d-wall, 12000 m2 of marine jetty, 70 lakh running metres of Vibrostone columns, 2 lakh running metres of driven piles, 2 lakh running metres of anchors, and 1 lakh m3 of grouting.
“As we reached these milestones in various projects, we encountered a number of safety challenges to solve connected to working near to the shoreline and managing multiple heavy machinery simultaneously”, explains Ramadas Veluri, General Manager. “By utilising structured risk management, safe work practices, and an incident management system, we have been able to take the best possible care of our people. Our clients have acknowledged our great commitment to safety and prompt delivery of superstructure construction work, and we have received recognition as the finest safety contractor”.
Charting the path ahead
‘Building the foundations for a sustainable future’. This is the idea at the heart of everything that Keller India does. In line with Keller Group’s vision, Keller India has structured its approach for ESG and Sustainability according to the 4P’s - Planet, People, Principles and Profitable Projects – and aligned our sustainability strategy with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Most importantly, in respect of carbon reduction, the firm has set ambitious and achievable net zero targets by 2050 (Ref: Carbon reduction | Keller Group plc). “We divide our emission targets using the scopes set out in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. We have already started the journey to implement the short, medium, and long-term actions required to achieve these goals”, says Madan Kumar, Head of Engineering.
Global Strength & Local Focus Is What Makes Us Special & Unique
Keller India is committed to improving its environmental impact by offering clients more environmentally sustainable foundation solutions. The company has also set Inclusion Commitments which brings together what they are doing to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace. While gender equality and empowerment are a priority, Keller recognises and embraces the broadest definition of diversity because its employees represent the broadest range of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and insights which leads to successful delivery of our business strategy and to best serve our clients.
People are at the heart of every organisation and a team of competent people drive Keller India in providing solutions to the clients. Inorder to constantly build the competency of people, at Keller we focus on various HR activities that begin from attracting the right talent through in-house programs like Young Engineers Development Program (YEDP) which focuses on hiring bright young Engineers from prestigious campuses and grooming them to take on bigger and challenging responsibilities at Keller, Competency building through clear definition and structured assessments for various roles, A Learning & Development roadmap on various technical knowledge, functional skills and behavioural/leadership attributes to bridge gaps that emerge out of competency assessment. All this people focus clearly differentiates the employees who work for Keller India and this is reiterated by way of industry leading engagement score of 89 percent in a recently conducted Employee Engagement Survey through a global organization, says J Subramanian, Head of Human Resources.
Signing off with how the future looks for the company, Y. Hari Krishna shares, “Keller India is looking forward toa future of sustainable construction with long-term benefits. We will contribute to saving our natural resources and developing more affordable solutions contradictory to the general perception of being expensive and financial unviability. There are various internal research and development project ongoing for exploring the usage of recycled concrete debris, brickbats, fly ash, manufactured sand in offering ground improvement foundation solutions. We are also working on introducing Continuous Flight Auger Piles to our heavy foundation solutions in our near future which will help in expanding our business into a wider aspect”.
