Mumbai: BMC ropes in IIT-B for better roads

The MoU being signed at the civic headquarters on Wednesday

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IIT Bombay to ensure good quality of road concreting. As per the arrangement, IIT-B experts will conduct a quality audit of concreted roads to ensure they are high quality.

The BMC has started the concreting of 392 km of road and work orders have been issued for concreting 309 km. Recently, civic authorities received complaints of cracks on newly concreted roads. While these issues were fixed, the BMC decided to carry out strict quality audits of the roads concreted. There are already third-party auditors, but BMC decided to appoint IIT-B for the task.

On Wednesday, the BMC signed a MoU with the institute at the civic headquarters. The document was signed by civic chief Bhushan Gagrani, Additional Municipal Commissioner Abhijit Bangar, Chief Engineer of Roads Girish Nikam and IIT-B Dean of Research and Development Sachin Patwardhan.

"IIT experts will conduct quality audits of the concrete material, along with core tests, cube tests, and durability tests. This will help improve the quality of roads," said Bangar.

Civic chief Gagrani added that the IIT-B experts will provide guidance to improve and maintain road quality, and to complete the work at a faster pace.

Meanwhile, an official from the roads department said, "IIT is a big name in quality assurance. Their involvement will put additional pressure on the contractor to deliver quality work."

392km
Length of road being concreted