Home / PEOPLE / PMV / Buildings cast in steel

[More Images]

Previously slotted as a sub-entity of construction, the market for pre-engineered steel buildings has now matured into a separate sector says Malav Patel, MD, Phenix Varco Pruden in an interview with Rajesh Kulkarni. 

Give us a brief background of your company and its core focus areas in the PEB segment?

The MB group is a fifty-year-old infrastructure company with a presence in all key economic sectors like power, irrigation, industrial construction, bridges and flyovers. We pioneered the delivery of large scale turnkey solutions in India.

We have recently entered into Pre-Engineered Steel Buildings (PEB) market in collaboration with Varco Pruden Buildings, U.S.A., having set up a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility near Ahmedabad. We already have a presence in support-less-roofing-structures with Proflex as our brand.

What is the scope of your collaboration with Varco Pruden Buildings Inc.? What is the role played by them in this venture?

In principal, the collaboration covers design, detailing, drafting and providing online/ electronic inputs to CNC machines, making the manufacturing operations automatic and /or semi-automatic.

These are the fundamental functions and are completely integrated through proprietary software called VP Command.

This integration helps us to give error-free solutions consistently, which is unique to us. Apart from this, knowledge transfer is a continuous and an ongoing process by way of periodic manpower training software upgrades.

Story continues below

Advertisement

COMMENT Comment on this article

 When you are equipped with the right capability and have proved yourself by way of performance, you are bound to attract big names in the industry automatically. We are manufacturing the most critical building for Tata Nano project, namely its paint shop.

We are going to supply approximately 4000 tons of steel components for this facility. The complexity is in the function of the building, which calls for multiple mezzanine floors, a heavy load bearing capacity of the main–frame structure and a height of approximately 25 meters.

Apart from that, we are also involved in dismantling & re–installing 35 odd ancillary buildings a covering a total area of 65,000 square meters. There is no doubt that this would be a quantum leap for us, as far as awareness and visibility are concerned.

How do you plan to leverage this association with the Tata group moving forward? Which are the other major clients serviced by Phenix VP in the past?

With the arrival of the Tata Nano project here, this area is likely to be transformed into an automobile hub with ancillaries mushrooming around. We are already being flooded with enquiries and are currently working on the schedules to meet these requirements.

In terms of our other major clients, we have served majors including: L&T, Asia Motor Works, 3M, Tetrapack, SemIndia, Essar and Simplex. In a short span, we have covered some of the major sectors and all major applications.

Kindly detail some of your other key ongoing projects? What is the total size of your existing project portfolio?

 Almost all the projects we are executing are strategic. We have covered everything from building a small shelter for the Uttar Pradesh police and a hydro project at high altitude in Himachal Pradesh to a massive warehouse in Andhra Pradesh, a shopping mall in Maharashtra, a big factory in Karnataka and an automobile engineering unit in Gujarat. From our first order to our last, the value of the order booking is somewhere around Rs250 crore.