Yet, the sector has been found wanting in the realm of manpower planning. According to P R Swaroop, director, Construction Industry Development Council (CIDC), the central problem is that professionals and workers at the various levels have not been performing the roles that were assigned to them.

While the technically qualified professionals took to administrative and bureaucratic roles, the less qualified contractors doubled up as engineers and half-baked technicians, leaving the workers with no meaningful supervision. Workers, too, lost out on their individual training over the past few decades because of the gradual decline of the guild system.

Swaroop feels it is the current university curriculum that is responsible for many of these problems. Students graduate from engineeringcolleges with hardly any hands-on experience. And industry finds it difficult to invest complex supervisory functions in these graduates.

Hence, the only way companies can absorb these graduates is by conducting long-term, in-house training programmes for them. Since, this is a high-cost endeavour, companies prefer to pay low salaries to entry-level professionals.

But lower salaries led to the cream of civil engineering graduates staying away from the construction sector. In fact, Swaroop discovered to his utter dismay that 90 per cent of the civil engineering graduates from IIT Kanpur were shifting to other streams like info-tech, management, banking and so on.

To stem this tide, CIDC initiated a student sponsorship programme at the IITs. As per this scheme, select civil engineering students at the IITs would receive corporate sponsorship to complete their programme, following which they would be absorbed by their sponsor company. Besides, practising managers from the construction sector would visitthe IITs to teach subjects such as business ethics, contract transactions and banking, arbitration, adjudication and international networking.

In the context of this new academia-industry interaction, Swaroop feels that ``when collective wisdom is available, why reinvent the wheel?'' Eventually, engineers must evolve as good engineering managers. So far, the unstructured manpower management in the sector has led to ``untested people working at the sites, leading to low technology absorption and high time and cost overruns,'' he says.

CIDC has also looked into the training needs of lower level workers. Swaroop informs that the training modules for the artisans are a ``combination of new technology and age-old practices. We must derive the finer aspects of the age-old guild system.''

CIDC has evolved the National Vocational Standards, a benchmark for training construction workers. The `vocational standards' cover four main trades: masonry, carpentry and shuttering, painting, and general supervision.Information on 31 more trades are on the anvil.

Swaroop feels that distance and open learning systems are the best way of educating the artisans. CIDC has entered into a partnership with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to conduct various open learning programmes for construction workers and artisans. The training programmes have been structured in such a manner that ``the learner while working at work-sites can be imparted such training through audio-visual, written material and audio systems.''

Also, the scheme has been developed keeping in view the ``seasonal and migratory nature of the manpower, the low level of education in general, and absence of a system that would define standards of training and testing, syllabi, methods of instruction, delivery mechanism, etc.''

Once the certification process is in place, CIDC will try and make it mandatory for construction companies to induct only certified workers and artisans. ``The extension education programme will also help lower levelworkers such as masons to rise up the ladder as supervisors, junior engineers and site engineers,'' Swaroop says.

Prof. Abdul Wahid Khan, vice-chancellor, IGNOU, says the programme is a process of ``certifying the already acquired skills of the construction workers''.

In the area of construction management, IGNOU conducts a B Tech programme in `Project Management, Quantity Surveying and Contracting', which can be completed module by module.

Another major development is the proposal for setting up the National Academy of Construction (NAC) in Hyderabad. ``This will the richest educational centre in the country. Construction companies in the state have promised to give 1.25 per cent of their individual gross bill value for the development of this institute. The institute will have a corpus fund of Rs 65-70 crore,'' Swaroop says.

NAC will be the first such institute that will bring all aspects of construction related training under one umbrella. The institute will focus on ``skill upgradation ofengineers and supervisors, development of new construction methods, productivity improvement, project management and training through local languages''.

The Academy will have six main departments. They are as follows: