Er. Mahesh Tendulkar on 33 Years of Concrete: From Underground Hydro Power at Tata Power to 1,000 Bridge Inspections With Underwater Divers to 85-Storey Towers at Bhendi Bazaar, and Why He Told Parul University Students That AI Can Never Pour Concrete on a Site

Er. Mahesh Tendulkar started his career at Tata Power in 1992, working on underground hydro power projects ranging from 100 metres below the ground. Amid those early days, ready-mix concrete was not so common. Concrete mixer trucks were rarely seen on project sites, never on city-side roads. Pouring 500 cubic metres was considered a major challenge and operation, but these days pouring 3000 cubic metres of concrete is a daily routine. Hence time changes, technology progresses and if you too wish to pursue a career in this domain, enrol into Parul University’s B.Tech in Civil Engineering Program.

Besides this, Tata Power taught him 2 foundational principles that he still applies today. Those foundations have shaped everything that followed in his career trajectory.

1. Safety is always the first priority on any construction site. Hence, the team was trained to use safety nets to safeguard themselves from any injurious object.
2. QA – quality isn’t a one-time process. It’s a daily process and manual. A checklist was installed so engineers can sign before starting any work, leading to prevention of mistakes and building a disciplined mindset.

Full Mumbai Tour: 9 Sessions Complete Guide

At Ambuja Cement, Mr. Tendulkar learned concrete in depth. His two mentors, Mr. Remedios (known as the father of concrete), transformed his understanding. When Mr. Remedios was diagnosed with cancer, he selected twenty engineers and spent six months training them to become teachers. He made them promise to teach young engineers. This is why, decades later, Er. Tendulkar speaks to students at Parul University and elsewhere. If you’re interested in leveling up your career, then enrol into Parul University’s M.Tech in Construction Project Management program.

“If you do not learn a new thing today, open a dictionary, find a new word, learn it, and then go to sleep.”

In 2006, Tendulkar joined the Mumbai Metro project with Reliance. He was the team leader for quality audits on Metro Lines 2A and Line 6. Constructing a metro in the middle of Mumbai was a problem of invisible complexity.

On a computer animation, building a metro looks simple: a machine digs, an iron cage drops in, concrete is poured. In reality, before a single drill enters the ground, the team must map underground utilities: water pipes, storm drains, electrical cables, phone lines. The government does not have complete maps of these utilities because roads have been widened over the years, shifting pipe locations unpredictably.

The team broke up concrete roads by hand, dug L-shaped trenches to search for hidden pipes, and still encountered surprises. Rock appeared metres earlier than geological surveys predicted. Active water pipes sat exactly where foundations needed to go. Engineers changed foundation designs on the spot, sometimes converting a 4-pile design to a 9-pile design at midnight to avoid hitting a water main.

“Underground utilities are the biggest headache for city construction.”

They also used precast technology to save time. Thirty-metre concrete columns were fabricated in a factory, loaded onto trucks, and driven 12 kilometres through Mumbai traffic at 2 kilometres per hour. It took a full day to deliver a single piece.

After the metro, Er. Tendulkar entered a rare specialisation: bridge health inspection. He has checked the health of more than 1,000 bridges in Maharashtra. The work revealed a surprising fact:

“One hundred year old stone bridges are often stronger than modern concrete bridges.”

British-era bridge builders maintained better records than current local government agencies. The inspection process for river bridges like those over the Godavari involves hiring divers who descend 10 metres underwater with a head-mounted camera and an oxygen pipe. A wire connects the camera to a screen on a boat above. The engineer and the diver communicate through a microphone. The engineer instructs the diver to check concrete from different angles (like clock numbers). The diver shows cracks, rusted iron bars, and holes carved by water. This work can only be done in summer when river water is clear.

Over time, moving water washes away soil under bridge pillars in a process called scouring. Sometimes massive concrete pillars are left hanging in the water with nothing beneath them. Finding these problems before a bridge collapses is the purpose of underwater inspection.

The Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT) project at Bhendi Bazaar is the largest cluster redevelopment project in India. The project cleared old buildings across 16.5 acres, relocated 2,500 families, and is now constructing towers up to 85 storeys tall.

The engineering challenges are specific to high-rise mass concrete:

• Foundation bases are 3 to 5 metres thick. Pouring this volume of concrete generates extreme heat through exothermic chemical reaction. If the heat is not controlled, the concrete cracks.
• An on-site ready-mix concrete plant is housed within the city site, covered with a roof to control dust and noise for the surrounding neighbourhood.
• Self-compacting concrete (SCC) is used for walls: it flattens and settles by itself without mechanical vibration, eliminating air bubbles and dramatically increasing construction speed.

B.Tech Civil Engineering at Parul University

The final segment of Tendulkar’s session covered precast housing, which he described as the future of residential construction. The contrast he drew was stark: a conventional building takes one month per floor. Current fast-track methods achieve one floor in fifteen days. Precast technology can build a 22-storey tower in two to three months.

The factory operates like a Maruti car assembly line:

• One team cleans steel moulds
• A second team ties iron bar reinforcement
• A third team pours concrete into the moulds
• Completed rooms enter a steam room for three-day accelerated curing
• Trucks carry finished bedrooms, kitchens, and toilets to the building site
• Giant cranes lift and stack the rooms like blocks

“Factory made buildings are the fastest and safest way to grow our cities.”

Because everything is manufactured indoors under controlled conditions, the quality of precast rooms is consistent in a way that site-poured construction cannot match. This is the construction method that CIDCO Package 4 (23,432 tenements, visited by the same Parul University students on Day 1 of the tour) is using at scale.

PU’s Civil Engineering Tour To Mumbai!

Er. Tendulkar explained that bacteria-based self-healing concrete remains mostly in the research stage. On construction sites, builders use crystalline chemicals that react with water to seal cracks automatically. He framed this as value engineering: spending a little now saves a lot in repairs later.

Precast wins for the next decade. 3D printing removes labour but cannot build high yet. Precast is already building 30-storey towers. However, precast only saves money when the same shape is repeated many times. If every floor is different, precast becomes too expensive.

The technology is new for India. Machines are expensive and have height limits. The industry is investing in proven alternatives: aluminium formwork and precast factories.

Three errors he sees repeatedly: engineers do not read the batch sheet (which tells you what is in the truck), engineers do not make a pouring plan (where the pump starts and ends), and engineers forget to cure concrete with water. His rule: the concrete pump machine is your quality controller. If the mix is bad, the pump will stop.

He defended engineers: designs are usually sound. When bridges fail, it is usually the approach road that washes away, not the bridge structure. The real long-term enemy is rust. Water enters and corrodes iron cables. Protecting steel from corrosion is what makes a bridge last.

BIM (Building Information Modelling) is excellent for clash detection, showing whether a water pipe will intersect a structural beam before construction begins. The biggest problem is not the software. It is getting engineers from different disciplines to agree and work together.

Bottom floors hold all the weight and use smooth, high-slump concrete that pumps easily. Top floors hold only the roof and use rougher, lower-slump concrete that causes friction in pipes. Engineers add a chemical plasticiser to make the pipe walls slippery. Tendulkar loved this question.

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Normal builders clean visible rust. For major projects, engineers add corrosion-inhibiting chemicals directly to the concrete mix. Near seawater, stainless steel reinforcement is used.

Structurally, the designs are similar. The difference is the working environment. A river bridge is built in open space. A metro bridge is built inside a living city with limited space, limited working hours, and live traffic above.

Three causes: bad concrete mix, weak pump motor, or an exhausted/frustrated operator. Tendulkar emphasised the human factor: the pump operator is the boss of the site. Building a relationship with the operator is as important as the engineering.

All Q&A From Every Session

“Do not run away to an air conditioned office or an MBA program. Spend your first five years sweating on the construction site and you will become an unstoppable engineer.”

This advice aligns with Prof. Tarun Kant‘s observation at IIT Bombay during the same tour: people who work at dusty project sites get promoted much faster and become chief executive officers compared to people who sit in design offices. Two experts, separated by decades of experience but united by the same career trajectory, telling the same students the same thing: the field is where careers are built.

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