What Parul University Students Asked at SBUT, Ar. Hafeez Contractor’s Office, and Ravi Kevalramani’s Session: Self-Healing Concrete, 3D Printing vs Precast, Pumping Concrete to 85 Floors, Why Bridges Fail in Floods, and How Buildings Survive 40 Years

Er. Mahesh Tendulkar‘s session at SBUT produced the highest volume of technical questions. He is the Chief General Manager and Concrete Technologist at the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust, with 33 years of experience and an M.Tech from IIT Bombay.

PU’s Civil Engineering Tour To Mumbai!

Using bacteria in concrete is still mostly research-stage and impractical for active construction sites. The industry uses crystalline chemicals instead. These chemicals react with water and grow crystals that seal cracks automatically. The crystals block the hole without human intervention. Spending a small amount on these additives now saves significantly on repair costs later. Tendulkar framed this as value engineering: preventive investment that reduces lifecycle cost.

Precast wins for the next ten years. 3D printing is exciting because it removes manual labour, but the technology cannot build high structures yet. Precast is already constructing 30-storey towers. The economic catch: precast only saves money when you repeat the same shape many times. If every floor is architecturally different, precast becomes more expensive than conventional methods.

Three reasons: the technology is new to India, the machines are expensive, and there are height limitations on what can be printed. The Indian construction industry is investing in proven fast-build alternatives: aluminium formwork (used at Runwal Garden City, which the same students visited on Day 3) and precast factories (used at CIDCO Package 4, visited on Day 1).

Tendulkar identified three recurring errors he sees on sites. First, engineers do not read the batch sheet, which specifies exactly what is in the concrete truck. Second, engineers do not make a pouring plan that maps where the pump starts and ends. Third, engineers forget to cure the concrete with water after pouring. His practical rule: the concrete pump machine is your quality controller. If the mix is wrong, the pump will stop pumping. The machine knows before the engineer does.

Er. Mahesh Tendulkar defended engineers: bridge designs are usually structurally sound. When a bridge fails during a flood, it is typically the approach road that washes away, not the bridge structure itself. The long-term enemy of every bridge is rust. Water infiltrates the structure and corrodes the iron reinforcement and cables. Protecting steel from corrosion through coatings, chemical additives, and design details that prevent water ingress is what makes a bridge last decades.

BIM (Building Information Modelling) is a computer model of the entire building. Its greatest strength is clash detection: the software shows if a water pipe will intersect a structural beam before anyone starts building, saving enormous rework costs. The biggest problem with BIM is not technical. It is organisational: getting engineers from different disciplines (structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing) to agree and work together in a single coordinated model.

BTendulkar sir loved this question. The answer involves understanding that different floors need different concrete. Bottom floors carry the weight of the entire building above them, so they use smooth, high-slump concrete that flows easily through pump pipes. Top floors carry only the roof weight, so they use rougher, lower-slump concrete that is stronger but creates more friction in the pipes. Engineers add a chemical plasticiser that makes the pipe walls slippery, allowing the rougher mix to travel upward. Without this chemical, the pump would choke./p>

Standard builders simply clean visible surface rust before pouring. For major projects, engineers add corrosion-inhibiting chemicals directly to the concrete mix. These chemicals create a protective layer around the steel that prevents moisture from reaching the metal. For structures near seawater (bridges, coastal buildings), the solution is more aggressive: stainless steel reinforcement bars that resist corrosion inherently./p>

The structural designs are fundamentally similar: both carry loads across spans. The difference is the working environment. A river bridge is built in open space with relatively few constraints. A metro bridge is built inside a living city: limited road width, restricted working hours (often only at night), live traffic above, hidden underground utilities, and neighbours who object to noise and dust. The engineering challenge of a metro bridge is not the structure. It is the context./p>

Three possible causes. First, the concrete mix is bad (wrong proportions, too dry, or aggregate too large). Second, the pump motor is too weak for the height or distance required. Third, and most commonly overlooked, the pump operator is exhausted, frustrated, or in a bad mood. Tendulkar made a point that surprised students: the pump operator is the boss of the construction site. Building a personal relationship with the operator, understanding their working conditions, and treating them with respect is as important as the engineering. A machine operates only as well as the human running it./p>

Ar. Hafeez Contractor (Padma Bhushan, Columbia University, 600+ employees, 7.2 billion sq ft of projects) took three questions after his seven-story session.

Hafeez Contractor smiled and said every single job is tough. He advised students to look for the difficult part in every project and solve it using their mind. Even after designing India’s tallest buildings, every new project presents constraints (budget, site, regulation, client preferences) that require fresh thinking. The job never becomes routine.

It feels nice to be recognised, he said. But the real reward was not the award ceremony. It was seeing the change he made in the lives of poor women in slums who, before his housing project, had no toilets and had to wait until sunset every day. Seeing them smile was the actual award.

Think hard, work hard, think deeply. And your biggest responsibility as the young generation is to fight climate change and protect the environment. India has 20 percent of the world’s population on 2 percent of the world’s land. The youth must figure out how to build dense cities while increasing forest cover.

Read more on Ar. Hafeez Contractor: 7 Stories (Full Article)

Mr. Ravi Kevalramani (Director, RK Mumbai Realtors, founder of Straight Talk, 2 million+ social media followers) engaged students on the intersection of civil engineering with technology and business.

Mr. Kevalramani demonstrated live: he took a photograph of an empty cement office space, fed it into an AI tool, and in five minutes had a fully rendered modern office design. Then a minimalist version. Then a luxury Dubai-style version. His interior designer friend would charge Rs 40,000 for the same work. AI did it for free. His warning to students: use AI to make yourself better so you do not lose your job. But AI cannot visit a building site, check if cement is strong enough, or verify electrical safety. AI generates options. Engineers verify reality. If you too wish to amp your career at the intersection of AI & construction, then delay not and enrol into M.Tech in Construction Project Management from Parul University!

He started on YouTube in 2014, stopped, then restarted during the 2020 lockdown when buyers could not visit properties. He showed homes through his phone camera. Early on, 9 out of 10 homeowners refused to let him film. He focused on the one who said yes. The breakthrough came when he turned the camera on himself: a video showing a 170-square-foot room priced at Rs 63 lakh went from 1,000 views to 100,000 because people connected with a face, not just a property. A later video about a property in Karjat crossed 20 million views. His advice: talk about your expertise on the internet. Show the world what a civil engineer does.

Mumbai design is plain: most buildings are glass boxes. Dubai is full of energy, creative shapes, and branded residences (Mercedes, luxury hotels). The regulatory difference is stark: Mumbai requires 100+ permissions to demolish an old building. Dubai completes all permits in 30 days. Mumbai also has Vastu requirements (kitchen placement, bathroom location) that constrain design. His advice to engineers: use these constraints as creative challenges, not excuses.

Every pool, sky garden, and gym on a rooftop adds maintenance cost that someone must pay. Swimming pools on upper floors risk leaking into apartments below. Kevalramani referenced 432 Park Avenue in New York: a super-thin, super-tall luxury tower where a heavy pendulum ball inside (to counteract wind sway) makes creaking noises all day, and the building movement causes elevators to get stuck, trapping wealthy residents. Buyers are suing the builder. The lesson: think about how the building will function for 40 years, not just how it looks at launch.

Bullet Train Tunnel to CIDCO Housing – Parul University’s CE Tour to Mumbai!

If a company hires a civil engineering graduate to serve tea, quit. But if the boss asks you to deliver a paper, use it as an opportunity: stand there after delivery and ask what else you can help with. Show intent. His friend at JP Morgan came early, stayed late, asked for work beyond her role, and beat 10 candidates for a full-time position after a 6-month internship.

“Showing good intent is the secret to success.”

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The questions students asked are not the questions of passive listeners. Self-healing concrete costs, 3D printing vs precast economics, BIM coordination failures, pumping chemistry for 85-storey towers, and AI-assisted design workflows are questions that require real-time processing of technical content and connecting it to applications beyond the demonstration.

This engagement culture is what Parul University’s Practical Learning Tour ecosystem, covering 146 tours across 19 cities and 280 companies, is designed to build. The civil engineering tour to Mumbai was one programme in that ecosystem.

The Q&A content is the evidence that the programme produces students who ask the right questions. The university’s mission goes beyond securing placements: it aims to build a business-ready mindset that empowers students to identify real problems, build real solutions, and scale at their own pace.If you too wish to champion a career in civil engineering & infrastructure, delay not and enrol into B.Tech in Civil Engineering Program of :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}!

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