<div>As the India infrastructure story unfolds, many large global corporations are expanding their presence in the country.<strong> Uwe Krueger, chief executive, WS Atkins</strong> — one of the leading design, engineering and project management consultancies globally — was in India recently to inaugurate WS Atkins’ new design centre in Gurgaon. The spanking new centre will accommodate 500 design engineers. This is in addition to the 1,000 people at the Bangalore facility. The £1.7-billion WS Atkins, official design partner for the London Olympics 2012 has been involved in the building of many iconic structures around the world including Dubai’s Burj Al Arab, the tallest all-suite hotel in the world and providing full design and management of the civil works on the Dubai Metro. Atkins is currently working on the Namaste Tower, a 300-metre, 62-storied building in Mumbai. Krueger spoke to <strong>BW Businessworld’s</strong> <strong>Anup Jayaram</strong> on the potential of using India as a design centre for the world. <br /><br /><em>Excerpts:</em><br /><br /><strong>You are expanding your Indian design operations. How critical is India for Atkins’ expansion plans?</strong><br />I took the decision to start the Delhi office in late summer last year. This office is clearly about growth and expansion. By adding 500 people to the 1,000 that we have in Bangalore makes us possibly the largest engineering & design representation that any of the international design companies now has in India. It comes with the additional clear will from our side to be much more present in the project business in India. We have been involved with two stations in the Kolkata metro, in the Hyderabad metro, the Namaste tower in Mumbai and master planning work in many places and low carbon design work for master planning. That is something that we believe strongly is an area where we are very competitive and add a lot of value.<br /><br />We set up the Bangalore office in 1995 as a global design centre (GDC) basically working for the whole Atkins universe and it grew steadily. The principle we put in place right from the very beginning was to have highly qualified engineers here. So we took a lot of emphasis in training our colleagues there so that basically today what we have in Bangalore is exactly the same engineering level of sophistication that we have in the US, Hong Kong and the UK. We have senior engineers who contribute to signaling technology, aerospace. It’s not very well known, but we do a lot of aerospace engineering out of Bangalore. We do independent validation and testing of carbon composite structures. Then of course general infrastructure design that includes water, iconic structures like super towers in the Middle East and in China is done in Bangalore now.<br /><br />We need to attract the best talent. For that we cooperate with the leading engineering universities worldwide. We have a strong cooperation with the Universities of Southampton and Oxford. And we encourage them to reach out to Indian colleagues to foster ties. <br /><strong><br />What bigger projects are you looking for out of India?</strong><br />In the long-term, all kind of master planning work that is connected with the Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Bangalore corridors are of enormous interest to us. Second, we are looking at all complex metro networks specifically connected to tunneling. In Delhi we did a small bit of the work on tunneling. In Hyderabad we have been asked to do the validation of the design by L&T.<br /><br />If you look at the architecture and design side of our business, we come from a strong presence in the hospitality business. The Burj al Arab, the sail shape building was our design; 5-star and 7-star hotels in China and the Asia Pacific. The expansion of the Jumeirah group here in India is a project we feel very qualified for. In addition to that we have an energy practice. <br /><br /><strong>Are you looking at buildings and hotels here?</strong><br />Yes, the large, iconic buildings are where international expertise would be needed. These would be large structures that would be a landmark. The Indian School of Business in Hyderabad is a project managed by us. We were the official design partners for the London Olympics. That’s the degree of precision that we offer. How the highly contaminated site was converted into an Olympic park stunned the world. That’s very much an expertise in turning existing urban infrastructure into something that is much more liveable and sustainable in the future.<br /><br />We did a major study about future proofing cities. It concentrates on the fastest growing cities in the developing world. We did that with the DFID, UK. Two projects that are connected to that in India are Madurai and Mysore where we applied the master planning knowledge for sustainable design. The general challenge is how you apply a holistic approach to water and waste water management when it comes to transport infrastructure, energy infrastructure in urban areas. It is not enough to do a silo approach. If you want to arrive at something that is a sustainable living and working environment, you have to consider all of them together. That is what we have demonstrated capable of doing in London, in Baku, Azerbaijan; be it in Hong Kong or other densely populated areas. Another aspect that we discussed with the Indian government during the state visit is transport oriented development.<br /><br /><strong>What are the problems that you face here in major projects?</strong><br />The challenge here is that if you want to invest in complex and expensive infrastructure like an urban metro, you need to find a way to finance that not only out of tax payers. In order to generate revenues, you need to design revenue generating real estate around the transport hub. So concepts that have proved to be very helpful in getting private financing in the UK, Hong Kong and the Middle East is something we believe will be very helpful here in India to make financing easier. That will attract more private development.<br /><br /><strong>Who are your major competitors here?</strong><br />We have international competition. These are largely companies based out of the US. We are typically not competing with Indian firms. We are partnering with these companies. We bring the additional knowledge and expertise for the very sophisticated part of the engineering, we are partnering local companies. We do a lot of international design out of India. The projects that we do out of here are at the highest levels of engineering complexity and Indian engineers’ ability to deliver these projects is remarkably high.<br /><br />One of the most complex projects that we handled was the Dubai Metro. If anyone in the world has fallen in love with the car, it is the population in the UAE. You needed a design that entices people to use public transport. We produced an iconic design for metro stations which has seen a utilisation that exceeded expectations by a factor of three. That is what I call a holistic approach to design and engineering.<br /><br /><strong>What sectors are you focusing on in India?</strong><br />We focus largely on the transport sector. So we talk about rail, complex bridges and highways, mass rapid transit and high speed rail. We are clearly very interested in urban transit projects. It is an area of core expertise for us. I think we can bring in the sophisticated part of the engineering to the table here.<br /><br />Another area that I would like to mention here is energy. In energy, we are among the largest engineering companies for nuclear power. UK was the first country to use civil nuclear for energy purposes. The entire fuel cycle from uranium and plutonium to the nuclear facilities is a very experienced industry. We are currently engaged in all major nuclear projects. We are heavily engaged in the UK. In India we are very interested in expanding our presence. Atkins India is among the very select organisations that have Department of Atomic Energy India’s permission to export design work out of India. This was very important for our engineers to work on international projects.<br /><br /><strong>Isn’t there a rethinking globally on nuclear power post-Fukushima?</strong><br />Even in Japan, there is some rethinking under the Japanese administration on re-opening nuclear power plants. The general rationale is that countries like China, India need to have an alternative to the large penetration of coal fired power plants. There needs to be a base-load alternative which in the future will be nuclear. So this is a clear trend that you can see. It is the investment into new nuclear plants; but it also in managing the whole fuel cycle that is needed. We have enormous experience when it comes to these aspects of the nuclear supply chain.<br /><br />Nuclear is one of the fastest growing businesses in Atkins. We have more than 20 per cent growth in the nuclear energy business because our engineering expertise is in such high demand. And even at the other end of the spectrum, there are older nuclear power plants that now need to be decommissioned.<br /><br /><strong>Where does the bulk of Atkins’ business come from?</strong><br />When I came on board as the CEO, 60 per cent of the business was from Europe. Now it is the other way round. We are expanding a lot in the Asia Pacific region.</div>
