About Sanjay Dutt, MD & CEO of TATA Realty and Infrastructure:
Sanjay Dutt is the managing director and chief executive officer of Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited (TRIL). He has over 28 years of experience in the real estate sector with various international real estate developers and property consultants. Dutt brings extensive experience in real estate across real estate segments i.e. office, residential, retail, hospitality and industrial.
His role involves strategic planning, development, acquisitions and monetisation and asset management across the geographies of India. He holds a Post-Graduate Degree in Marketing & HR from the International Management Institute.
He is the Chairman South Asia – RICS, Joint Chairman of the FICCI – Real Estate Committee and Chairman APREA Asia-Advocacy Committee, Advisory Board NAREDCO and Co-Chairman of ASSOCHAM – Ease of Doing Business Council and a member of CoreNet Global. In 2020 he was recognized as the Compliance Champion by Legasis.
Q: Tata Realty is one of the few Indian developers to acquire the WELL Health-Safety Rating for their operational portfolio of commercial projects. What are some of the strategies implemented by the compnay for the same?
The Covid-19 pandemic is enthralling the industry to look at wellness as a major priority area of building design and construction. With health and safety becoming a priority to all, employers too have to take up this responsibility towards their employees. Today, developers need to consider all aspects of safety and the upgradation of design features to accommodate measures that aid people during a pandemic.
Commercial buildings are now taking proactive measures to maintain health, wellness, and safety standards at workplaces and places of public gathering. This includes dealing with unprecedented situations like the continuation of work-from-home culture due to the rising COVID-19 cases or accepting a hybrid mode to work, change in consumer behavior, digitalization of company processes, and integration of wellness aspects into the very core of the construction, amongst others.
Tata Realty is one of the few Indian developers to acquire the WELL Health-Safety Rating for our operational portfolio of commercial projects across Gurgaon, Mumbai and Chennai (Intellion Square (TRIL IT4), Mumbai, Intellion Edge, Gurgaon and Ramanujan Intellion Park, Chennai through the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI).
Ramanujan Intellion Park, Chennai
As a commitment to our stakeholders, we have taken up the responsibility to implement various health and sanitization features. Right from the moment you enter the campus till the time you exit, we have implemented a completely touchless journey for all and provided technology, equipment and built a culture of “safety for all”. We expect this to be industry standards.
The big words are “REPURPOSED, RELEVANT & RESPONSIBLE REAL ESTATE”. The emphasis for a very long time was on buildings, which moved to environment and now totally focused on its occupants. There was lot of emphasis on sustainability through energy conservation, which has now extended to air quality and wellness of the building and its inhabitants.
In order to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus, in the short term period, the designers came up with a viable solution of installing perspex or glass screens in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak. This will see a change in the newly designed office as designers are opting for a more viable alternative, which is not only visually pleasing but also eliminates the feeling of, disconnect. However, there are certain trends that are here to stay for example, designers have realised that communication channels are of immense importance in the new normal and are incorporating in the principles of design.
Newly repurposed offices will witness devoting specific rooms to teleconferencing screens, digital whiteboards, and more elegant cable management with additional outlets and plugs in every corner of the room and on tabletops for convenience.
The pandemic has made employers revise investments in their air conditioning through UV protection and advanced filtration systems. Some companies are investing in systems that extract stale indoor air and filter in fresh outdoor air instead of systems that recirculate the air. While the design and architecture will play a magnificent role in revolting challenges, incorporation of energy efficient lighting, investing in water and energy efficient appliances and switching to solar panel energy are some of the additions to be taken seriously by the employers.
Q: Digital technology is also witnessing fundamental shift in how a project is designed, constructed, operated and decommissioned. What are some of the emerging technologies that the industry is working with?
The industry has taken a technological leap into a variety of technological means and methods to keep pace and sometimes lead the transformational change brought about by recent events. Some of the prominent technologies that the industry is implementing are AI, NLP which help in target segmenting. Due to pandemic, physical walk-ins have been replaced by virtual walkthroughs and state-of-the-art AR/ VR tools today provide end consumers a sense of space and help make informed decisions. Increased use ofpredictive & prescriptive analytics to effectively manage lead conversions, delayed payments & customer cancellations have gained prominence in the industry.
Today, we have witnessed e-mail bots, chabots & virtual assistant facilitating early customer interactions. However, with the advancements seen in robotics, we are not very far from a scenario where-in the complete end to end Sales transaction would be concluded by a bot. Also, 3D space capture platform that transforms real-life spaces into immersive digital twin models enables users to capture and connect rooms to create truly interactive 3D models of spaces and even plan various layouts for optimal space utilisation.
Digital technology is also witnessing fundamental shift in how a project is designed, constructed, operated and decommissioned. While few technologies have seen good adoption quite a few are being robustly evaluated for value deliverance. Digital technologies such as Drone, Advanced 3D models, Cloud-enabled Collaborative Design Process and many more are transforming the sector.
Long-range technologies being explored are restructuring of working strategies using transformational software and internet platforms for regular work. Moving to cloud storage to reduce liabilities on physical infrastructure, IOT to help gather data, analyse, & strategize, in real time to provide tailor-made solutions for customers and transformational software such as BIM and EDGE to continuously optimise work on the field and operations are some of the tech that will set industry standards and lead from the front.
Some of the quick ones include automated cleaning and disinfection of high volume touch surfaces, installing corona guard free electron generators to minimise infection rates, voice control / gesture control commands for elevators, touchless proximity based pushbuttons (using Infra-red sensors), pedal operated/silver ion door handles to arrest virus formation, touchless visitor management systems using mobile/bluetooth, & sensor-based sanitary fittings.
Q: What are the green measures taken up by Tata Realty to confirm that the sustainability aspect is addressed throughout the lifecycle of their projects?
Sustainability started as fad, became a differentiator and is now an imperative. It is still the single most dominant contributor in terms of impact on the planet followed by mobility and constructions. With the ever-growing economies and the need and greed for more, attending to the sustainable factors is becoming increasingly important for brands and consumers alike.
However, Sustainability in a developing country like India comes with its own set of challenges. As more and more people become conscious of the environment and individual acts that deteriorate its quality, considerate action is being taken by employees and companies to make a conscious effort towards reducing their workplace’s carbon footprint and use natural resources sustainably. Real estate developers must recognize their accountability towards the environment and espouse Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) as a part of their core business.
Given the pandemic situation, it is more peremptory than ever before for the industry to implement solutions that enable the effective use of resources. At Tata Realty, we take conscious measures on sustainability and our impact on the environment. We are proud to be leading the country in being the greenest developer as all our residential and commercial buildings are certified green.
- The waste generated in our projects is at a minute and is effectively reduced, reused, or recycled – both during construction as well as operation. We confirm that the sustainability aspect is addressed throughout the lifetime of our projects, hence we implement waste management practices at every stage.
- In the construction phase, we reuse the debris as a landfill and control emission from DGs by using Chakra Shield.
- We also amalgamate several waste-management features that make use of organic waste composter, solar panels and heaters, rainwater harvesting pit and sewage treatment plants, to conserve our resources.
- Right from the design stage we ensure we develop campus with better indoor air quality, radiant cooling systems and use solar energy as an alternate source.
At one of our project Intellion Park Gurugram, we have installed an 800 KVA solar plant that further supports us in optimum usage of energy. Besides this, we also undertake tree plantation drives to reduce dust & noise pollution and make use of herb/vegetable gardens as a means to encourage people to grow their produce.
By opting for a green workspace companies can demonstrate their commitment to environmental causes to employees, customers and competitors. It is imperative for businesses with any kind of commercial space to address a post-COVID-19 environment in a manner that is sustainable for the long-term.
Q: What in your opinion woud be the key elements in an evolving workplace for the future?
Office constitutes work station, work place, collaboration space, recreation and comfort stations. You will see technology and digitization dominating physically. While corporate and developers are working on safe return of employees and is sustainability, designers will now focus on ‘Designing for Productivity with physical and emotional health of employees.’ The future workplace will witness multi-use spaces that support diverse activities, thereby enabling distancing needs and or facilitating the accommodation of different size groups and activities. Physical as well as digital experience will be braided to enable working from a variety of regions.
From the perspective of physical design, workstation sizes have increased to accommodate social distancing norms & transparent screens between workstations keep the visual connect whilst fulfilling safety norms. Higher ceilings and more natural light and ventilation will lead to an open office plan with more collaborative spaces and youth oriented design.
The use of technology such as sensors, air filters, automated screening and sanitising solutions and touchless modes of work will dominate the physical environment. Hot-desking and multi-use cabins will form the new office structure and the cafeteria will double up as informal meeting rooms. Conference rooms will morph into conversation arenas wherein three or more key stakeholders engage with the rest of the team who log in from their mobile devices at multiple locations providing key data points from on field location and operations.
Satellite hubs will crop up connecting people from remote locations to each other. Remote access will boost productivity as demonstrated during the pandemic, as it has freed up time and resources otherwise wasted in costly commuting and polluted environments in cities. Teams would only meet up for critical engagements optimising time, work, and productivity.
The redesigned workplace will reflect the optimised workforce in terms of lesser floor area per person / parking space needed which would free up spaces for more creative engagement for people when they do come into work. These can translate into sports, leisure & recreation where informal workplace chatter can spur innovative solutions and boost overall performance of both – the individual and the organisation.