So far, the owners are happy with the way construction is progressing, they say. When ENR visited in September, the site was buzzing with concrete, rebar and mechanical trades. Crews had raised the building to the 10th floor. On-site rebar cutting, bending and welding stations are a reminder that labor here is cheap, though India's growing dependence on heavy machinery is expected to alter this reality (">see sidebar).
Before the building got off the ground, the general contractor, B.L. Kashyap & Sons Ltd., faced numerous challenges underground. In order to accommodate parking and other amenities, One Horizon Center has one of the deepest basements in Gurgaon, with four stories buried more than 65 ft below grade. According to project executives, complicated deep-foundation work literally broke new ground in the area.
Founded in sandy, clayey soil on a concrete mat up to 6.5 ft thick, the building required some 350,000 cu yd of excavation. A concrete retaining wall supports the basement on two sides of the site, which abuts a busy thoroughfare. Using continuous augering, crews installed concrete piles to support the substructure. "It took seven to eight months to get out of the ground," says Monish Krishna, director at Hines India.
The building also uses an advanced, high-performance concrete mix that is unusual for commercial buildings in India. Columns are made from M60-type concrete, which has a compressive strength of about 8,700 psi. The mix is a grade above the typical M40 concrete mixes found readily throughout the country.
"We have gone one step ahead and started using M60 concrete to reduce the column sizes and attain better strength in the building," explains Harmeet Singh, manager of design and construction for Hines India. Due to the lack of space on the site, the concrete is brought in with ready-mix trucks. To comply with a local municipal requirement, the project also is trucking in water to reduce the demand on the city's already-stressed water supply.
Greening Gurgaon
Gurgaon is caught between two worlds. For example, compared to other iconic, lofty skyscrapers around the world, One Horizon Center won't be a record-breaker—it has no supertall height or wild appearance. The project aspires to set standards for its global and green merits, two major trends dominating the new construction landscape in India. Yet like other new commercial suburbs sprouting up around India's major metropolitan hubs, Gurgaon is hardly green, critics say.
"These are really adjuncts to cities," says Sumit Banerjee, vice president of Reliance Cementation Ltd., one of the country's largest cement suppliers. "As a country, we have not planned a city in a very long time." Last September, Banerjee spoke at the Infrastructure Today Leadership Summit in New Delhi, where he advocated for smarter infrastructure growth for satellite cities like Gurgaon.
"When you compare some of the cities that are well travelled, we begin to see the gap between the city infrastructure that we see there and the city infrastructure that we see here," says Banerjee. "On the other hand, the sheer size of population migration is probably moving faster in our case than in those countries."
The pace of private development ">in Gurgaon has moved much too quickly, and its infrastructure now needs to catch up, critics add. Despite its Fortune 500 companies, luxury shopping centers and million-dollar condos, the city lacks a sewer system, sidewalks or other basic infrastructure.
"Most buildings have their own sewage-treatment plants," Stevens explains. "There is no municipal sewer line. There is no municipal water line. So you really have to be kind of self-sufficient."
In addition to incorporating its own wastewater treatment plant, One Horizon Center is designed to capture stormwater to irrigate the landscape. It will use gray water to flush toilets and run the chillers. Finally, as with most buildings in Gurgaon, One Horizon Center will be fitted with diesel generators to mitigate the risk of electrical failures.
