Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani, backed by Minister Piyush Goyal, is busy these days changing the work culture of his mammoth organization employing about 1.3 million people.
For instance, General Managers (GMs) of railway zones have been given blanket permissions to take up any work of up to Rs60 crore as against Rs 2.5 crore earlier - that, too, only after the Railway Board (RB) cleared the proposal and it found a mention in the 'Pink Book' - which indicates the works to be taken up for the year. All those steps hitherto were consuming a lot of time for project conceptualization, clearance, and actual grounding.
Now, it has been decided not to clear any work - new lines, doubling, electrification or anything else without completing the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) together with precise estimates. The norm earlier was to conduct a preliminary survey, prepare a rough estimate, seek RB's approval, then go for DPR with drawings, estimates and call for tenders which led to cost and time overruns.
This was done after Lohani set up a GMs panel to suggest ways for improving the functioning of the railways. Once the recommendations were made, Lohani got them approved by the Minister and the process of change was set into motion immediately. The expectation now is that the timeline from project plan to work mode can be brought down to a few months from two years to 10 or even more as was happening. "Railways have a large shelf of stalled projects without any definite plan for completion," said an officer.
GMs have also been given the leeway in deciding traffic blocks of up to three hours - time required for allowing traffic maintenance and this has been made mandatory for every section. "Our Minister has already made clear that the priority is safety, so track maintenance and renewal take precedence over new lines along with the capacity building of doubling, tripling, quadrupling as also electrification on high-density routes," says a senior railway official.
Zonal Managers are also free to decide on any change in materials of up to 50%, can create 50% posts for any new project without having to surrender any as was the rule, plus more powers to handle land acquisition and utilities shift.
Goyal & Lohani become agents of change in Railway
By IndianMandarins - 2018-04-26 11:28:56
Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani, backed by Minister Piyush Goyal, is busy these days changing the work culture of his mammoth organization employing about 1.3 million people.
For instance, General Managers (GMs) of railway zones have been given blanket permissions to take up any work of up to Rs60 crore as against Rs 2.5 crore earlier - that, too, only after the Railway Board (RB) cleared the proposal and it found a mention in the 'Pink Book' - which indicates the works to be taken up for the year. All those steps hitherto were consuming a lot of time for project conceptualization, clearance, and actual grounding.
Now, it has been decided not to clear any work - new lines, doubling, electrification or anything else without completing the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) together with precise estimates. The norm earlier was to conduct a preliminary survey, prepare a rough estimate, seek RB's approval, then go for DPR with drawings, estimates and call for tenders which led to cost and time overruns.
This was done after Lohani set up a GMs panel to suggest ways for improving the functioning of the railways. Once the recommendations were made, Lohani got them approved by the Minister and the process of change was set into motion immediately. The expectation now is that the timeline from project plan to work mode can be brought down to a few months from two years to 10 or even more as was happening. "Railways have a large shelf of stalled projects without any definite plan for completion," said an officer.
GMs have also been given the leeway in deciding traffic blocks of up to three hours - time required for allowing traffic maintenance and this has been made mandatory for every section. "Our Minister has already made clear that the priority is safety, so track maintenance and renewal take precedence over new lines along with the capacity building of doubling, tripling, quadrupling as also electrification on high-density routes," says a senior railway official.
Zonal Managers are also free to decide on any change in materials of up to 50%, can create 50% posts for any new project without having to surrender any as was the rule, plus more powers to handle land acquisition and utilities shift.
