App covers database of over 180 fields

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is now digitally monitoring progress of its projects them through a state-of-the-art Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS), which has been developed in-house along with The Boston Consulting Group.

Speaking at the launch on 3 October 2017, the NHAI chairman Deepak Kumar said PMIS Mobile App will facilitate close, in-house monitoring of NHAI projects on a mobile phone.

PMIS has a comprehensive database with over 180 data fields being tracked for each project, and a further 500 fields specifically for complex Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, covering all key progress matrics such as design progress, contracting progress, construction progress, land acquisition, compensation disbursement, toll and traffic information and concession/contract information.

A series of Executive Dashboards have been designed to provide updated progress on all these data fields at various levels, such as national, Regional Office (RO) level, Project Implementation Unit (PIU) level & project level.

The data for these dashboards is submitted at an individual project level by the responsible Project Director, and is reviewed at regular frequency at the level of the NHAI Chairman and NHAI Members.

An in-built algorithm automatically highlights focus projects with key pending issues, so that focused interventions for these projects can be discussed during these reviews.

Apart from dashboards views of data, the PMIS is also enabled with Geographical Information System (GIS), which provides a geographical visualization of all NHAI projects on an India map. This is a unique feature of PMIS, which enables geo-visualization of projects rather than searching through a database.

The PMIS has enabled significant progress, with a 32% increase in construction in 2016-17 over the previous year, and with over 60% of the projects identified in 2016 with issues, now being back on track.

To facilitate access to the PMIS, which was so far available as a desktop version, NHAI has now launched a PMIS App in coordination with the Boston Consulting Group. The App, available in both Android and Apple versions, will be accessible to all of its officers in the Field and Headquarters, and will enable access to any project dashboard in just two clicks of a button.

The App also comes with a host of additional features – a Task Manager, so that tasks can be assigned and tracked through the organization; a Photo Upload functionality, so that Project Directors can click photos at project site and upload the latest status on PMIS; a Check-In feature, so that every visit to a site by an RO / PD can be tracked; and quick access to Stalled Issues, which are issues flagged with projects that have not been resolved in 30 days.

Kumar has also launched a world class, new multilingual website of the organization on 3 October 2017. fii-news.com